Spontaneous reboots

[ltning]

Hi,

in the last few weeks I've experienced several spontaneous reboots on my GhostBSD installation. I have not changed anything system-config-wise, other than upgrading to 13 a while back (soon after it was released) and followed the usual upgrades since.

Does GhostBSD automatically reboot when hitting a catastrophic error (kernel panic, etc.)? Or is this actually the hardware doing the rebooting? I have not been looking directly at the screen while it happened, but just now I saw from the corner of my eye that the screen went dark and a second later I saw the boot loader, so I knew it had happened again.
Note that this happens without any load; while the fans are relatively quiet on this box I would have heard them spin up if that was the case.

The hardware in question is a Zotac EN72070V:
https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_p ... s-en72070v
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zotac-ZBOX-EN7 ... B07WK1L4SS (since zotac.com is down right now)

Key info:
9th Gen Intel Core processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 8GB GDDR6.

I'm using the "official" nvidia driver as shipped with GhostBSD.

Anyone have any idea what I should be looking for?

/Eirik

[ericbsd]

If you could set savecore and dumpon services and see if you get anything in /var/crash, I would appreciate it.

Code: Select all

sudo rc-update add savecore
sudo rc-update add dumpon

I had a similar issue. I did set up savecore and dumpon services and did a forced upgrade. Since then, I was not able to reproduce.

Code: Select all

sudo pkg upgrade -f

[ltning]

I'll try your suggestions, have been away from the office for a few days and, surprisingly, the machine was still running when I got back. So reproduction here is unpredictable at best.

Thanks again,
/Eirik

[ltning]

Well, this is still going on, sadly. I have even completely replaced the computer; going from that Intel based machine mentioned above to a Threadripper. The only "common" element is the nVidia graphics; I went with nVidia in the new one simply to avoid having to mess with Xorg graphics drivers.

I just found out however that the driver is quite old; 460.84. The current release from nVidia is 470.57, and I'd like to install this - however I need the source tree corresponding to my kernel for that. How do I get this?

Thanks,
/Eirik

[ericbsd]

Code: Select all

pkg install src

[ltning]

Code: Select all

pkg install src

Of course. *duh*
Anyway, didn't help. New driver is if possible even worse than the old one. I can now reliably insta-boot the system by starting firefox (restoring a handful of windows and a few dozen tabs). The windows have time to form on screen, but no content loaded, before it rolls over and dies.

I'll enable savecore/dumps and try once more, then I'll replace the nVidia GPU with a Radeon.

What's the best way to switch graphics drivers? Does it autodetect?

/Eirik

[ericbsd]

Remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf and make sure that drm-fbsd13-kmod is installed.

[grahamperrin]

… 470.57, …

… firefox …

Cross-reference FreeBSD bug 257456 – x11/nvidia-driver: Update to 470.57.02 with other reports of instability.

[ltning]

The new driver from a few days ago (downloaded from Nvidia and compiled locally) no longer produce the insta-boot on starting Firefox.
Time will tell if it solves the other instaboots.

[ltning]

No more instaboots so far.. But I think I want to see September come around before I declare complete victory.