Unstable gzip/gunzip
I am seeing some very unstable behavior which I am trying to track down,
and I would really really appreciate some input...
Here is what I am seeing on this machine:
Slink install, SMP kernel 2.0.36
Asus P2B-D MB, 2 PIII/450, 256M ram (2 PC100 128M DIMMs)
IBM 14GXP 14.6G drive, UDMA disabled (part of test...)
Stable for some time, then suddenly you name it, it crashed. I have
also attempted to run the slink installed kernel (single processor,etc),
and see similar results.
One test I perform to see a failure is to move a file from my /home to
/tmp
gunzip file.gz; gzip file; gzip -t file.gz
I run this loop anywhere from 5 to 20 times, no problems, but
eventually, I will get a bad crc. This tells me that I am headed for
trouble.
On some reboots, I get a mess of errors, others no problem. Netscape
4.61 runs great, or crashes before a window is even drawn. Lots of
segfaulting, or stable operation for a while.
I have JUST upgraded to slink, and at the same time upgraded to this new
MB with lots of memory, and a new hard drive. SO, I am attempting to
isolate the problem.
I was suspicious that this drive (7200 RPM, UDMA) was either overheating
crammed between a floppy and a sparq drive (so I moved it in my case) or
failing due to some UDMA problems (so I disabled UDMA in bios).
I disabled MPS 1.4 support in the bios.
I installed kernel 2.2.1 from the stable slink (r2?) from a debian site
(original install from lsl cds, BTW).
I still see weird behavior.
I have noticed, though, that my aging power supply sometimes needs some
coaxing to power up from shutdown (perhaps fluxuating power supply
problems?), or it could be a marginal memory cell/row/column/chip. I
have had the memory almost filled up with tons of stuff running, with no
problems, but who knows.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of flakiness? I grabbed
memtest from a link on freshmeat.net and built it, and am about to
explore that, I have a fan blowing right on the board in case it was
overheating in some way, and I am running out of other ideas...
Any input greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Dan Hugo
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