FreeBSD 6.1 & 6.2 hanging and/or spontaneous rebooting

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 162, Issue 17
As Message: 14
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:15:10 -0600 Joe Vender <jvender at owensboro.net> wrote:

Joe, I'm going to hack your message pretty mercilessly ..

 > I need Help with a FBSD spontaneous rebooting and freezing issue.

 > Here's a quick description of my computer system:
 > 
 > I have a Compaq Presario 5184 desktop about 7 or 8 years old
 > AMD K6-2 processor @ 380MHz
 > 320Mb RAM, 8Mb dedicated to video via BIOS
 > Quantum Bigfoot TS-6.4A Hard Drive (~6Gb capacity)
 > SiS 530 integrated graphics
 > Zoom 56k DUALMODE external modem connected to the serial port
 > CTX VL700 monitor (30-70/50-120 refresh rates)

[..]

 > worked fine under FBSD until I dial up the internet and start browsing, 
 > emailing or whatever. Then, when the computer is busy transferring packets, 
 > it suddenly reboots without warning. Sometimes, Konqueror will freeze, the 
 > mouse pointer will freeze for a few seconds before the reboot. It doesn't 
 > take very long on the internet before the lockup/reboot happens, only 
 > minutes. It happens over and over and over. I can't stay on the internet long 
 > enough to even use it.

Nothing at all reported in /var/log/messages? 

 > Remember, the spontaneous reboots and hangs only happen when I dial up the 
 > internet and start browsing or sending email or such, basically start 
 > sending/receiving packets. It doesn't happen when no packets are moving over 
 > the modem, only when its busy. It isn't the modem failing either, obviously, 
 > since the modem works flawlessly under Linux and windows.

Ok.  You mean it sometimes 'hangs' and sometimes just reboots?

 > One more thing that may or may not be important. I remember seeing a message 
 > at boot up about "IRQ 3 not in the list of probed ports" or something to that 
 > effect. But, KPPP recognized my external modem without a problem. Its 
 > on /dev/ttyS0 in KPPP. My computer came with an internal "winmodem" piece of 
 > @#!$, but I removed that when I plugged in the Zoom external. The internal 
 > modem is no longer present. The external is plugged in to the serial port. 
 > Could this be an IRQ conflict or something like that? I'm assuming that the 
 > message was about the absent internal modem. "Interrupts" in KInfoCenter 
 > reports that "serial" is using interrupt 4. Please help. I don't mind going 
 > through the reinstall if I can get FreeBSD working.

Ah, so you're using KPPP rather than FreeBSD's user PPP?  Have you tried
using 'regular' user PPP?  I don't know anything about KPPP, but would
expect with KDE's linux leanings that it would be using pppd instead. 
Where and how have you configured ppp?

In ancient PC tradition, IRQ 4 is used for the first serial port, IRQ 3
for the second.  Eg from /var/run/dmesg.boot here (also an older box): 

 sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
 sio0: type 16550A

I have sio1 disabled in /boot/loader.conf, just to quell such messages,
but it seems yours is using the correct IRQ (4) for your ext. modem. 

 > One last question. How do I get FBSD to completely power off my computer when 
 > I shut down, both from KDE and from console? When I shutdown, it just gets to 
 > the "system halted, press any key to reboot" prompt and doesn't completely 
 > power off. In slackware, all I have to do is uncomment the "modprobe apm" 
 > line in rc.modules.

Well that begs more questions.  Are you using APM? or ACPI?  What exact
command are you using to shutdown?  What does running just 'apm' say?

 > Sorry for such a long email, but I wanted to be as thourough as possible with 
 > the little I have to go on.

Posting latest /var/run/dmesg.boot would tell us more about what FreeBSD
thinks it's detecting, and I suspect that setting up user PPP by the
handbook would determine whether this is a FreeBSD or KPPP problem.

Cheers, Ian