Re: A new, unstable system, HW problem ???
On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 11:16:02PM +0300, jpahka@welho.com wrote:
> This mail might be partly off-topic, since I'm pretty sure it's my hardware
> that's at fault and not debian-amd64, but I don't know where else to ask, so I
> thought I'd try here, thanks for you patience... :)
>
> So, the situation is, that I upgraded my computer on weekend, with the following
> components:
>
> AMD64 3200+ (Winchester core)
> Abit AV8 mobo
> Seagate 7200.8 250Gb sata harddrive
> 2x512Mb 64bit DDR memory (M-Tec, Twinmos MT6464400D I quess)
>
> I installed debian-amd64 sid distribution with no problems, so thanks to all the
> people who made it happen, it feels really fast when it works...but the problem
> is, it doesn't work very well. My system crashes all the time, it's very
> repeatable. It crashes everytime I try to compile a kernel, every time I try to
> copy my old home directory (~10 Gb) to a partition in the new harddrive, and at
> least once when I tried to watch an mpeg file. I've found one oops in my syslog,
> but I'm not sure what caused this oops. But I was hoping someone here could
> maybe point out the most probable faulty component in the system.
>
> The reason I'm pretty sure that it's a hardware problem is, that I also
> tried a 32bit sid in the computer and that isn't stable either. And I've
> upgraded the kernel to the newest 2.6.11.9 on the amd64 version. And the only
> parts that aren't new in the computer are power unit and video card and I've
> tried two of each just be sure...so I really can't think of anything else than
> hardware problems...can you?
>
> Any how, the oops part is attached to this mail, I'd be very grateful if some
> kind soul could help me out, I'm very confused...
You might want to try a newer kernel. I remember reading recently that
some combinations of sata drives and controllers were blacklisted (which
turns off dma and some other operations to avoid locking up the disk),
and I seem to recall seagate was (yet again) among the offenders for
faulty sata implementations.
Other potential issues: is the power supply large enough/good enough
quality? I run a new system with a 3500+, 2*512M kingston DDR400 ram,
Asus A8V-Deluxe, PX716A dvd writer, and two WD2500JD sata 250G drives
using an enermax 350W power supply. Runs flawlessly. Don't skimp on a
good power supply or good quality ram. The memory controller on the A64
is very picky about memory timings and it is picky about power levels in
general too. Your system is only as reliable as the worst piece of
hardware in it.
Of course you may also have gotten a bad motherboard, cpu, ram and/or
hardisk.
The oops you sent appears filesystem related, and if it occours with
both 32 and 64bit then it is probably either a bug in that version of
the kernel in general (no matter what the cpu setting is) or a problem
with the hardware. At least it is being consistent.
Len Sorensen
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