[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD box rebooting itself

[Steven Kreuzer]

On Nov 12, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Matt Juszczak wrote:

> Problem started today @ 8:30 AM or so...
>
> Nov 12 07:38:47 pluto sshd[73708]: error: PAM: authentication error  
> for
> illegal user soandso from ipaddress
> Nov 12 08:41:59 pluto syslogd: kernel boot file is /boot/kernel/kernel
>
> So you can see this was a hard reboot since no "reboot" was issued or
> anything (and I got disk mount complaints later in dmesg):
>
> WARNING: / was not properly dismounted
> WARNING: /tmp was not properly dismounted
> WARNING: /usr was not properly dismounted
>
>
>
> Just happened again about 20 minutes ago.
>
>
> My first guess is a hardware issue (power supply, etc.), but does  
> anyone
> know of any other possibilities?  I'm hoping this isn't some super  
> hidden
> reboot root kit or something.

If this machine has been well behaved in the past, chances are that you
have a malfunctioning piece of hardware that is causing the kernel to  
panic.
Once the kernel panics the machine will reboot itself.

If you recently did a kernel upgrade, I would check in the cvs tree to
see if any of the drivers for your devices had changes made to them
recently. If thats the case, its possible a bug was introduced and you
are hitting it.

I suggest you read Chapter 10 in the FreeBSD developers handbook.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html

Once you setup a dump device and get a dump of the kernel it will make
diagnosing this issue much easier.

--
Steven Kreuzer
http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer