Hey folks. I've been having some real problems with make buildworld on 5.2.1. I was trying to build RELENG_5_2_1 from the initial 5.2.1 install, done from the distribution ISOs.
Namely, the whole system was siezing. Well, mostly. It's really wierd, because I could switch desks, desktops, play with windows, everything redraws, but I couldn't get any response from the xterms, bring up any new terms, or get Netscape to actually follow a link or bookmark. It was like the lights are on but nobodys home. This happened 3 times, right in the big fat middle of buildworld. All three times I lost info in the root filesystem - files that had been modified between 5 and 20 minutes before the actual hang. I found only one reference to this kind of behavior in the archives, but it suggested potential hardware problems. Since this machine rolled off the line less than two weeks ago, I wasn't willing to accept that yet, so I looked at the soft updates feature. There was nothing in anything I found to indicate this could be the cause of the hang, but it was pretty obvious (at first glance, not afterward) that turning it off should at least prevent losing anymore data. Now, I'm writing this solely in the interest of being helpful to the next poor sap that runs into the problem, so if anyone thinks this is a "Bad Thing", please respond with your reasoning so (1) I'll understand what really happened, and (2) the next guy won't run into the gaping maw of "Bad Things" I could be headed for. After 3 tries failed in horrible agony, I simply turned off soft updates and turned on noauto on all filesystems. Now, I know very well that noauto is a good thing, since I have no desire to find out the last time I ran xpat2 to play freecell by looking at the last access time of the executable, not to mention a hundred other reasons, most of them better that that. I also know very well that softupdates is not on by default in the root filesystem, so how could it be the cause of the lost data? I dunno. I also know this: When I made those two changes and only those two, make buildworld zipped through without a hitch, as did the rest of the whole upgrade process. I don't know why, but maybe someone else does? As for softupdates, I don't really think I need the performance bad enough to juggle the settings every time I upgrade, so I'm inclined to keep it off. In fact, I've left the option out of the custom kernel altogether. Any ideas on the "why" here would be welcome. Lou -- Louis LeBlanc [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Funded Hobbyist, KeySlapper Extrordinaire :) http://www.keyslapper.org ԿԬ Neil Armstrong tripped. _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
