[Soekris] soekris 4801 problem

[Steven Finnegan]

I have had a a similar problem running FreeBSD 6.1 on my 4801. You  
didn't say what was "running" on your system when it dies. In my  
case, the active processes included NTPd and DnsMasq. The system  
would run anywhere from a few minutes to several days, then suddenly  
freeze solid. Serial port and SSH consoles would lock with no  
indications in any logfile of a problem (I had them "tailed", as  
nothing can be done once the lockup occurs, and the logs are  
recreated when rebooting from CF.)

This was not a hardware problem as I could re-create the issue on any  
of several 4801s that I have. I also discovered that splitting the  
ntp and dnsmasq functions such that they were running on different  
4801s caused the problem to disappear. I discovered a suggestion  
online that indicated that the problem was most likely a deadlock  
situation rather than a system crash and suggested that the kernel be  
modified to allow for debugging. I added

	# For debugging crash/deadlock (1/24/07)
	options         KDB
	options         DDB
	options         BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER

to the kernel configuration file. Unfortunately, once these  
modifications were made, the deadlock NEVER reoccurred. It has been  
running for several weeks now without

Don't know if any of this will help, but at least you know you're not  
alone.

sjf