On 5 Jul 2007, at 15:51, David Lord wrote:

 
> For several weeks I've been trying to get NetBSD 3.1 to run without 
> panics on this system, Asus P4R800V m/b, Celeron 2.4GHz and 256 MB 
> ram. It's was previously running FreeBSD as fileserver and build 
> system without problem (like 6mth+ uptime no problem). I think NetBSD 
> 3.0 was installed August 2006 and only/big problem then was with 
> auixp driver codec error preventing bootup but a kernel without that 
> driver allowed boot but with kernel panics if loaded. I've gone 
> through following:
> 
> swapped ram and memtest

Despite replacement of ram and no errors from hours running memtest 
between attempts at getting this working it appears to be a memory 
related fault. From single user I was getting a memory error and core 
dump when running 'tar -xzf src.tgz' with src.tgz being about 216MB 
and extracted files using nearly 1GB. I've reduced ram speed setting 
from 400 to 266 and extracted ok. I've since re-enabled softdeps and 
booted with full set of services running and again file extracted ok. 
Moving same src over nfs - seemed ok and tools+kernel build on copied 
src directory completed in 19 minutes.

David
 
> seatools check of hdd
> 
> updated m/b bios
> 
> installed NetBSD-daily/netbsd-3-1/200707020002Z after wget and mkiso 
> on this suspect system and ftp of iso to desktop to burn install cd.
> 
> Problem is now much worse.
> 
> eg. Remote nfs mount and attempt to copy src.tgz (216MB) gives 
> uvm_fault (0xc08ae4e0,0x966000,0,1) -> 0xe
> kernel: page fault trap, code=0
> Stopped in pid 895.1 (nfsio) at netbsd: sched_wakeup+0x24:
>   cmpl %edi,0x34(%ebx)
> 
> What appears to happen from 'top' is that files increases and free 
> decreases then when free is bouncing around 300K - 1MB there will be 
> a panic/lockup/segmentation fault or whatever.
> 
> Bios update didn't help as original minimum ram for vga was 8MB but 
> now is 16MB so max total ram is now 238MB rather than 246MB. Problem 
> seems worse with this 238MB total vs previous 190MB (16MB for vga vs 
> 64MB).
> 
> Any hints as to how best to proceed with sorting this. To me it just 
> appears as if kernel has overestimate of free ram as I've not seen 
> any swap space in use.
> 
> dmesg attached
> 
> David