Andre Hedrick wrote:
>
> Now that is cleared up that it is not you, yet another.
>
> What is the nature of the problem?
I detailed it on this list a while ago.
Symptoms are, after normal operation for a while, the machine rapidly crawls to
a stop. First, the mouse stops responding, as does everything else. I've
noticed toggling NumLock sometimes doesn't register, or registers incorrectly
(ie; pressing numlock & observing the LED on the keyboard). The rest of the
system appears lifeless; screen left as is, no error messages or anything.
As well as the Dual 400's/BP6, it has 128MB RAM, D-Link DE530CD+ (Tulip Chip)
net card, and a 16Meg Matrox G400 (w. Dual Head).
My suspect list is:
- Motherboard/SMP instability. I'm HOPING it's not this
- RAM fault. Seems unlikely; same RAM was used before the CPU upgrade with no
problems
- Virtual RAM/SWAP problems. Previously, I set up a log to log vmstat once
every 30 mins, and before a crash, the amount of Swap used was around the
64Meg+ mark. Would a buggy swap-file cause these symptoms? Will have to reset
up this log with finer granularity...
- G400/X-Server problems. Running XFree86 3.3.4, which is the first to have
G400 support. I already suspect this to have a memory hole or two (mem usage
just climbs & climbs), so this could be triggering a Swap-related problem?
As the problems occur so rarely, it's hard to adjust a setting, then see if it
fixes it or not. As I mentioned before, my latest "fix" was to reinstall
Debian, keeping to the stable packages. After this, it crashed after almost 6
days uptime. Normal uptime before was 1-2 days, but since the upgrade, I
haven't loaded the system with [EMAIL PROTECTED] The reinstall I also increased Swap
from the old 130M limit to 200Meg...
I'm unsure myself what the symptom could be related to, although memory
consumption springs to mind, as does SMP-related Deadlock, but I'm not familiar
with either system enough to make any firm conclusions...
--
. Trevor Phillips - http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ .
: CWIS Technical Officer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] :
| IT Services - Murdoch University |
>------------------- Member of the #SAS# & #CFC# --------------------<
| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of /
| course. But mostly evil, on the whole. /
\ -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) /
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