receiving error, and then machine rebooting

evilchild · 06-07-2004, 07:40 PM

Hello all,
I am running a fresh install of Solaris 9 on a SPARCstation 20 with 128mb of ram, occasionally i received the following error "panic[cpu0]/thread=f64900a0: fatal asynchronous fault" then after that the machine reboots. I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing that causes this but it has occurred why browsing with Netscape, when port scanning from another machine, and when removing a directory from "/". What could this be? and how can i fix it.

Thanks Evilchild

jlliagre · 06-08-2004, 03:15 AM

If you haven't already done it, enable crash dump (kernel core files in /var/crash/<hostname>), cf. dumpadm -y.

Then wait for a new panic, and use one of the available tools to analyse the crash dump, iscda.sh or CAT:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/downloa.../3fce7df0.html

evilchild · 06-08-2004, 02:11 PM

I belive crash dump is already enabled, (because after a crash it writes files unix.17 and vmcore.17, and the numbers go up on every crash, in /var/crash/<my hostname>/) but being a new to Solaris, I'm not sure what tools to use when analysing the crash dumps, or which files are the dumps.

jlliagre · 06-08-2004, 03:58 PM

Just use those I recommend to you ... both are well documented.
You're right, the unix.* and vmcore.* are the crash dumps to examine.

evilchild · 06-08-2004, 09:25 PM

I understand now, but what is the path to these tools or do I need to download them, I would run "find" but i can't run it with out the machine crashing.

Thanks for your help

jlliagre · 06-09-2004, 02:06 PM

None of the tools I wrote about are installed by default, I gave you the link to download the second tool in my first reply, please follow it to get it.

If your host is so unstable than you can't issue a few commands without the system crashing again, try:
strings vmcore.17 |more
In the first lines, there may be a message giving hints on what happens.
You definitely need to try also:
/usr/platform/`uname -i`/sbin/prtdiag
and see if hardware problems are reported (likely, as the panic seems to happen at random times).