re: SparcStation 20 system freezes

[matthew green <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost>]

> > I have a Sparcstation 20 that I used to run NetBSD 4.01 on for quite a few
> > years. I used to use it as a headless server, until I retired it when I got
> > a keyboard, mouse and a cg6 frame buffer.
> > Recently I decided to try out NetBSD 7.1 on it, but even during the install
> > process I'd get what at first seemed like random system hangs. After
> > resolving some hardware issues I managed to get the OS installed, but it
> > would still hang after a period of time. I ran the system diagnostics and
> > did some testing and the base hardware appears to be working.
> ...
> > I have a SMP (3 processor) system which I'd heard wasn't always
> > stable under load, but that seems ok as I can load up the processors
> > with work as long as there isn't much disk I/O. This is repeatable.
> 
> SMP is still a bit sketchy but should be mostly stable on SuperSPARCs
> by now. Is this reproducible on -current?
> The reason I'm asking is, there were a bunch of SMP-related fixes in
> the last few years, with the latest just a few days ago. I don't know
> how much of that made it into the 7.x branches other than the last bit

i don't think there has been anything major besides your fix for
a number of years.  i just checked, and i had the fixes that made
a few years ago were present in netbsd-6 and pulled up to netbsd-5,
but maybe i'm thinking of an earlier set than you are?

> certainly didn't.
> That said, I've seen plenty of SMP-related crashes and deadlocks but
> none that's correlated to disk activity. But my disk is external,
> hooked to an hme/wide scsi board, not the onboard esp.

netbsd-7 mostly works OK, but it seems -current and -8 are better,
and Michael fixed something recently that really helps.  perhaps
you should try a -current kernel on the -7 install, which should
be OK.

i don't run my SS20 with any disks, just disk less, so that may
be relevant here.  i also only have 2 cpus.


.mrg.