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List:       netbsd-port-alpha
Subject:    Re: Occasional core dumps in netbsd-8
From:       John Klos <john () ziaspace ! com>
Date:       2019-02-16 20:42:04
Message-ID: Pine.NEB.4.64.1902162033140.7908 () hlin ! zia ! io
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> You might want to get your hardware checked, when random programs that
> should not fail start randomly acting in a weird way, it can be an
> indication that something is marginal (power supply, RAM, ... even
> the CPU possibly.)   I know you doubt that it is possible, but it
> might be.

The egrep core happened on both machines, which are very different 
machines. The CS20 could have components which might be marginal, since it 
runs pretty hot and therefore pretty close to its shutoff temperatures. 
The DS25, on the other hand, has three power supplies and enough fans to 
keep everything very comfortably cool.

I can't imagine the same kind of problem happening on two different 
physical machines being hardware issues which cause the same core dumps in 
the same binaries. It's possible, sure, but I really can't imagine it's 
likely.

> It is also possible there's some kind of error in the Alpha VM
> implementation (perhaps brought about by other changes which
> violate some assumption which used to be OK, but now is no longer
> valid.)

I wonder. I've considered trying older NetBSD versions on one of the 
machines, but I think it'd take a good week of compiling without a core 
dump to really say for sure. I might just prepare a half a dozen NFS 
exported versions and netboot to automate tests...

John
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