Subject: Re: Frozen Processes on PowerEdge 8450
To: None <tech-smp@netbsd.org>
From: Thomas T. Thai <tom@minnesota.com>
List: tech-smp
Date: 03/22/2004 22:55:42
Thomas T. Thai wrote:

> Using the same kernel (GENERIC), the next three reboot (via reset 
> button), the system booted up only to:
>
> ...
> root on ld0a dumps on ld0b
> root file system type: ffs
> [FROZEN]

I think there is a bug with handling large amount of RAM on i386. I 
still have 24 gig of RAM in the server. After poking around the BIOS 
settings, I found a setting to limit the amount of RAM the BIOS 
recognized to 2 gig.

Another reboot and the system came up. Didn't freeze at the above point. 
In fact, it hasn't hang on any processes yet. I was able to build a new 
kernel, for the first time, using

    make -j 10

and watched the CPUs go to work using '"top." I also had "sup" on the 
background pulling down -current. No process has freeze yet. I've tested 
this with GENERIC and GENERIC.MP.

Before I set the BIOS option to limit RAM to 2 gig, the system did see 4 
gig. I'm going to try the new kernel I built using "largepages.inc." 
I'll try it with no limit on the RAM from BIOS and the 2 gig limit.

Now that I've verified it isn't an SMP issue, I'll start a new thread in 
the current-users list to work through the memory issue.

Regards,
Thomas