List,
I just started my machine after leaving it off while away from home. I
noticed that when I booted the machine, right over the third? column
where the devices are listed with there associated interrupts was a
rectangular section colored green with four greek letters shaped like
"Es" (I can't remember the name of the letter its been too long) spaced
like this: E EEE. The machine hung after that and I was forced to reset
the unit. When it rebooted, I got a bios checksum error so I restarted
again and reset the bios to optomized settings and the machine restarted
(didn't see the colorized box again though). It did kill my menu with
my logout buttons and a couple of buttons some other panels.
I noticed that it took a long time for the file systems to be mounted
and when it did final come up (> 1min) I logged in and opened gqview. The box locked up I tried the <Alt><SysReq> R,S,E,I,U,B key sequence but
to no avail. I reset it. I'm back up and creating this document.
My first question is obvious: How to get rid of the virus?
How to check why the alt sysrqst key sequence isn't working?
Thanks with Urgency,
Terry
P.S. I hesitate to go in as superuser, I don't know if the virus is scanning for passwords or not.
Hi Terry,
I seriously doubt you've got a virus. If you do, and I don't think thats what it is, then that would be something very new. Secondly, what is "alt sysrqst key sequence"? I've never heard of that for restarting a linux machine. OTOH, if you're refering to CTRL+ALT+DEL then that would and should usually restart a machine unless it is seriously locked up at which point the only way to get one going again is a hard boot.
( hitting the reset button. )
To my knowledge there are only two viruses in the linux world and they haven't been around for quite some time. So I really don't think thats your problem. It sounds more like a hardware problem. Could be bad RAM that is causing the kernel some very nasty headaches. Has this machine ever acted strangely before? Are you sure no one else had access to the machine while you were away? Did you load any new software on the machine before going away and shutting it down that may have been compromised?
-- Mark
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