Since upgrading to DU4.0B we have experience serious lock-up problems
on all our FDDI (DEFPA-UA) connected workstations. (250-4/266 and 500/333)
One of our main user written programs that is extremely CPU intensive
will lock-up the machine after some hours of running.
By lock-up I mean that the screen is blank and cannot be woken up by
keyboard or mouse and the system will not respond to any network
requests including ping. On pressing the reset button the machine
enters the power-up sequence and reboots OK. There is nothing logged
in uerf, /var/adm/messages or /var/adm/syslog.dated/* and no core file
generated.
This program ran OK day in day out on 3.2G and still runs OK on
ethernet connected machines. If the dataset for the program is chosen
so that its memory requirements are small it is still OK on FDDI
machines. It only appears to fail when its Virtual memory requirement
gets large ( >180Mbytes?) ( Physical memory is 128Mbytes, swap
512Mbytes ) and it is running on an FDDI machine. It is not yet clear
if this is the only program that will fail as it is the only large
CPU/memory program that we have run for any length of time since
upgrading to 4.0B. The program does not fail consistently at the same
point even with the same input data. We have tried recompiling on 4.0B
without any change in in behaviour.
I have logged a call with DEC and they are sending me by post( what is
wrong with ftp?)x the latest 4.0B patch kit but I apparently there was
little in the info that suggests that it will cure this problem.
Any suggestions on how to debug what is happening?
One point I notices when upgrading firmware is that on the servers
(1000 and 1000a) the 3.9 firmware ( downloaded from digital by ftp)
upgraded the DEFPA firmware to 3.1 but on all workstations the upgrade
procedure left the DEFPA firmware at 2.46. What is the difference
between 2.46 and 3.1? Is it relevant to our problem?
Many thanks for any help.
Tim.
Tim Janes | e-mail : janes_at_signal.dra.hmg.gb
Defence Research Agency | tel : +44 1684 894100
Malvern Worcs | fax : +44 1684 895103
Gt Britain | #include <std/disclaim.h>
Received on Fri Apr 04 1997 - 10:56:00 NZST