Automatic reboots on boot attempts

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Thu, October 22, 2015 1:16 pm, kpneal at pobox.com wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 08:48:49PM -0700, jaymax wrote:
>>  uname -a =>
>>  FreeBSD MACH1 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12
>> 19:31:38 UTC 2015
>> root at releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
>> i386
>>
>>  On booting, everything seems to run OK up to a point. POST runs as
>> expected, hardware/device probe runs with bright white foreground text
>> fonts
>> to stdout. I can't tell if the probe is completed because of its
>> rapidity,
>> but apparently stalls afterwards as there is no further output, in fact
>> the
>> screen display disappears.
>>
>>  The system at this point or after some irregular delay period will do
>> an
>> automatic reboot, [BIOS being set for auto reboot on 'Power OFF'].
>>
>>  There is no indication of entering the init or getty stage of the
>> bootstrapping process?
>
> Are you running X?
>
> It sounds like it goes into "multiuser mode" (where all the filesystems
> are mounted) and then something happens that causes the reboot. I can't
> rule out an errant device driver (X?) touching a chip in such a way as
> to cause an instant reboot.
>
> The need to fsck all of your filesystems indicates that they were mounted
> at the time the system got the finger.
>
> I can't rule out hardware because bad memory could also cause a reboot.
>
> My personal guess is that you are running X11 and something is going
> bad there. If you turn it off is your machine stable?
>
>>  Shutdown, followed by a power-up and the problem re-asserts itself. My
>> /boot/loader.conf is currently empty no customization & everything
>> should be
>> 'at default", yet - continual reboots.
>
> Somebody else chime in here: Are device drivers for X11 supposed to be
> added to the loader.conf? Sorry, I only use FreeBSD as a server myself.
>

On my FreeBSD 10.1 workstation I have nothing X related in my
/boot/loader.conf. I must say: I do not run display manager daemon with
graphic login, instead I log in as regular user on virtual console, then
run

exec startx

("exec" so user is logged out if X is killed), and in turn my .xinitrc has

exec mate-session

I hope this helps.

Valeri


> --
> Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
>
> "What is mathematics? The age-old answer is, of course, that mathematics
>  is what mathematicians do." - Donald Knuth
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++