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System Panics, Part 2: Recovering and Debugging

Posted by timothy on from the lifejackets-and-axes dept.

LiquidPC writes: "This is Part 2 in a two-part series on system panics. In his first column, Michael Lucas talked about how to prepare a FreeBSD system in case of a panic. In this column, he talks about what to do when the worst happens."

26 comments

  1. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even if it is dying I couldn't care less, because it is unthreatened in quality; I don't care about hype or coolness, I want high quality products that are fast and DO_NOT_CRASH(TM).

  2. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your inability to administrate Silicon Graphics machines must be daunting, if a machine craches it most often the administrators fault for not understanding how to make the most of what the machine and software has to offer.

    I'm not talking mainframes here, I'm talking UNIX, because that's what you idiots are bashing. I've yet to see a Linux box pass 1200 days uptime, plenty of BSD/OS boxes at Telia are well beyond twise that, and still going strong.

  3. First Non-Troll Post in this thread by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    At least it would be if someone modded this post up.

  4. Wouldn't it be nice if we had... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    World Peace or at least a post modded to +1 in th is thread? I sure think so.

  5. Solution! by Icephreak1 · · Score: 1

    "In this column, he talks about what to do when the worst happens."

    This one's too easy: switch to Linux

    1. Re:Solution! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Naturally, since who wouldn't want to have a crap VM system, other nice flaws like the curruption of filesystem on reboot and god knows what else.
      Oh, I forgot, we don't.

    2. Re:Solution! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

      One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BS community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers.
      Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.


      You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future.
      In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are
      looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market
      share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having
      lost 93% of its core developers.

      Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.


      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD
      are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in
      ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on
      Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users
      of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore
      there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of
      FreeBSD Usenet posts.

      Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on,
      FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled
      OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yt another charnel house.


      All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick
      and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will
      be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could
      save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

      Fact:
      *BSD is dying

    3. Re:Solution! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you from Microsoft or what?

      Anyhow, y're wrong and stop posting this bull-sh*t

    4. Re:Solution! by ASyndicate · · Score: 2

      I tried Gentoo, hated it. :(
      I am no newbie either. Its just, They patch anything and everything without any regard for side effects, I have had 4 different boxes corrupt a filesystem with gentoo. Then I said, thats it. I have had enough. Bye.

      If you tell me that there isnt a system that the worst can happen, I had a deal that you could make 10,000 at home.

      --
      This page left intentionally blank.
  6. Re:*BSD is dying by boltar · · Score: 1

    Any box thats been running for 1200 days (ie over 3 years!!) deserves to be hacked since the admin
    is obviously too lazy or just too irresponsible to have done any security patches to the machine
    (which would require a reboot). There is NO operating system unix or otherwise which has not
    found some sort of security flaw either in the kernel or in a server app in that length of time.

  7. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you need to reboot, it's because flaws in the kernel, all other flaws can correfcted without rebooting. Naturally you can patch a running kernel if it has a /dev/kmem, but it's not recomended.
    It's been like 8 years since there was a security issue in SunOS kernel, similar can be said for a lot of system; though not Linux kernel, which has had atleast two know holes in the last 18 months.

  8. Mantwat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's a mantwat?

    1. Re:Mantwat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm surprised you don't know. Here's a pic of a mantwat.

  9. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    though not Linux kernel, which has had atleast two know holes in the last 18 months.


    Speaking of two holes, I filled two of your mom's holes last night. I would've taken her up the ass, but that pear-sized hemmaroid was a little off-putting. Still, good woman your mom. She says you should call me daddy now.


    Go get daddy a beer.