Hi !

On Sun, 16 Jul 2000 nbsd@righi.dhs.org wrote:
> thanks to all of you I could finally install NetBSD on my 4000/60
> I Also  installed a DEC RZ25 4GB disk on my vaxstation.

How do you get 4GB out of a RZ25? I wanna know, mine is just 425MB :-)

> if I make a very hard and heavy compiling job like compiling 6 or 7
> applications teh same time so that I Can use all the RAM Avaliable it
> happend to me that the system crashed and kenel debugger started. I traced
> back and I got GCC was the one which made the system crash... but this

Did you create and activate some swap?

> happened to me only one time. Now what is happeniing is really very weird.
> AFter a while the system is running if I make hard compilation jobs, it
> happened to me 2 times that the system hangs withotu a reason, no core
> dumps no kernel crash, just NOTHING is displayed on the screen.
> ALSO the RESET switch on the front of the vaxstation does not work anymore
> and the only way for me is to POWER-CYCLE the machinee which reboots
> correctly  doing fsck. also the reste switch is hanging very weird!

It's not a RESET, it's a HALT button which does some kind of non-maskable
interrupt. If this doesn't result in a CPU halt, the machine is really
extremely crashed. Did you ever had VMS or so running under heavy load? I
compiled 2 kernels today on my 4000/90 with NetBSD 1.5_ALPHA, and had
absolutely no problems, so i think, the problem might not be NetBSD-related.

> Anyone of you happened before this problem of machine hanging ??
> could it be a problem of overheating ??

Mybe, in the worst case some very fine breaks in the lines on the PCB, this
would give such behaviour. But we don't want to think of such worse problems.

> could it be a problem due to the fact that a PIN in a SIMM socket of my
> vaxstation is damaged ??

Maybe... Try to get this fixed, usually with a fine needle, this works ok.

> the memory test anyways shows me all the memory is OK!

In the COLD state. Did you do some "TEST MEM" after such a hard crash as
you described? You might also do a "SET FBOOT 0" and power-cycle the machine,
then you can be sure it does a full RAM check, not the quick check.

> and I do not think it can be overhating.
> I installed the new SCSI disk at about 2 centimeters higher than the
> motherboard and it has no physical touch with any part of the vaxstation
> case.

VAXen usually have a nice cooling, i don't think of a real overheating, but
some of your problems could come from some devices having problems, which they
only show after getting a bit warmer.

> well let me know if someone of you ever experienced this problem which is
> very weird and  impossible to explain why it happens for me!

I never had a problem with a VAX which i couldn't remove by power-cycling the
machine, or which really was some kernel bug. I know of a case, where a
VS 4000/60 self-repaired it, it did absolutely nothing, but after it ran in
this "zombie" state for several hours, it suddenly made those beeps after
a self check. Since then, the box works fine again (hi Marc :-)

...Michael

-- 
 Michael@unixiron.org, Rottweil/Germany, http://www.bsdfans.org
 I'm using: [solaris] [hp-ux] [irix] [freebsd] [netbsd] [openbsd] [linux]