Kenneth Dombrowski wrote:
Well, I'd just been thinking recently how uncannily stable unstable has been. Today I did an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade & something has gone seriously wrong. Judging by the dates in /var/cache/apt/archives it looks like last Friday was probably my last upgrade
Whereas the circumstances you describe sound like an upgrade gone wrong, your description "feels" to me like maybe a hardware problem. Perhaps Summer has finally kicked in where you are and your cooling is inadequate? gzip errors while running apt-get just sound to me more like hardware glitches than software issues.
You might want to install memtest86 (you can use another machine and build a bootable memtest86 floppy if need be) and run a few rounds of tests. If you have lockups/failures during that, you can be pretty confident you've got a hardware problem.
Of course, if nothing has changed that would affect the hardware (summer heat, crossing your legs and kicking the case, the dog peed on the box, etc), you're probably right about it being software. Still, you might want to keep the possibility in mind.
-- Kent West (westk@acu.edu)