Bug 87514

Summary: 6.0-CURRENT freezes machine using >4GB on AMD64 architecture with high memory load
Product: Base System Reporter: Sean Dean <seandean>
Component: amd64Assignee: freebsd-amd64 (Nobody) <amd64>
Status: Closed FIXED    
Severity: Affects Only Me    
Priority: Normal    
Version: 6.0-CURRENT   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description Sean Dean 2005-10-16 11:50:14 UTC 
Under 6.0-CURRENT using a Tyan K8SE (v1.03) with dual Opterons and 8GB of RAM my machine will freeze up when I have Software selected in the BIOS for Memhole mapping. The system will freeze when running a high load memory application, or an application using a large portion of memory.

I tested with a MySQL process using just over 6GB and the system will have an uptime of about 4-5 days before it freezes. I have also tried running Nutch (with JDK1.5p2) and it will run until the resident memory size hits 101M (the size memory is at 2.2GB captured through the top application at the same time).

Running in either Hardware or Disabled mode for Memhole mapping will not cause the machine to freeze, but will remove about 1GB of RAM from the OS.

Kernel memory output with Software selected:

Oct 16 03:29:28 link kernel: real memory  = 9663676416 (9216 MB)
Oct 16 03:29:28 link kernel: avail memory = 8288559104 (7904 MB)

Kernel memory output with Hardware or Disabled selected:

Oct 16 04:04:47 link kernel: real memory  = 8589934592 (8192 MB)
Oct 16 04:04:47 link kernel: avail memory = 7246278656 (6910 MB)

Fix: 

I dont know of any fix, but if your willing to run with 1GB less of RAM you can use either Hardware or Disabled mode selected.
How-To-Repeat: Run MySQL with a large memory size, greater then 4GB or use any application that requires large portions of memory with high read/write activity.
Comment 1 David E. O'Brien freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2005-10-18 17:36:41 UTC 
On Sun, Oct 16, 2005 at 10:47:40AM +0000, Sean Dean wrote:
> Under 6.0-CURRENT using a Tyan K8SE (v1.03) with dual Opterons and 8GB
> of RAM my machine will freeze up when I have Software selected in
> the BIOS for Memhole mapping. The system will freeze when running a
> high load memory application, or an application using a large portion
> of memory.
...
> Running in either Hardware or Disabled mode for Memhole mapping will
> not cause the machine to freeze, but will remove about 1GB of RAM from
> the OS.

This is a BIOS bug, not a FreeBSD bug.  What version of the BIOS are you
running?  What revision Opterons do you have?

-- 
-- David  (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
Comment 2 Sean Dean 2006-12-19 19:07:17 UTC 
I recently updated the BIOS to version 2.03 from version 1.03, which was
what I was using when I submitted this PR.

The revisions of the Opertons are C0, and according to AMD there were two
errata open that was responsible for the deadlock. These are errata 99 and
101, which have been fixed in the BIOS.

I have load tested the machine now with 8GB RAM, and everything is holding
up under 6.2-PRERELEASE.

We can now close this bug. Thanks.
Comment 3 Mark Linimon freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2006-12-19 20:37:23 UTC 
State Changed
From-To: open->closed

Fixed via firmware upgrade.