# FreeBSD 8, Kernel Panic



## Guiltysparc (Dec 16, 2009)

Hi, a small FYI...

Stumbled over a "quirk" when configuring IPFW / NAT on a brand new FreeBSD 8 installation. My own fault actually 

I forgot to specify the NATD device (it is empty by default). At the subsequent reboot the system crashed with a Kernel Panic (and something like "unknown device", before rebooting).

I suspected that I had made a blunder during kernel config, but it turend out to be the missing ethernet device (natd_interface="") in /etc/rc.conf.

Could be handled more gracefully perhaps? 

Anyhow, thanx for a utterly fantastic OS! 

Keep up the fantastic work!

Stein Morten


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## fronclynne (Dec 17, 2009)

Have you tested this behaviour with GENERIC?  Cos that's probably the first thing you should do, if possible.  You'll save everyone asking for that when you file a PR.


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## Guiltysparc (Dec 18, 2009)

I'm in the process of investigating this in more detail. I guess within a week or so I may be able to present a more detailed report on this. I will try GENERIC, but that will disable kernel IPFW of cause... I might do a kldload of the neccessary loadable modules later, as a test.

I noticed though, that on the same machine (after correcting the natd device error), that under high disk IO load (copying large files over NFS) it dropped the (local) disk being written to with error messages like: 


```
g_vfs_done():ad8s1d[WRITE(offset=492637962240,length=131072)]error = 6
```

I also noticed that NATD was very busy, more so than I ever seen on 7.2 and previous releases (on a 2 core CPU, 45% in top).

brb


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