Solved [Solved] FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE kernel panic

When I boot the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE CD, my system reliably kernel panics after 28 seconds. The message I get is "panic: general protection fault." Thinking I might have a bad CD, I downloaded and burned the DVD image. It gives the same result.

I'm currently running 7.2-RELEASE and I can get that to panic on boot if I leave any USB devices plugged in. Unplugging USB devices allows me to boot 7.2-RELEASE but has no effect on 8.0. Once booted, 7.2-RELEASE runs reliably. 8.0-RELEASE panics whether I have USB devices plugged in or not. I tried unplugging everything but the keyboard and monitor and 8.0-RELEASE still panics.

My system:
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 940
8 GB Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5 RAM
GIGABYTE GV-R435OC-512I Radeon HD 4350 video card
Seagate Barracuda 250 GB SATA disk
Samsung SATA DVD burner

I booted in verbose mode but didn't see anything that provided a clue as to the problem. Any debugging suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Thanks for the quick reply.

If I boot with ACPI disabled, the boot process freezes on "Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0."
 
radmanly said:
I'm currently running 7.2-RELEASE and I can get that to panic on boot if I leave any USB devices plugged in.

....

8.0-RELEASE panics whether I have USB devices plugged in or not. I tried unplugging everything but the keyboard and monitor and 8.0-RELEASE still panics.

I decided to take a glance at your motherboard, and found a BIOS that was released on the 24th of November:

Code:
Version: F9D

Date: 2009/11/24

Description:

   1. Beta BIOS
   2. Fix USB keyboard compatibility

HTML:
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=2982#anchor_os

See how that goes.
 
I updated the BIOS but I still get the kernel panic. Thanks for the suggestion. What else can I do to diagnose this problem? It would be great if I could get a core dump or a stack trace or something...
 
Is 8.0-RELEASE RC3 still available? I'd like to try booting that. I was able to boot RC1 when it was released.
 
radmanly said:
Is 8.0-RELEASE RC3 still available? I'd like to try booting that. I was able to boot RC1 when it was released.

Not sure if it is still available. Try looking into the FTP sites to see if you can find it, or see if Google comes up with anything.
 
I can't find RC3. Is there any way to set a dump device when the installation disk boots? It would be great to dump core to a USB drive. Perhaps if I knew what the kernel was doing when it panics, it would point me in the right direction.

I also think it's curious that the kernel always panic with an uptime of exactly 28 seconds; never 27 seconds or 29 seconds but always 28. Whatever is causing the kernel panic seems to happen consistently and predicatably.
 
I certainly will.

It seems really odd to me that the 7.2-RELEASE installation CD boots up just fine but 8.0-RELEASE panics. If I could only get a core file out of it I might have a clue!
 
The last version I can install flawlessly is 6.4.. I'll try to use 6.4 cd to install 8.0 and see if works, although installing 6.4 and later upgrade to anything above 7.0 falls into the same error.
 
I found the problem. I had a couple of bad sticks of RAM. With them removed, the 8.0-RELEASE install disc doesn't kernel panic. I don't know why 7.2-RELEASE worked so well despite the bad RAM.
 
That's classic.
Different kernels, different setups, different memory footprint.
Sometime at home, i got a panic *every* night at 03:00...
Some cron job (i think makewhatis) was running and resulting to panic.
Replacing motherboard and memory solved the problem.
Glad you found it!
 
How did you find it may come from bad RAM? It didn't work on other OS too? I'm using Linux and Windows too and RAM seems fine, but I'll try to take it of to test.
 
AFAIK, linux tries to detect and hide the bad addresses giving you the impression of being ultra solid. (while hardware bleeds)
FreeBSD OTOH, will try to manifest hardware problems as loud as it can.
 
Rui said:
How did you find it may come from bad RAM? It didn't work on other OS too? I'm using Linux and Windows too and RAM seems fine, but I'll try to take it of to test.

My machine dual boots FreeBSD and Linux. At the same time I was trying to install 8.0-RELEASE I was also trying to upgrade my Linux kernel. I started getting panics on Linux, too. That made me think maybe this was a hardware issue. I started pulling RAM and suddenly the panics stopped. I ordered a fresh pair of DRAM sticks and now everything's fine (so far).
 
As I say Linux e mean Windows, but I get your point. I'll try to check it as soon as I can. Thanks for the reply.
 
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