kern/163145: FreeBSD 9.0 PRERELEASE freezes without any warnings or panic messages

[Jukka A. Ukkonen]

The following reply was made to PR kern/163145; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: jau at iki.fi (Jukka A. Ukkonen)
To: ponomarenkoan at oranta-sk.ru (ðÏÎÏÍÁÒÅÎËÏ áÎÄÒÅÊ îÉËÏÌÁÅ×ÉÞ)
Cc: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org, jau at iki.fi
Subject: Re: kern/163145: FreeBSD 9.0 PRERELEASE freezes without any warnings or panic messages
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:53:10 +0200 (EET)

 > What graphic card do you have?
 > 
 > I have this problem with the graphics card GTX470.
 
 
 My graphics card is a PCI Express attached Radeon.
 
 I assume your card while being of different make and model
 is anyhow attached to PCI Express as well, right?
 
 For a while I also had the idea that this would be somehow
 related to some graphics driver or something.
 It does not seem to be the case, though.
 
 I have also 2 Intel gigabit NICs attached to PCI Express.
 If I start using them, the problems occur more frequently.
 For a while I thought the em driver could also be faulty.
 
 The true problem probably lies in how the PCI Express devices
 and the PCI Express bus are managed.
 
 First of all the exact same system has no tendency to freeze
 when running Ubuntu. => So, it is not a HW problem as such.
 
 Secondly my system has a BIOS which maintains a log of hardware
 level events like PCI events.
 In that log there is always a new entry after a system freeze
 saying "PCI Express Fatal Error".
 
 I have yet to try whether running X11 with DRI on or off has
 any effect on the issue, but knowing that also Intel Ethernet
 NICs on PCI Express are prone to trigger the same problem,
 I am pretty confident that this problem hides somewhere inside
 the PCI drivers.
 
 Cheers,
 	// jau