Re: disappointing upgrade to NetBSD 5.0

[Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>]

Dan Engholm wrote:
> I can't be sure what I am doing to get the problem to occur, but it seems
> to be network related.  Looking around Google, I found one thread in
> port-xen with a similar description but it dead ended with no resolution. 
> (see http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2009/01/18/msg004686.html)

It is network related, but the error is due to the hypervisor returning 
an error for the decrease memory operation. As the domU does not expect 
it to fail, it ends in panic().

Advice would be the same as in the link above: any error reported by the 
hypervisor on its console?

> Building databases:panic: buf mem pool index 7
> Begin traceback...
> uvm_fault(0xc9d58b98, 0, 1) -> 0xe
> fatal page fault in supervisor mode
> trap type 6 code 0 eip c0396531 cs 9 eflags 10246 cr2 0 ilevel 0
> panic: trap
> Faulted in mid-traceback; aborting...
> dumping to dev 142,16 offset 1582223
> dump device bad
>
> rebooting...
>
> What it should have said after "Building databases:" is:
>
> Building databases: dev, utmp, utmpx done
> Starting syslogd.
> Setting date via ntp.
> Checking for core dump...

Any chance we could get a backtrace?

For that, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf of domU, set the ddb.onpanic to 1. 
Then "bt" from ddb prompt.

> Since the upgrade, my user domain no longer boots without intervention.  It
> does not figure out on its own where the root partition is so I have to
> manually enter "xbd0a" from the Xen console.  The configuration file has
> 'root = "/dev/xbd0a"' in it as it has since I started using Xen.  This is
> true regardless of which version of Xen I use.

And with root = "xbd0" ?

> Also, I got burned by Xen telling me that the "nics" configuration option
> is obsolete.  The man page says that it's still valid and that its default
> value is 1.  If I don't have a "nics = 1" line in my configuration file, no
> NICs are created and the creation fails because it can't configure the
> network.  What gives?

vif array?

vif = ['mac=00:16:3e:00:00:11, bridge=bridge0'] # for example

--
Jean-Yves Migeon
jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost