Solved Refugee from Linux, now 2 kernel panics in 2 days

Alex Dowad

Alex Dowad

Dear FreeBSD forums,

Hi! New BSD user here (only 2 days "old"). I've been looking forward to trying out BSD for a long time and decided to try FreeBSD first. After installing FreeBSD 11 on my new Lenovo laptop, I am brutally disappointed to get 2 kernel panics in my first 2 days. I don't even have a working desktop environment yet; I'm still just compiling Xorg and XFCE using ports.

Is there a kernel hacker 'round here who would like to see my core dumps?

Both panics happened while running "make install" - I believe while running clang. The message should have been something like "page not available when in supervisor mode". I think it also said "trap 12".

AMD64, newest kernel build from the FreeBSD download site, I used the memstick ISO image. EFI boot is turned off in the laptop firmware (legacy BIOS mode).

Please tell me this isn't normal for FreeBSD!

Thanks
Alex
 
Hi Alex, I am also new to FreeBSD, even though I have installed it a few times already. One question: why are you compiling Xorg? For a first installation I would use pre-compiled packages.

Anyway, apart from minor glitches, FreeBSD works great on my desktop. I just followed the handbook for the basic installation, and then this guide for the desktop environment.
 
In my experience, panics during compilation or other CPU heavy tasks are an indication of hardware problems.
I've had 2 machines in that past which would panic consistently during a kernel build, that otherwise even passed memtest86. Replacing the RAM solved that issue, but it certainly wasn't obvious.
 
Thanks for the replies. I have swapped in a compatible DIMM as suggested by leebrown and am seeing if that will change things. As a bonus, the laptop seems noticeably faster! Thanks also to drhoward, and I will try not to stomp on too many toes in my next post (if there is one).
 
For future, if you have crashes like that you should observe if they happen at the same place (like at the same exact spot during boot up) or if they are completely random. Crashes that always happen at the same spot are usually a software level problem, a regression in a kernel driver or a related problem. Completely random crashes are very likely a hardware problem like CPU overheating, fluctuating voltages or bad memory.

It's also quite common that a system that has been running a Linux happily for long time doesn't run FreeBSD properly because FreeBSD puts a different kind of usage pressure on hardware (being developed independently of Linux and not sharing any kernel code) and might reveal problems like a bad memory stick that was never discovered under Linux because the faulty memory location was never used for the kernel memory space.
 
Thanks also to kpa, but from my last 20 years of software development, I would say that even seemingly "random" crashes are usually caused by software, not hardware. All it takes is one little use-after-free, or a race condition (even if the window for data corruption is perishingly small), and you are in for the pain and suffering of debugging "random" failures. If only I could have all those hours of my life back...
 
Well, my company has 10 FreeBSD servers, plus two that are still humming along from 2004 or so and six developer workstations. Our two Linux test servers are always crashing with every update and software change. I sometimes feel like I should hire someone just to watch them since they are so delicate.
 
Alex I came from the Windows world, not Linux. FreeBSD is not perfect, and like many I had a few of my own growing/learning pains too. Stick with it, you will learn to love it.
 
I have been running FreeBSD as main OS for about a year back in 2007. Until I bought new printer. Samsung mono laser. There was no way to get it running, and I needed printing so I switched back to Linux.

Support for new hardware is slower than on Windows and Linux. Another issue is that FreeBSD does thing differently.Often in ways which are less obvious for Linux user. There is a distinction between base system and other stuff, which does not exist in majority of Linux distribution. It does, in some ways, in Slackware, which is my favorite. Also, there is more effort to create abstraction between OS and hardware in order to increase portability.

My advice is to run FreeBSD along with another OS until you get more familiar, so you can do your daily tasks uninterrupted. If you are just trying to put distance between yourself and 'trendy' Linux things, like systemd, Slackware, Gentoo, AntiX and others can still do that for you. Systemd is 5-6 years old, who wanted to adopt it, already did.

I have installed FreeBSD again recently, and I am, in fact, disappointed that it has become more similar to Linux than it was before. I am still not sure what to think about 'rcng'.
 
Askfor said:
Until I bought new printer. Samsung mono laser. There was no way to get it running, and I needed printing so I switched back to Linux.
Click to expand...
I read this as you bought the wrong printer so you switched OSes.

Askfor said:
Support for new hardware is slower than on Windows and Linux.
Click to expand...
FreeBSD supports each and every piece of hardware that hardware vendors supply drivers for and then some. Just like Windows and Linux.

Askfor said:
I am, in fact, disappointed that it has become more similar to Linux than it was before.
Click to expand...
I see no similarity at all in Linux. Linux is trying to become Windows. FreeBSD has no interest in becoming Linux.

Margarine may claim it's just like butter but butter will never claim it is just like margarine.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Margarine may claim it's just like butter but butter will never claim it is just like margarine.
Click to expand...
:D loved that

OP, good luck in tracking down the issue; I'm sure it will benefit us all to know what the problem is exactly. Like others have said, BSD is different, and mostly in a good way.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I read this as you bought the wrong printer so you switched OSes.
Click to expand...
Most potential new users of FreeBSD were using an existing OS with vendor supported hardware previously. The expectation of possibly having to buy new printer to use with FreeBSD isn't looked at as a positive first experience by some potential users and rightfully so. Thankfully, many printers are supported under FreeBSD, specifically using print/cups and more will be supported/added as FreeBSD/open source software grows and improves.
drhowarddrfine said:
FreeBSD supports each and every piece of hardware that hardware vendors supply drivers for and then some. Just like Windows and Linux.
Click to expand...
This is a bit misleading. There is very little direct vendor support for FreeBSD outside of server hardware. With the exception of Nvidia, all desktop/laptop supported hardware is directly supported by the FreeBSD community and/or other open source drivers through the ports framework, unlike Windows and even Linux. The best way to change this is getting involved in the community to help, donating to the FreeBSD Foundation, and writing to hardware vendors requesting they support FreeBSD directly. I write to vendors myself all the time. I'm sure they hate me by now ;)
 
protocelt said:
The expectation of possibly having to buy new printer to use with FreeBSD
Click to expand...
He was running FreeBSD first. Then he bought a new printer.
protocelt said:
This is a bit misleading.
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Not at all. Tell me one piece of hardware made where the vendor supplied a driver for FreeBSD that doesn't work on FreeBSD.
protocelt said:
all desktop/laptop supported hardware is directly supported by the FreeBSD community and/or other open source drivers through the ports framework
Click to expand...
As I meant by, "...and then some.", though I realize I didn't make that clear.

This misses my point. My point is, most hardware vendors supply drivers to Windows and, often, Linux, too. It is not a fault of FreeBSD that vendors don't supply drivers but too many people like to blame FreeBSD and not the vendors where all the blame truly lies.
 
protocelt said:
Thankfully, many printers are supported under FreeBSD, specifically using print/cups and more will be supported/added as FreeBSD/open source software grows and improves.
Click to expand...
Cups doesn't support any printers! Non PostScript printers need drivers HPIJS (HPLIP), Gutenprint, Splix. Cups is a queuing system just like our native LPD queuing system or LPRng. Use of queuing system is only limited by your imagination. You can use LPD for example to play your MP3(I prefer Flack) files.
https://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2003/05/23/lpdforfunandmp3playing/

Your statement indeed reveals that FreeBSD or many of its community members suffer from Linux Wanna Be Syndrome.

Yes LPD is in dire need of revamp and would make a wonderful Google summer code project. Interesting student should be only ready to delete lots of obsolete code. At least one OpenBSD wanna be developer works on this right now. However it is not competing with CUPS (owned by Apple) and it is perfectly sufficient for smaller organizations which don't need very complicated printing policies. As somebody who is using LPD at home, used to manager LPRng in late 90s and now manages CUPS server at work I could just say stay away as far as possible from CUPS. When CUPS works it looks brilliant when it doesn't troubleshooting it is a nightmare.

Statements like these is one of the reason foomatic-rip crowd dropped support for LPD so their filter (pre-procession) is now part of cups-filters package and even worse people like I had to come up with clever scripts to continue to use LPD with foomatic-rip filter. That makes entry bar even higher for new BSD desktop users.
 
Askfor said:
Support for new hardware is slower than on Windows and Linux.
Click to expand...
Factually not true. NetBSD was the first OS which supported AMD architecture as AMD used it during the development. Many important drivers are written by vendors. Intel LAN open source drivers are written by Intel employees. The problems occur when particular vendor is not willing to disclose datasheet for its device and decides ti chary pick an OS for which it releases binary blob. Broadcom, some Brother non-script printers, lower end Epson scanners, entire NVIDIA line of products are all examples of such devices. A serious OS would not include such driver into the kernel anyway (OpenBSD for example) as they pose grave stability and security risks. Some other systems like Windows recommend only the use of certified drivers. The same is true for Linux. FreeBSD principal problem IMHO is that community can't decide the proper course of action. On one hand FreeBSD wants to behave like Linux. On the another hand it is minuscule with non-existing corporate support comparing to Linux (HP, IBM, Oracle) so vendors in particularly for fast moving desktop devices have little incentive to release the drivers. I would be much more concern if large vendors of Hardware RAID cards for example decide that FreeBSD is not worthy or their proprietary blob driver. That would be much more serious problem.

Due to the systemd requirements for new Gnome, Xfce in the very near future desktop experience on BSDs will be much more different than desktop experience on the Linux anyway. FreeBSD could chose to ignore that or embrace the fact that they have a nice niche OS with excellent network stack and storage file system second to none and just try not act out of its league. Windows have won desktop wars long time ago. Desktop as we know will be dead in very near future and the people who actually use computers and keyboard to interact with them like I will continue to do what they have done for the past 30 some years (in my case)
 
Oko said:
A serious OS would not include such driver into the kernel anyway (OpenBSD for example) as they pose grave stability and security risks.
Click to expand...
+1.
Oko said:
Desktop as we know will be dead in very near future and the people who actually use computers and keyboard to interact with them like I will continue to do what they have done for the past 30 some years (in my case)
Click to expand...
You mean in favour of tablets and smartphones? IMHO in most of the cases they are just (too much) expensive toys than replacement for desktops. Maybe I'm just another physical keyboards addicted (I usually prefer them over virtual ones on phones too). ;)
 
Maxnix said:
You mean in favour of tablets and smartphones?
Click to expand...
I think he means for the average user. Just recently, Google announced that there are more searches via mobile devices than from desktops though I think a lot of that comes from the proliferation of more easily accessible mobile devices. When you really think about it, a large portion of people really don't need a computer but they can make great use of a smartphone.
 
I have marked this thread "Solved, since I haven't had any crashes since swapping out the RAM in my laptop, as suggested by leebrown. Thanks!

Now if I could just get Wi-Fi and graphics acceleration working, figure out why X.org gets messed up when switching virtual consoles back and forth, figure out why the XFCE power manager core-dumps instantly when run, and migrate all my data stored on BTRFS to a filesystem which can be mounted on BSD...
 
Well, assuming one Linux or another not using BTFS can read the BTFS system, FreeBSD can easily read ext4fs, or use NFS to mount it.

Graphics, if it's Intel, a lot of people are having better luck these days---everyone but me, it seems. (Meh, not quite true, but the percentage of success is getting higher). If you're using EFI, there's also the possibility of using scfb. https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/SCFB
(I could go on about this--TrueOS is also, apparently working on it and I got TrueOS' installation to use it, but it wouldn't boot. )

EDIT: HAH! Today, finally got Haswell working with FreeBSD-CURRENT and the drm-next-4.7 git repository. If anyone is interested, I have it in the FreeBSD section of a little page I have on the yoga2 at https://srobb.net/yoga2.html

Wifi, do you know the model of the card?
Each of these is probably a separate thread, I'm afraid. While I understand what Oko is saying, when he says NetBSD supported whatever (in this case, AMD) first, generally speaking, newer laptops tend to first get Linux support, then support from the various BSDs. For what it's worth, OpenBSD is often better for laptops. In my own experience, I got OpenBSD's video and wireless working (though it won't work with a hidden wireless network) with very little trouble on a Yoga2 pro. In contrast, I think the wireless didn't work until FreeBSD-11.x and I still don't have the Intel video working, even with 12-CURRENT. Also, OpenBSD had synaptics mouse stuff working out of the box, which I didn't get working with FreeBSD. (We'll put that one down to my laziness though, tried a few things on these forums and elsewhere, but didn't try very hard.)

When you say xorg gets messed up--if you mean that once you leave a virtual console, or try to get out of X, you get a blank screen, you _might_ be able to fix that with adding kern.vty=vt to /boot/loader.conf though I was under the impression that's no longer necessary.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I read this as you bought the wrong printer so you switched OSes.


FreeBSD supports each and every piece of hardware that hardware vendors supply drivers for and then some. Just like Windows and Linux.


I see no similarity at all in Linux. Linux is trying to become Windows. FreeBSD has no interest in becoming Linux.

Margarine may claim it's just like butter but butter will never claim it is just like margarine.
Click to expand...

Yes, I switched OS. I needed to print and I couldn't do that from FreeBSD. What am I supposed to do, by another printer ?
Not going to happen. I'll do that again, ten times in a row if that is what it takes. Software is there to serve people, not the other way around.
I am no fan or believer, I am user. I had similar discussions in Linux USENET groups. They seem to believe that OS installation is some sort of life commitment, a statement to the world.

It is a solid printer, by the way, still have it.

last time I used FreeBSD there was no PulseAudio, no D-Bus, I could run Firefox with or without CUPS. BSD was, traditionally, supposed to run LP rather than System V printing. Firefox requires CUPS, now. I suppose it has been ported from Linux source code.

I have installed FreeBSD to learn something new and different. However, my primary concern is to get job done, and I am not switching OS
until I am 100% sure that new one can do everything I need it to.
 
As for Firefox and Cups, apparently, one can get rid of that by editing make.conf, though I forget the exact syntax and am too lazy to google it. You can still use LP, but honestly, for the few times I print, it's easier to let something pull in cups and use it.

You'll find that many folks here have the attitude towards Linux that many Linux users seem to have towards Windows and OSX. It's unfortunate, but as recent current events have shown, it's easy to unite in hatred.
 
scottro said:
As for Firefox and Cups, apparently, one can get rid of that by editing make.conf, though I forget the exact syntax and am too lazy to google it. You can still use LP, but honestly, for the few times I print, it's easier to let something pull in cups and use it.
Click to expand...

During my previous time with FreeBSD, I asked something about CUPS on USENET and someone politely advised that LP is the BSD way. That spirit seems to have gone away in the meantime. I don't mind CUPS, personally, it is just an example. Personally I installed FreeBSD because I like traditional UNIX, not because I expect it to run faster or something. I suppose I am getting old...

Considering Linux, distributions are not all the same. Some of them keep ties to UNIX heritage, others seem to be ashamed of it. Slackware and Gentoo are old school, fortunately . I understand negative attitudes towards Linux, I have some of them myself.
 
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