hazard@ihuxe.UUCP (12/16/83)
A question for anyone running Unix version 7. If there were
read/write errors with the swap area on the disk, would the
master terminal print the I/O error messages? I have often seen
messages of the type:
error on device 6/7
bn=000000 ...
This is fine and dandy for devices which have major/minor device
numbers, but /dev has no entry for "swap". The operating system
occasionally crashed with "PANIC: trap type 1" (illegal
instruction). I suspect that a process which was swapped was
incorrectly read into memory.
As I don't have access to the source, maybe someone out there
can investigate for me.
Bryant S. Hazard
ihnp4!ihuxe!hazard
(312) 979-1829achut%rand-relay@qsi03.UUCP (12/21/83)
A disk error occurring during a swap operation is considered by UNIX to be a fatal one. Therefore, if you got such an error, you would see the folowing on the console: panic: I/O err in swap rather than usual disk error message. - Achut Reddy
edhall%rand-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (12/28/83)
Whether an i/o error during swap is a panic or not depends upon what flavor of UNIX you are running. For instance, later Berkeley systems mark the current process as being locked in core (to prevent any further attempts at swapping it) and send a kill signal to it. A message is sent to the terminal associated with the unfortunate process as well as to the console. A bit less drastic than V7's response of suicide, though it could be improved. (For instance, the bad sectors could be removed from the swap map...) -Ed edhall@rand-unix (ARPA) decvax!randvax!edhall (UUCP)