kmem_malloc crashes running FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE-p5

[John Uhlig]

Hi.

We are running FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE-p5 with a fairly generic kernel on a
Dell PowerEdge 2650 with 1/2TB of disk RAID arrays. It recently crashed at
about 3AM while running the daily /etc/periodic/security/100.chksetuid 
script.

I am able to crash this system at will (takes about 5-10 minutes by 
running the
security scripts in a loop and using gtar to copy files to the server at 
the same
time. I have included output from one core dump below. The other core dumps
 I have so far are almost exactly the same e.g. "Error accessing memory 
address
0xf8b7983c" is the same in all core dumps so far.

On the web, freebsd mailing lists and bug lists, I have seen existing 
thread about
"kmem_malloc and kmem_map too small" problems - but no evidence of a fix
or patch. We experienced the same problem running 4.9 but were able to 
fix it
by setting the MAXMEM option in our kernel conf file to a value 1GB less 
than
actual physical memory size. This does not help with 5.2.1-RELEASE-p5.

My group is under pressure to bring 3 of these servers on-line for our user
community by the end of the month and would greatly appreciate any help
in resolving this problem.

thanks,
John Uhlig.

(coredump 
output)---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lifeboat# gdb -k kernel.debug /crash/vmcore.7
GNU gdb 5.2.1 (FreeBSD)
Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-unknown-freebsd"...
panic: kmem_malloc(4096): kmem_map too small: 275251200 total allocated
panic messages:
---
dmesg: kvm_read:
---
 
warning: failed to read linker file data at 0xca29b100
 
#0  doadump () at /usr/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:240
240             dumping++;
(kgdb) backtrace
#0  doadump () at /usr/src/sys/kern/kern_shutdown.c:240
can not access 0xf8b7983c, invalid address (f8b7983c)
can not access 0xf8b7983c, invalid address (f8b7983c)
Error accessing memory address 0xf8b7983c: Invalid argument.

(kgdb) list *0xf8b6783c
No source file for address 0xf8b6783c.