On Wednesday 03 January 2001 06:41, you wrote:
> It does almost sound like hardware - when you run RH or Debian do you
> stress the system to see if it dies?
> (like running several instances of "cp /dev/hda /dev/null" or "find / |
> cpio -o | compress > /dev/null")
>
> I was going to say that memory may be an issue but you have ECC RAM and
> that should squawk if there are errors.
>
> How did you get your distro? off the net? There were a few posts I saw that
> implicated that some of the Mandrake ISOs might be corrupt on some of the
> mirrors or become corrupt at download.
>
> BTW: Why do you have to recompile for SMP support? - may be I'm thinking of
> Red Hat but I could swear that Mandrake provided SMP kernel rpms.
With PPros you need the latest BIOS for our stock SMP kernel. Symptoms vary
from hard-lock at boot to what you described earlier, though I don't think I
have seen all the symptoms on the same system before.
Civileme
>
> May be you should try temporarily pulling out one of the processors? (I'm
> grasping at straws here)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 10:02 AM
> Subject: Re: [expert] Critical problem (Not a Hardware Problem)
>
>
> [ snip ]
>
> > This problem came up within 24 hours of performing a complete system
>
> update from
>
> > one of the Mandrake mirrors. However, this may be a coincidence.
> >
> > When I booted the machine, the LILO dialog screen came up as usual. If I
> > selected the standard "linux" or just let the default do the work, the
>
> same
>
> > result: An immediate reboot. LILO dialog comes up, default, reboot.
> > The
>
> cycle
>
> > continued.
> >
> > Not having a working box, I performed an experiment. This is what I did
>
> (with
>
> > attendant results):
> >
> > 1. Performed a complete reinstall of Mandrake 7.2 (from scratch,
> > including reformatting the hard disk (I wanted to get rid of CUPS
> > anyway)). Result: Exact same problem, LILO, select, reboot.
> >
> > 2. Next, I switched distributions and loaded Debian 2.2r1 onto the box.
>
> It ran
>
> > just fine. No memory problems, no hard disk problems, nothing out of the
> > ordinary.
> >
> > 3. Next, tried loading Mandrake 7.2 back on. Exact same problem! LILO,
>
> select,
>
> > reboot cycle. Moreover, I tried to load from a boot floppy. Same
>
> problem!
>
> > 4. Next, I switched yet again to RedHat 6.2. Same result as Debian.
>
> Normal
>
> > install and stable performance.
> >
> > Here is the configuration:
> >
> > Compaq Professional Workstation 8000
> > Dual Pentium Pro (200 MHz)
> > 128 MB ECC RAM
> > two 4 GB Segate SCSI HD's (no RAID).
> > Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card.
> >
> > The odd thing is that Mandrake ran stable for several weeks before
> > failure (albeit just after a major update). However, if it was something
> > with the update, the reinstall should have cleared it up -- but it
> > didn't.
> >
> > I plan to do some more troubleshooting tonight. I will first try to
>
> reload
>
> > Mandrake, only this time I will specify GRUB in lieu of LILO.
> >
> > Next, I will load Mandrake 7.1 and see if I can narrow the problem down
> > to
>
> 7.2.
>
> > One last thing, since this is an SMP system, and I have to recompile the
>
> kernel
>
> > for SMP (and I'm not sure about RH 6.2), I will first check out SMP
>
> enablement
>
> > in RH 6.2 and, if necessary, recompile the kernel for SMP and reboot to
>
> see
>
> > whether that is causing the problem. Note, however, that upon boot both
> > processors are initialized (as normal) so I don't think that SMP is a
>
> problem.
>
> > Any other suggestions?
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > Ron
> > ./.
