I wrote:
> 1. No wonder we could not reproduce it anywhere else. I've warned
> the cfarm admins that their machine may be having hardware issues.
I heard back from the machine's admin. The time of the crash I observed
matches exactly to these events in the kernel log:
May 07 03:31:39 gcc202 kernel: dm-0: writeback error on inode 2148294407, offset 0, sector 159239256
May 07 03:31:39 gcc202 kernel: sunvdc: vdc_tx_trigger() failure, err=-11
May 07 03:31:39 gcc202 kernel: blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vdiskc, sector 157618896 op 0x1:(WRITE) flags 0x4800
phys_seg16 prio class 0
So it's not a mirage. The admin seems to think it might be a kernel
bug though.
regards, tom lane