[wplug-bsd] Frequent page faults -- getting on my nerves

[Brandon Kuczenski]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005, Bill Moran wrote:

> Brandon Kuczenski <brandon at 301south.net> wrote:
>> I've been running freeBSD 4.10 ("stable") since around August 1.  My

[snip]

>> Apr 11 20:06:14 ocean /kernel: Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
>> Apr 11 20:06:14 ocean /kernel: fault virtual address	= 0x0
>> Apr 11 20:06:14 ocean /kernel: fault code		= supervisor read, page not present

[snip]

> If this is happening this often, you can debug the kernel.
> First, subscribe to one of the FreeBSD developer lists.  Then update to the
> current 4.x-STABLE (4.10 has been superceded by 4.11).  Then, follow the
> instructions below to set up your system to debug the problem:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html
>

This has started to happen often, and with other processes besides httpd. 
Tonight it happened twice in twenty minutes when I was running GnuCash 
over X11 tunneling (the first time, sshd was the process that choked; the 
second time, guile) So I need to debug it.  I will do as you suggest, but 
I don't really understand what exactly is meant by updating to the current 
4.x-STABLE release.  Is that the kernel?  Can I do that with sysinstall?

I'm sorry for this question, but I don't know what to google for.  I've 
read the handbook section on building a custom kernel (and in fact I've 
done it) but I don't know what's involved with completely replacing the 
kernel source tree and starting from scratch.  I don't want to be left 
with an unusable system.

If you can point me to a howto, that would be great.

Thanks in advance,
Brandon