Re: Crash.

[joost@topaz.mdcc.cx (Joost Kooij)]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 12:13:07PM +0400, Alexey wrote:
> I have installed Potato.

Upgrade the kernel-image that come with it.  It is old and if there are
any bugs in it, there is a good chance that these are fixed in newer,
already available kernels.

> Sometimes my computer hangs up. There appears:
> Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address...
> and so on.

Clear sign of kernel trouble.  Can be kernel bug or hardware brokenness
that is beyond coping for the poor kernel, which gets confused.

> After all, if I try to boot from Debian GNU/Linux Potato CD, I get
> the same message: Unable to handle..., registers, stack and so on.

Sounds like definately hardware.  Make a memtest86 bootfloppy and leave it
running on your computer for a few nights and days.  If nothing comes up,
enable "ultra performance" options in the bios to set the chips to their
performance edge and try again.  Maybe overclock a few system busses a
little (1 to 5 %) to actively trigger boundary conditions in the hardware.

If nothing comes out of that still, try latest kernel (2.2.20-pre3,
resp.  2.4.6-pre3 or 2.4.5-ac20 IIRC) and report any problems to
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org.  But not after reading the BugSubmitting.txt
in the documentation directory of the linux kernel source, of course.

Cheers,


Joost