SUMMARY: Peculiar system crash

From: David Rubin (drubin@forte.poly.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 03 1992 - 01:51:08 CDT


MY PROBLEM...

  One of our Sparc 4/65 crashed today with the following errors:
 
  DVMA Parity Error, ctx = 0x0, virt addr = 0xff0782d0
  pme = e3002372, phys addr = 23722d0
  Parity Error Register 94<ERROR,CHECK,ERR08>
   bad module/chip at: U683
  System operation cannot continue, will test location anyway.
  parity error at 23722d0 is transient.
  panic: dvma parity error
  esp0: Unrecoverable DMA error on dma send
  sd0: SCSI transport failed: reason 'tran_err': retrying command
 
The system then rebooted itself normally.
 
Does anyone have any idea what would cause this? Should I write it off
as a "glitch" or is it a sign of potential impending disaster?

THE RESPONSE...

In the tradition of this great list, I received an overwhelming number
of responses. In summary, most people agreed that it was related to a
potentially bad SIMM at slot U683. Some recommended that the chip be
replaced, since it is likely that more problems will occur. Others
suggested that it may not be a permanent problem, and that I should adopt
a wait-and-see attitude, and if it happens again, replace the SIMM.
Some said that opening up the unit and making sure the SIMMs are well
seated might be a good idea.

Many thanks to all who responded:

Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de
birger@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne)
Steve Elliott <se@computing.lancaster.ac.uk>
Tim Beyea <beyea@ERC.MsState.Edu>
aldrich@sunrise.stanford.edu (Jeff Aldrich)
celeste@stokely.mtview.ca.us (Celeste Stokely)
canuck@masc38.rice.edu (Mike Pearlman)
trinkle@cs.purdue.edu (Daniel Trinkle)
walt@mailhost.adaclabs.com (walt klingenberg)
frankm@shadow.cna.tek.com (Frank 'Scruff' Miller)
Mike Raffety <miker@sbcoc.com>
Patrick Shopbell <pls@pegasus.rice.edu>
Robert Haddick <rhaddick@us.oracle.com>
Perry_Hutchison.Portland@xerox.com
evan@flatiron (Evan L. Marcus)
ups!kevin@fourx.Aus.Sun.COM (Kevin Sheehan)

--
Dave Rubin
Polytechnic University
drubin@poly.edu



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