Alexei Chetroi wrote:
It could happens that kernel freezes before disk caches are flushed, so there's nothing in syslog/dmesg. Try to setup serial console, make logging on serial alsa and attach a machine that records anything from you console.
I recommend this advice.If you can't get to look at the console when it crashes, anything else is a waste of time.
My 2.6.10-smp build was crashing with ndiswrappers x.12rc, I finally realised it wasn't merely dumb laptop hardware failures when it happened in text mode and I could read the console.
I rebuilt the klernel (without ub for usb storage) and used the latest ndiswrappers andhave been fine since.
When I was at Ananova we had some postgresql TV listings servers crashing too often. Only when it happened on a test box locally didwe realise it was a kernel problem (redhats early 2.4 days).
Console blanking can be a real problem because the screen is blank and as the box has crashed you can't bring itup again, so on server boxes make sure you disable console blanking (man stty for details)
Sam