Panic caused by bad memory?

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday 25 October 2006 02:28, Charles Sprickman wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> 
> >> I can't get a kernel dump since it fails like this each time:
> >>
> >> dumping to dev #da/0x20001, offset 2097152
> >> dump 1024 1023 1022 1021 Aborting dump due to I/O error.
> >> status == 0xb, scsi status == 0x0
> >> failed, reason: i/o error
> >
> > Bad memory seems unlikely to cause an I/O error trying to write the
> > dump to the swap partition.  I'd guess a dicey drive -- and bad
> > swap space could also account for the original crash.  You might
> > be able to get a backup by booting single user, provided nothing
> > activates the (presumably bad) swap partition.
> 
> Just for the record, this box is running an Adaptec raid controller (2005S 
> - ZCR card) and swap is coming off a mirrored array.
> 
> Coincidentally, I have a utility box where it had bad blocks on the swap 
> partition (but no others) - what I saw there is that the box would just 
> hang and spit out a bunch of "swap_pager timeout" messages to the console. 
> Quick and dirty remote fix while waiting for a drive?  Run file-backed 
> swap on /usr. :)
> 
> Let's pretend for a minute it's not the drive that's the root cause... 
> Not saying it isn't - we're none too thrilled with these Adaptec RAID 
> controllers...  Do those memory addresses in the panic message point 
> towards bad memory if they are always the same?

No, they are virtual addresses.  Having the same EIP means you are crashing in 
the same place.  Did you recently kldunload a module before it crashed?

-- 
John Baldwin