Re: System Hangs!
>It might be instructive to look in /var/log/messages to see if the
>kernel managed to notice anything awry just before the crash. [I
>know, I think you've already done this, but without any clues to go
>on, I don't think other people are going to be able to do any better
>than you.]
Well, absolutely nothing appears in the log after the last boot message. BTW
the major things that appear on the console but not in the messages log is
the output from the boot script and run-parts. What do I do to get these
messages into a file somewhere?
>
>It might also help to go through a complete inventory of your
>hardware.
Well, this is a pentium 75 with two IDE channels, two I/O channels, a
parallel and a game port, all built into the mother board. There is a 14.4
internal modem, a Trident 9440AGI vidio card and an Adaptec
AHA-1540CF/1542CF SCSI adapter card. There is a 220 Meg Western digital
drive as master on channel 0. The Linux partitions are on a Seagate 540 Meg
drive as slave on channel 0. There is also a Seagate 1 Gig drive as master
on channel 1.
The machine has been up and running for about three months as a DOS machine
with no crashes (powered up for 5 days straight in windows with only the
usual General Protection Faults from Netscape). I is highly unlikely that
any of the hardware is faulty, with the exception of the 540 Meg drive
itself. The drive, however, has passed all the bad block checks when it was
formated, and has been completely recoverable with e2fsck. The crashing
behavior seems, however, to be completely disk related. If I do a 'find /
-name tput*.deb' the find reports the copy of the file that is found on the
first DOS partition (I can search the 1 Gig drive as well with no problems)
but dies before it reports the file on the Linux drive (it's there. I can
even install it.) From these symptoms I am reluctant to suspect hardware,
but could still be convinced.
It might help me to know what other cron processes do blanket sweeps of the
disk. I suspect there is a periodic sync operation. What clock times are
these guys run on.
The machine runs DOS for hours at a time, and yet will not run Linux for
more than several hours. Have there been other problems (maybe already
solved, but not in my system) with the ex2f system?
>
>For that matter, it might help to just remove boards from your system
>to see if that makes the problem go away - anything to isolate the
>problem is good.
Well, as none of the boards seem to be involved in the problem, (and work
fine in DOS) I am reticent to spend time ripping boards out when the
hardware involved is on the mother board.
>
>--
>Raul
I know this is tough to diagnose long distance and I know that you are all
very busy right now. I will try to be patient. The, as yet unincorporated
'Foundation For Humanity In Outer Space' needs a machine capable of hanging
out on the net for days at a time. I am hoping that we can make Debian Linux
the solution to this problem.
Thanks for all your help. It has been greatly appreciated.
YHS, Dale
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