FC3 randomly crashing

[Brian Fahrlander]

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 06:28 -0500, Bob Chiodini wrote:
> Endy wrote:

> Did you verify the memory?  This sounds like it might be a memory 
> problem.  The memtest86 program on your original boot CD/DVD might 
> help.  As understand it, you should let it run for a several days.
> 
> Bob...

    My experience with Redhat/Fedora has almost always been that this is
caused by hardware.  There *is* however one piece of hardware you've not
changed, and it could be the key.

    Here, on reasonably old machines, when it came time to upgrade from
FC2->3, the machines balked.  Some wouldn't even make it through the
install. And these things have been running Linux for almost half a
decade!

    It turns out that ACPI (the power-down demon*) and APIC the enhanced
interrupt system tended to go awry.  I don't know the details of why,
but my instinct is that these technologies were meant to be driven my MS
stuff, whose documentation is naturally tight-lipped....and a bunch of
boards were created to _their_ specs, not so much the industry-wide
specs.  Just a hunch, but it may be that the Linux understanding differs
slightly than the hardware.

    Thankfully these aren't 'treestumps' and can be turned off, modified
and otherwise avoided.  Look into them.  Consult google and acpi, for
example, as to your motherboard.  I'll bet you find the answer there.

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    *I know it's spelled 'daemon', but this is hardware...and I'm not
calling it a 'resident, always-ready piece of software', I'm calling it
an annoying, always-present pain in the ass. Power control for desktops
used to be so easy...now it's got a mind of it's own....and I think it's
using Pewee Herman's.  :>

-- 
Those who entrust life and limb to Microsoft deserve neither. -Me, 2005
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Brian Fahrländer                 Christian, Conservative, and Technomad
Evansville, IN                                http://www.fahrlander.net 
ICQ: 5119262                                          AIM: WheelDweller
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