Richard Rauch wrote:

>I'm presently running my AMD64 box in a 3-way boot.  Partition
>#1 has NetBSD, but some of the stability issues (plus an itch
>to see DRI running; (^&) pushed me to look at other systems.
>
>I tried FreeBSD, but it was a bit rough.  SuSE GNU/LINUX also had
>problems when I last tried it.  However, a recent Mandrake GNU/LINUX
>is running---and, I think, is running more stably than NetBSD.
>(sigh)
>
>
>The reason for my posting here is that the GNU/LINUX kernel comes up
>with a report about a ``K8'' issue (typed by hand):
>
>****** Your BIOS seems to not contain a fix for K8 errata #93
>****** Working around it, but it may cause SEGVs or burn power.
>****** Please consider a BIOS update.
>****** Disabling USB legacy in the BIOS may also help.
>
>...and I thought that it might help in isolating the problems
>in NetBSD if I forwarded this information.
>
>I have the latest BIOS already, as far as I know.
>
>I could not find "legacy" options for USB, but perhaps that's
>just a synonym for something else?  I could disable USB 1.1
>when booting Mandrake...but for NetBSD, I think that I need
>USB 1.1.
>  
>

Legacy options for usb include bios support for usb keyboard and mouse.

I've surfed around a little bit but haven't found an exact description 
of k8 errata #93, but I don't think its the reboot problem.

skd

>I also tried disabling all of the hardware that NetBSD does
>not support at this time:
>
> * The RealTek 8169 NIC.
> * The USB 2.0 (leaving USB 1.1).
> * SATA and RAID.
> * 1394/Firewire.
> * A few others that I cannot remember offhand.
>
>Since disabling the 8169, USB 2.0, and Firewire, I have not
>pushed the LINUX boot very hard, but NetBSD still crashes with
>UVM faults.  (E.g., "make clean" at the top level in /usr/pkgsrc,
>and NFS mount, just crashed NetBSD a few minutes ago.  NetBSD
>synced the disks, but got held up by an NFS error ("server not
>responding" was printed after the green kernel messages; no
>"Press any key to reboot" message appeared; printable keys printed
>on the console; nothing else seemed to do much).
>
>[Oh, another incidental factoid: In the recent past, I was able
>to improve system stability, e.g., to compile X or clean all of
>/usr/pkgsrc, by using ^Z periodically.  I thought that the
>CPU might be overheating, but BIOS says it stas at 40 degrees C.
>I installed some more system fans, and that seems not to have made
>any difference.  I have not tried that recently, but assume that
>it's still true.  The fact that GNU/LINUX *seems* much more
>stable under load makes me skeptical.  Also, it was once upon
>a time quite stable under load with NetBSD.)
>
>
>Is it worth trying to disable USB 1.1?  My mouse is a USB mouse,
>and I'd like to hook up some other USB devices, but if someone
>thinks that USB 1.1 is a likely source of my problems, I can
>give that a try.
>
>
>My NetBSD instability issues seem to have spiked up after leaving
>the machine running for an undetermined time in i386 mode (running
>an i386 version of LINUX; it crashed overnight).  But also around
>that time, I upgraded BIOS from something like ``F4'' to ``F11'',
>and also not long before that I put in a post-2.0 NetBSD/amd64
>kernel.
>
>Reverting to older installations is a bit painful because some
>of my older -current boot CDs only have the GENERIC kernel.
>(My system is *very* unhappy if I do not disable IOAPIC.)
>
>Around December/January, I had some very stable NetBSD/amd64
>installs on this box, once I had removed IOAPIC.  (Enabling
>IOAPIC is not a good idea unless the problems with using it
>on this nForce3 chipset have been resolved.  With IOAPIC
>turned on, as described elsewhere, some hardware simply never
>works, and other hardware will work for a while and then at
>random times will stop working until a reboot.)
>
>
>Anyway, just some random bits of info.  Maybe it will help
>someone get a better handle on the instability that some
>of us are seeing.
>
>
>  
>