[ale] Locked FreeBSD box

[kaboom at gatech.edu (Chris Ricker)]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Christopher Fowler wrote:

> 
> I've got one FreeBSD 5.0 server that ocasionally locks.  I'm not
> seeing any messages on the console so I'm assuming it is hardware related.
> Is there a way to attach a debugger to the kernel so I can see if there
> is a common location the lock is happening?

You have to have compiled with

options DDB

in your kernel config (not done by default, for security)

You can then force it to drop into ddb by a sysctl 
(debug.enter_debugger=ddb) or by pressing <ctrl><alt><esc>. It'll 
automatically drop into ddb if you ever panic

Instead of ddb, you can connect with gdb from a remote box, but I've never 
tried that. For ddb commands, see the ddb man page....

You might also consider upgrading to 5.1. Neither 5.0 or 5.1 are considered 
production stability, but 5.1 is closer than 5.0 is ;-)

later,
chris