We experience frequent panics under heavy network load with FreeBSD 8.3 that appear to be related to the em driver: Fatal trap 9: general protection fault while in kernel mode cpuid = 1; apic id = 01 instruction pointer = 0x20:0xffffffff806cd1d5 stack pointer = 0x28:0xffffff80000f1450 frame pointer = 0x28:0xffffff80000f1470 code segment = base rx0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b = DPL 0, pres 1, long 1, def32 0, gran 1 processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 current process = 0 (em1 que) trap number = 9 panic: general protection fault cpuid = 1 KDB: stack backtrace: db_trace_self_wrapper() at db_trace_self_wrapper+0x2a kdb_backtrace() at kdb_backtrace+0x37 panic() at panic+0x183 trap_fatal() at trap_fatal+0x290 trap() at trap+0x105 calltrap() at calltrap+0x8 --- trap 0x9, rip = 0xffffffff806cd1d5, rsp = 0xffffff80000f1450, rbp = 0xffffff80000f1470 --- m_freem() at m_freem+0x25 em_txeof() at em_txeof+0x164 em_start_locked() at em_start_locked+0x718 em_start() at em_start+0x5c if_transmit() at if_transmit+0xea lagg_start() at lagg_start+0x17b if_transmit() at if_transmit+0xea vlan_transmit() at vlan_transmit+0x11d ether_output_frame() at ether_output_frame+0x33 ether_output() at ether_output+0x518 ip_fastforward() at ip_fastforward+0x4a5 ether_demux() at ether_demux+0x198 ether_input() at ether_input+0x197 ether_demux() at ether_demux+0x6f ether_input() at ether_input+0x197 em_rxeof() at em_rxeof+0x1c7 em_handle_que() at em_handle_que+0x52 taskqueue_run_locked() at taskqueue_run_locked+0x85 taskqueue_thread_loop() at taskqueue_thread_loop+0x4e fork_exit() at fork_exit+0x11f fork_trampoline() at fork_trampoline+0xe --- trap 0, rip = 0, rsp = 0xffffff80000f1d00, rbp = 0 --- Uptime: 9h55m2s Cannot dump. Device not defined or unavailable. Automatic reboot in 15 seconds - press a key on the console to abort --> Press a key on the console to reboot, em2: discard frame w/o packet header Fatal trap 9: general protection fault while in kernel mode cpuid = 1; apic id = 01 instruction pointer = 0x20:0xffffffff806cd1d5 stack pointer = 0x28:0xffffff800011ba50 frame pointer = 0x28:0xffffff800011ba70 code segment = base rx0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b = DPL 0, pres 1, long 1, def32 0, gran 1 processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 current process = 0 (em2 que) trap number = 9 panic: general protection fault cpuid = 1 This machine is a pf firewall under a pretty heavy traffic load. The line "em2: discard frame w/o packet header" seems to be the most informative diagnostic, because all that interface does is pfsync to the another machine; it's under very light load compared to em0, em1, and em3. How-To-Repeat: 1) Configure machine as FreeBSD OpenBGPd router/ pf firewall. 2) Punish it. 3) Wait.
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->freebsd-net Over to maintainer(s).
I am no longer seeing this happen with pf based firewalls on freebsd 10.2r or current. Can you retest this and see what your results are?
Time out on requested for testing.