Re: [exim] Exim 4.66 Causing Kernel Panics?

Sometime around Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:39:24 -0700, it may be that Don
O'Neil wrote:
> Anyone aware of a reason why a fresh build/install of exim 4.66 would
> cause kernel panics and reboots on my FreeBSD 6.1 machine?

No. Besides which looking at the application crashing the machine is
the *last* thing to suspect. First look at the hardware.

> My machine, just out of the blue this morning, started rebooting
> every 3 minutes.... I narrowed it down to exim I think... As long as
> I never started up exim 4.66 the machine didn't have the problem...
> But as soon as I started it up, whammo... Panic and reboot.

It is possible that starting Exim exercises the memory enough to cause
a memory error to surface. Or perhaps the new Exim binary is held on
slightly marginal disk blocks and it causes a panic when the relevant
pages are paged in.

If you can live without the server for a few hours, try running a
memory checker (Ubuntu boot CD has one, although I'm suggesting that
because that happens to be the most recent sighting of one for me). You
could also try renaming the exim binary and re-installing it.

--
Mike Meredith, Senior Informatics Officer
University of Portsmouth: Hostmaster, Postmaster and Security
"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work." -- Gallagher