analyzing freebsd core dumps

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 08:04:07AM +0200, Mister Olli wrote:
> hi list...
> 
> I have a freebsd maschine running for more 6 months without any
> problems.
> the machine's only service is to be an openvpn gateway for a hand of
> users.
> 
> 2 weeks ago the first problems started. the openvpn exited with signal
> 11 and 4 and core dumps were written.
> 
> the same happend yesterday with the postfix/cleanup process, and the
> suddenly the machine rebooted without any further log messages.
> 
> what is the best way to troubleshoot the cause of this problem?

Signal 11 happening "out of no where" on machines which have been
running fine, most of the time, is a sign of hardware failure (usually
RAM, but sometimes motherboard or PSU).  The fact you got a reboot is
also further evidence of this.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/faq/troubleshoot.html#SIGNAL11

I would recommend taking the machine offline and running something like
memtest86+ on it for 6-7 hours.  Any errors seen are a pretty good sign
that you should replace the memory or the motherboard.  You can
download an ISO or floppy disk images here:

http://www.memtest.org/

Bottom line is that this is probably a hardware issue.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |