Bug 22779

Summary:	procfs corruption in FreeBSD 4.1.1-REL (ps gives "bad namelist")
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	lew <lew>
Component:	kern	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	Closed FIXED
Severity:	Affects Only Me
Priority:	Normal
Version:	4.1.1-RELEASE
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description lew 2000-11-12 04:50:01 UTC

procfs seems to become corrupt over time.  This causes "ps" and "w" to fail with a "bad namelist" error.  Once this happens, it is impossible to manage processes.  Even re-genning the kernel, or booting good old kernel.GENERIC, does not fix this...  like managing the system with a blindfold on.  Can someone please, please help me with this.  I'm also running NFS (some machines as clients, some as servers) on the boxes, and the problem doesn't seem to discriminate between servers/clients.


  When it does, nothing fixes it... not even a reboot or re-genning the kernel.  Even booting with kernel.GENERIC won't fix the problem.

Fix: 

Reinstalling FreeBSD from scratch temporarily solves the problem, but after several days of uptime, the problem resurfaces.  Please help!
How-To-Repeat: Install 4.1.1-REL, and these ports, then just let it run for a week:
bzip2-1.0.1             jpeg-6b                 mysql-client-3.22.32
gdbm-1.8.0              libtool-1.3.4           mysql-server-3.22.32
gettext-0.10.35         lynx-2.8.3.1            rsync-2.4.6
gmake-3.79.1            mtr-0.42
or just write me for telnet access into my cluster.

Comment 1 ps freebsd_committer

2000-11-12 06:43:38 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed

User was deleting /dev/null and not realizing it.