Subject: Re: mysterious reboots
To: Christos Zoulas <christos@zoulas.com>
From: Frank Kardel <Frank.Kardel@Nagler-Consult.COM>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/23/1999 10:06:53
> In article <199908191637.LAA20783@harper.uchicago.edu>,
> Wenchi Liao <wliao@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> >I've been pretty happy with my netbsd 1.4/i386 box so far.
> >It is mainly desktop use (lots of network and x stuff in
> >the day, nothing really at night) with a GENERIC sans
> >pcmcia/scsi/kitchen sink kernel. The hardware is a micron
> >with a pent. mmx.
> >
> >For some reason, the machine will reboot in the middle of
> >the night. I don't think this is some wierd exploit/trojan
> >horse thing, since it started happening when the machine
> >was really new, and I have all sorts of security devices
> >and filters in place.
I do run 1.4J (current-19990821) and i DO see the reboot pattern
also. It is not very reliable to reproduce but i get reboots
about every two days mainly when amanda-client runs. I have had
sucessful amanda-runs though (doesn't happen when you look at it 8-( ).
So, crashes are likely but not certain on amanda runs. The configuration
is ASUS-P2S, 400MHz PII-MMx, 256Mb. Trouble started somewhere around
May i guess. The 1.4 release was very stable. BTW: RND is disabled.
Any ideas ?
The bad thing is that the kernel debugger is not invoked and i haven't
seen the code passing cpu_reset() when setting a breakpoint there. I just
reboots without any visible trace ...
> 
> I would upgrade to 1.4.1, or disable the random pseudo-device
> in your kernel.
> 
> christos
> 

Frank