On Jul 9, 2006, at 4:38 AM, Ron Johnson wrote:
Better support for h/w. (For example, you may want to install a SATA card in your machine. I don't know how well 2.4 supports SATA.) The 2.6 kernel is where all new features like "more efficient ext3" are released. Even if 2.4 does everything you need/want, still, upgrade to 2.4.32 and go to .33 when it is released soon.
Yeah, I know all that.No amount of fiddling with hdparm helped when running 2.4 so I think the problem lies elsewhere. On 2.4 Memtest runs a complete cycle in ~2400 secs. No errors other than the initial probes are reported.
Anyway, the problem goes away with a 2.6 kernel. This is with no changes to BIOS or any of the package configurations. This gives _me_ an acceptable solution....for now.
... there are those nagging doubts. Surely I'm not the only one who's seen such behavior. From a community perspective it's troubling to see a basic, no-frills, stable installation on a name- brand machine produce such horrible results. It's shaken my confidence that the problem will not reappear at the most inopportune time.
--rich