FreeBSD crashes on regular basis

P

philipz

All,

I have a FreeBSD system that is running for several years already without an issue, but since last week it crashes at least daily. The server gets unreachable and a hard reset needs to be done.
Here's some info:
Code: 
FreeBSD j-bur-bsd01.eu.mycompany.com 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 11:05:30 UTC 2007     
[email]root@dessler.cse.buffalo.edu[/email]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  i386
When looking at the screen after a crash, I see this:
Code: 
Fatal Trap:19 id = 07instruction pointer
That doesn't tell me a lot and I'm not very familiar with troubleshooting these kind of issues. Is there a way to start troubleshooting/fixing this issue?

Thanks a lot for any help,

- Phil
 
Could be just about anything including memory gone bad, power supply about to fail, dust in CPU cooler. I would look inside the case first and see if anything looks/smells funny in there.
 
kpa said:
Could be just about anything including memory gone bad, power supply about to fail, dust in CPU cooler. I would look inside the case first and see if anything looks/smells funny in there.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks for that tip, I didn't know that this pointed to a hardware issue. I noticed at boot that it takes a while before it "sees" the 4th processor, maybe that one is faulty.
I will have someone look at the box (it is at a remote location).
 
No problem. It's the wording "is/has been running for several years already without an issue" that usually hints at a hardware problem, if it was a software level problem it would be solved by a reboot assuming no changes were made to configuration.
 
Ah ok I see - it is a logical conclusion anyway - thanks! Is there no reference somewhere to what
Code: 
Fatal Trap:19 id = 07
actually could mean? System has been rebooted a couple of times already but the error reoccurs. Also a view on the system's inside didn't reveal too much.
 
I (luckily) never experienced this type of error, so my (little) knowledge comes from Google.

Check your RAM with Memtest86+.

It can also be a disk problem: if you search "Fatal trap 19" on Google you will find several posts, and many of them show a line like this:

Code: 
current process         = 0 (swapper)

So yes, it's a memory problem, but the culprit could be your old hard disk.

Hope this helps.
 
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