Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!nova.cc.purdue.edu!gerrit
From: gerrit@nova.cc.purdue.edu (Gerrit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: kernel corruption on 330Mb hd???
Keywords: kernel corrupt bug /sdmach
Message-ID: <5060@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 89 02:14:49 GMT
References: <17504@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
Reply-To: gerrit@nova.cc.purdue.edu (Gerrit)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 23

In article <17504@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 2FHGKINGLY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>Has anyone had any problems with your NeXT not booting up off the hard
>drive?  What happens is the machine locks up during the boot process.
>You fix the problem by booting off optical and copying the sdmach
>file from optical to the hd.  This has happened to me once and others
>three more times.  Any suggestions, comments?

This is a real problem and NeXT is aware of it.  The current theory
is that some user level process is opening /sdmach carelessly for
write and "accidentally" dropping garbage.  The symptoms seem to be
that a block of zeroes is written at the beginning of the data segment
and on the next reboot, the machine hangs after printing out the
memory configuration.

The fix listed above is currently the best workaround for the problem,
so keep a distribution OD within your reach for a while.

NeXT has a few sites running some tests hoping to isolate the faulty
program.  Once that is done, you should expect to see an updated version
of the faulty bugger, possibly in the archives on cc.purdue.edu, possibly
available via email, possibly available more directly from NeXT.

gerrit