On Friday 18 November 2005 10:05 pm, Charles Sprickman wrote: > Hello, > > I tried this query on -stable, hoping someone here can help me further > understand and troubleshoot this. > > Reference: > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.stable/32837 > > In short, top, ps report 0% CPU on all processes as of a few weeks ago. > "systat -vmstat" hands out the "Alternate system clock has died" error. > > Box is running 4.8-p24 and has been up 425 days. Nothing out of the > ordinary except for the above symptoms. In searching the various > lists/newsgroups, it seems that the other folks with this problem have > fixed it in various ways: > > -early 4.x users referenced a PR that was committed before 4.8 > -some 5.3 users reported this with unknown resolution/cause > -sending init a HUP was suggested (tried it, no luck) > -setting kern.timecounter.method: 1 (tried it, no luck) > -one user seemed to actually have a dead timer
Actually, there was a patch that was committed in 5.4 and 6.0 for this issue. You can see the diff here: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/i386/isa/clock.c.diff?r1=1.213&r2=1.214&f=h That patch would probably backport to 4.x fairly easily. > The -stable poster had a warning that if the RTC is bad, the machine > likely won't come back up if I boot it. That has me very worried as this > box is very important (mail server). If it's a software glitch such as the ones fixed in the patch above, your box will come up after a reboot without a problem. > Can anyone help me determine if this is a hardware problem? If it is, I > really need to stretch the budget and dig up some new hardware to > transplant everything into. That is not very easy to tell. It's doubtful that it is a hardware problem, but if it is, it would require a new motherboard to fix as the RTC is part of the southbridge which is rather firmly attached to your motherboard. :) -- John Baldwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve" = http://www.FreeBSD.org _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
