9.0-RC1 crash on G5 (late 2005)

[Justin Hibbits]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:00 PM, Justin Hibbits <chmeeedalf at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:28:13 -0500
> Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> > On 10/27/11 20:26, Justin Hibbits wrote:
> > > I don't know the conditions of the crash, but sometime after
> > > booting, can happen right away, or later, my G5 just stops.  No
> > > kernel panic, no messages, it just stops.  The red light in the
> > > case comes on, and it just sits there.
> > >
> > > Hardware:  Late 2005 model G5, Dual-core 2.0GHz, 4GB RAM.
> > >
> > > Anything else I can provide, just ask.  Can't provide a coredump,
> > > dmesg, or anything else like that, though (machine just dies).
> > >
> >
> > Is this a 32 or a 64-bit kernel? I have the same model, with a 64-bit
> > kernel, as my primary desktop, and have never seen anything like this.
> > -Nathan
>
> To add yet another data point, I tried booting a snapshot from last
> year (2010-11-17), and that also had the same problem, but only when
> booted into a full production mode.  When booted from CD, it worked
> just fine.  Should I even bother trying a ppc32 install?  I know I'd
> lose out on 2GB of the RAM.
>
> - Justin


For a test, I installed Linux (debian testing, kernel 3.0.0), and it BUG'd
with an error "soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 23s!".  This may be similar to
what's going on with FreeBSD.  Is there a way to disable SMP at bootup, so
that it doesn't use the second core (man pages aren't helping)?

- Justin