How to troubleshoot why VirtualBox kernel module freezes the system?

[Bernhard Froehlich]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:18:18 -0700, Yuri <yuri at rawbw.com> wrote:
> VirtualBox kernel module (port emulators/virtualbox-ose-kmod) began to 
> cause system freezes from some kernel change around the end of January.
> Once the system freezes it has to be rebooted. Soundcard, if it was 
> playing something, begins to cycle some very short piece.
> Nothing is logged into /var/log/messages.
> 
> Is there any way to troubleshoot this, like enabling some kernel 
> configuation options?
> What is normally done in such case?
> Should I run system under kernel debugger? But would it detect something

> if it's not a SEGV but the freeze?

Mario Lobo currently sees something similar and has already tracked it
down to probably be a drm/Xorg issue. It does work fine for him if he uses
the virtualbox-ose-devel ports and VNC so without running an xserver on
that machine.

To debug this it's probably the best to try it with a serial console and
the descriptions in the developers handbook.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/serialconsole-setup.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug-online-gdb.html

-- 
Bernhard Froehlich
http://www.bluelife.at/