14.1-RELEASE installer kernel panic

Y

yha

I'm trying to install FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE (i386) on an old ThinkPad X41 Tablet machine, but very shortly after booting the kernel (from the installer), I get this (copied by hand, so don't mind the formatting/typos):

Code: 
Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
cpuid = 0; apic id = 00
fault virtual address   = 0xf33b000
fault code            = supervisor read date, page not present
instruction pointer    = 0x20:0x1381a45
stack pointer        = 0x28:0x1ef9bfc
frame pointer        = 0x28:0x1ef9c14
code segment        = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
                 = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
processor eflags    = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
current process        = 0 (swapper)
trap number        = 12
panic: page fault
cpuid = 0
time = 1
KDB: stack backtrace:
#0 0xfaf3e6 at kdb_backtrace+0x46
#1 0xf68450 at vpanic+0xf0
#2 0xf68354 at panic+0x14
#3 0x137df86 at trap_fatal+0x346
#4 0x137dfc0 at trap_pfault+0x30
#5 0x137d6b6 at trap+0x386
#6 0xffc0321f at _end+0xfe1dcffb
#7 0x28 at ll+0x7
Uptime: 1s
Automatic reboot in 15 seconds - press a key on the console to abort

I also tried the 13.2-RELEASE installer, same results. Looked this up here on the forums and elsewhere online and it suggests it's a hardware issue. However, I have replaced the RAM, ran memory test, and everything is in working order. I also installed Windows XP, Linux, and most recently OpenBSD, and they all work just fine, so I'm ruling out a hardware issue. What might be the problem? This is a single core machine (Pentium M Dothan), so I was looking for ways to disable SMP/SMT (guessing that might be the issue), but I couldn't find any relevant entries in the output of `show` at the loader prompt.

Any hints?
 
This could be your hardware. My old laptop with Pentium-M, running 14-CURRENT, had no problems at the time.

From the look of your stack trace it appears the kernel stack may be corrupted. RAM problem, maybe?
 
Before I go ahead and buy yet another RAM module, I just want to confirm one thing: I explained in my original post that Windows, Linux, and OpenBSD all work just fine on the machine. Could it be the case that FreeBSD, contrary to the other operating systems, is loading parts of its code at the supposed bad blocks of RAM, which is causing the kernel panic? Because, otherwise, why would these other operating systems work fine but not FreeBSD? Also, if it matters, the X41T has the somewhat unusual setup of having a soldered 512MB of RAM plus a slot for an additional stick. Mine is 2GB, so a total of 2.5GB physical memory, but only 2GB can be seen by the system (I believe it's a chipset limitation. Also, at the time of the machine's release, 2GB sticks didn't exist, so the maximum announced RAM was 1.5GB). Could any of this have anything to do with my issue?
 
You should run memtest86 first. You need to do that anyway for the soldered RAM.

You can also test with the slotted RAM removed. The installer will run in half a GB.
 
According to wikipedia for the X40 1.5G is the max RAM you may install anyhow, while the X41 seems to be a smaller updated variant of it, I think for this is also true.
Also it fits with what you observed.
You installed XP (which btw may no "benchmark"), Linux, and OpenBSD (presumbly a recent versions), I like to rule out, your RAM may be defective, but cause problems on motherboard's level.

As cracauer@ already mentioned a memtest86 is a good idea anyway (but I bet it will find nothing, except 1G5 is maximum),
But also try to remove the added 2G is a good idea.

512M may not be sufficient for a satisfying usage of FreeBSD (at least not if you intend to use some fancy desktop-environment like KDE), but you simply could rule out some things.

Personally I recommend you to reconsider to buy another RAM for it.
I don't know the price, but RAM even for old laptops may cost some buck,
so it may could be to be considered if it wouldn't be better add app. 50...100€ and buy some more powerful laptop instead of just RAM.
 
This is indeed very early boot. From the %eip I'd say this is when kernel is being set hence mix of lower half and upper half addresses. Page fault is on a "reasonable" address.

yha said:
However, I have replaced the RAM, ran memory test,
Click to expand...

If you ran memtest successfully and on top of it you can run other OSes chances are there is something off in FreeBSD. i386 is tier2 now though.
It's hard to help here as the crash is occurring way too early. The best way to debug these is to drop to debugger when the issue occurs and debug directly.

Easier way for you to test would be to try other FreeBSD versions, even the legacy ones. That way you'd be able to tell within reason if there's something your setup specific that is triggering the issue.

The oldest CPU I have now is Celeron 500, I ran FreeBSD with 256MB and it was working just fine.
 
Thank you for your input cracauer@, %pupil - sceptical, and _martin. I ran memtest86 (it reports 2G memory), been running for over an hour now, and the first pass has just completed with no errors ("Pass complete, no errors, press Esc to exit"). I also removed the RAM stick and tried the installer again (before running memtest), same error.

I tried 14.1-RELEASE and 13.2-RELEASE, but will try some of the older versions as well and report back.
 
So, just as I suspected, my RAM was fine. Ordering and installing my THIRD memory module did not change anything: OpenBSD, Linux, and Windows work, FreeBSD doesn't.

To try and find out which version of FreeBSD broke the installer, I took my way backwards from 14.1-RELEASE all the way down to 12.4-RELEASE (i.e. tried 14.1-RELEASE first, then 14.0-RELEASE, then 13.3-RELEASE, etc), and sure enough, 13.1-RELEASE worked just fine (as well as 12.4-RELEASE), so it seems 13.2-RELEASE was the offending version that introduced the bug (or deprecation of some feature).

I'm currently upgrading through freebsd-upgrade to 13.2-RELEASE. If I get the kernel panic again, then that confirms it's a problem with 13.2-RELEASE onward. If not, I will see if I can upgrade further to 14.1-RELEASE. I will report back to this thread later.
 
I was able to upgrade to 13.2-RELEASE with `freebsd-upgrade -r 13.2-RELEASE upgrade`, which is strange considering the stock 13.2-RELEASE installer gave the kernel panic, but I'm guessing the patch level is different? Either way, going from 13.2-RELEASE to 13.3-RELEASE with freebsd-upgrade produced the kernel panic again. I'm giving up on this and sticking to OpenBSD for now. Thanks for everyone who contributed to this thread.
 
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