Why won't FreeBSD reboot after a kernel crash?

Once in a while I get my server running FreeBSD 8.0 amd64 fail due to bad memory (incompatible with motherboard) modules. Each time it happens, the box stalls with the last note saying that it will automatically reboot in 15 second, but it never does.

How do I fix this? I need computer to reboot after kernel crash, unattended.

(Please do not recommend to replace memory, as soon as I get the modules, I will, but I need a quicker solution that will not require me to stand still next to the box just to press the reset button each time it crashes.)

Solution 1:

Unless someone/something is causing keyboard input (or something that looks like keyboard input) FreeBSD should reboot automatically after a panic. You'll know if that's the case because instead of saying that iy will reboot in 15 seconds it will say something to the effect of "press any key to reboot" because it thinks you're looking at the panic trace.

The fact that the auto-reboot is not working & you suspect bad RAM suggests that's what could be causing the auto-reboot to fail (the auto-reboot is just another software function - if it's in corrupted memory it may not work).

Did you get this bad RAM from a memory upgrade? If so, downgrade back to the old configuration (better to have a machine with less RAM than one with bad RAM that causes crashes). Alternatively if your system can run without matched pairs of RAM run one of the free memtest tools to locate the bad DIMM & pull it (if ALL your DIMMs are bad or incompatible you're pretty well screwed: If anything on this box is important I'd take the machine out of service rather than risking data corruption).