[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD rebooting every 120 seconds =-(

[N.J. Thomas]

Sometime last week, the FreeBSD 5.4-p6 machine I had been using merrily
since August started crapping out on me.

It rebooted spontaneously twice last week while I was using it. Over the
weekend, it rebooted itself at least two more times.

(I have installed no new software on this box in months, and I'm fairly
certain it is not a security issue (it's tied down fairly well, and the
only service pf allows is ssh from the local LAN).)

This morning I came back in to find that it is rebooting roughly every
2-3 minutes or so, but only when I access the disk.

Nothing in /var/log seems to indicate what is the problem, but I noticed
I was able to get it to reboot on me twice by running "less
/var/log/messages". I noticed I can occasionally make it reboot if I
open some file.

Has anyone experience anything similar? How can I go about debugging
this?

If this a disk issue, I can easily replace the disk and restore
everything from the latest backup, but I'd like to find the root cause
before I start throwing hardware at the problem.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thomas

-- 
N.J. Thomas
njt at ayvali.org
Etiamsi occiderit me, in ipso sperabo