# FreeBSD stability on Atom PC



## tanked (Jan 27, 2013)

My system:

OS: FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE #0 r245600 i386

Hardware: Lenovo Ideacentre Q180
CPU:  Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D2550   @ 1.86GHz (1862.04-MHz 686-class CPU)
Memory: 4GB (1GB reserved for display adapter)

Hello all, I have a couple of questions regarding things I've noticed whilst running FreeBSD on this machine:

1.) I noticed the following in the dmesg output:


```
acpi0: reservation of 0, 4000 (3) failed

................

atrtc0: <AT realtime clock> port 0x70-0x77 irq 8 on acpi0
atrtc0: Warning: Couldn't map I/O.
```

Is this above anything to be concerned about?

2.) A more serious problem I encountered was with the console screensaver (which used the fire.ko module); if it came on whilst I was compiling software (in my particular case it was the www/nginx port and it's dependencies) then the OS crashed and automatically rebooted - this happened every time until I disabled the screensaver. I do not have any unsual settings in make.conf or use ccache etc. 

I should mention that Hyper-threading is enabled in the BIOS, is it the case that the FreeBSD devs don't think much of Hyper-threading and if so should I disable it?

This of course isn't a problem as I have just left the screensaver off and the OS runs fine, its just a bit disconcerting that something as simple as this crashes the OS - it reminds me of issues I noticed a few years ago, on different hardware, where I could crash FreeBSD just by selecting an unsupported console resolution.

Thanks for any input.


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## Uniballer (Jan 27, 2013)

As you are discovering, the CPU and RAM are rarely the problem with laptop features/functions/stability.  It's the other stuff that gets you: display hardware, ACPI, pointer device, general hardware weirdness.


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## fonz (Jan 27, 2013)

tanked said:
			
		

> A more serious problem I encountered was with the console screensaver (which used the fire.ko module); if it came on whilst I was compiling software (in my particular case it was the www/nginx port and it's dependencies) then the OS crashed and automatically rebooted - this happened every time until I disabled the screensaver.


I have noticed a similar phenomenon when building -STABLE on a netbook. Disabling the console screensaver (or launching X and staying there) solved the problem, so I didn't make it a priority to find out what's causing it. Now I know that others have the same problem, perhaps I should start looking into it


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## rob34 (Jan 27, 2013)

I have similar hardware but mine is a small form factor desktop that acts as my firewall.  It has run for around 3 years straight with no problems.  I also have hyper-threading enabled and have not experienced any issues related to the CPU.


```
CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU  330   @ 1.60GHz (1596.03-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x106c2  Family = 6  Model = 1c  Stepping = 2
  Features=0xbfe9fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x40e31d<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE>
  AMD Features=0x20100800<SYSCALL,NX,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  TSC: P-state invariant, performance statistics
real memory  = 2147483648 (2048 MB)
avail memory = 2035843072 (1941 MB)
Event timer "LAPIC" quality 400
ACPI APIC Table: <INTEL  D945GLF2>
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 HTT threads
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  1
 cpu2 (AP): APIC ID:  2
 cpu3 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  3
```


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