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SubjectRe: HARDWARE HELL - POSSIBLE LINUX BUG AND/OR HARDWARE FAILURE ?

Turning off the L2 cache just means you made everything run slower, and
changed the timing so the bug doesn't happen. There could be geometry
problems with your drive and the versions of Linux/Windows you are
using. You may want to try upgrading to the latest and greatest stuff,
and see if you problems persist. There were problems in the recent past
with very large drives that got fixed, though I have not heard of 10GB
drives giving folks fits for a while.

Jeff

jjs@mail-tele.ccbc.cc.pa.us wrote:
>
> First of all, I sincerely apolgise for being off topic here and I don't
> want to bother the great work you guys are doing on the linux kernel and
> system but this is a problem I been dealing with for 6 months or so and I
> am desperate for a answer. Personally I would be happy if my computer
> were to burst into flames, at least then I would know what I have to
> replace. IF YOU ARE TOO BUSY TO HELP WITH A HARDWARE PROBLEM, PLEASE DON'T
> WASTE YOUR TIME AND READ ON :) I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE BUSY
>
> Oh I forgot to mention I fix pc's for a living and been using linux for
> almost 4 yrs so I am not a newbie.
>
> MY SYSTEM
>
> -AMD K6-2 400 BOXED CPU (NEVER OVERCLOCKED)
> -SOYO 5EHM MOTHERBOARD - VIA MVP3 CHIPSET, AT STYLE 1 MEG L2 CACHE
> -2 32 MEG PC100 DIMMS
> -WESTERN DIGITAL 10 GIG HD UDMA33, (ALSO HAD THE
> PROBLEM WITH A MAXTOR 5.7 UDMA33 WAS IN THERE INSTEAD)
> -CREATIVE LABS TNT 16 MEG AGP 2D/3D CARD - NVIDIA TNT CHIPSET
> -AUREAL VORTEX1 CHIPSET PCI SOUNDCARD (ALSO HAD THE PROBLEM WITH A
> ENSONIQ AUDIOPCI ES1370 SOUNDCARD IN THERE INSTEAD)
> -NETGEAR FA310TX 10/100 PCI NETWORK CARD - PNIC TULIP CLONE CHIPSET
> -NO CDROM CURRENTELY INSTALLED DUE TO FAILURE
>
> If my wording looks weird or does not make sense it's because my nerves
> are shot over this. Please feel free to ask me what something means
>
> [Software]
> WINDOWS 98
> Slackware 7.0 BARE.I bootdisk glibc based distro and Slackware 4.0 rescue
> rootdisk libc based distro. GNU SHRED from unstable fileutils series
> statically compiled in a redhat 5.x or 6.0 glibc system.
>
> Okay I few months ago while doing a disk shred for various reasons
> (no not porn or hacking darnit!) using GNU shred, a file/device shreder,
> Linux just suddentely crashed for no apprentely reason. From then on,
> win98 began to just freeze after sitting for a while or while doing
> something intensive like a 3d game or demo. Linux off a bootdisk would
> sometimes fail to uncompress the kernel due to crc errors or refuse to
> load a ramdisk due to invalid size, both of which point to memory
> problems. Windows 98 or Linux would just sometimes reboot by themselves in
> the middle of stuff. Windows98 would sometimes bomb for no apprentely
> reason. The system would sometimes even crash before it started loading a
> os and would freeze in the middle of printing a bios message sentance.
> Sometimes reseating the ram, playing with buss speeds, etc would seem to
> make the problem go away but this was always temporary. Well after many
> months of problems I finally got desperate and took the system compleately
> apart, cleaned all the pci card contacts and dimm memory contacts with a
> eraser and then scrubbed the pci cards, motherboard, cpu, and memory all
> with a toothbrush and isopropyl alchol. From then on the system ran fine
> with no problems. That lasted only a few months as we will soon see.
>
> About a month ago while doing a disk shred, the problem appeared again
> and Linux just oop'ed in the middle of running GNU shred, sometimes, it
> would just crash the program, many times the whole kernel would crash with
> "unable to handle null pointer at virtual address, etc" or "stack dump
> process ........" (correct me if I got the messages wrong). I have not
> had windows98 back on the system since the crashes started again so I
> don't know if the problem is back there also but I do know it's not a
> power supply, a pci card or a hard drive bug because all those parts have
> been swapped out before when the problem arose and the problem was still
> there although sometimes it would go away for a while. Just a few days
> ago now, Linux has also begun to blow major chunks just doing a dd
> if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024k on my 10
> gig hd with the process crashing or the whole kernel dying or rebooting.
> I managed one time to get a weird error about LRU TABLE CORRUPT or
> something
>
> After many runs to try to duplicate the problem I finally managed to
> get enough consistant crashes to discover that when the system starts to
> get into one of it's "moods" and crashes almost every time you boot linux
> and run that problem or even just turn on the system and have it crash
> into the middle of bios messages, ALL THE PROBLEMS STOP IF YOU DISABLE THE
> EXTERNAL L2 CACHE. I figured I finally found the source of the problem, a
> bad l2 cache but to be sure I played with the ram, first removing 1 of the
> dimms and it still crashed, then moving the other dimm to that slot and it
> was stable. Now the system is behaving with both dimms in but it has
> pretended to be fixed before and started misbehaving very soon. I also
> noticed the problem seems to go away for a while if the system if left off
> for a while but nothing is overheating from what I can tell.
>
> OKAY!!!! lemme finally end this horribly long message but I am desperate
> for advice. I really suspect the motherboard is shot since I had the ram
> tested and it was okay. I also forgot to mention that my k6-2 400 is a
> boxed cpu which means while you get a 3yr warrenty, you also get a glued
> on small heatsink and a cheap ball bearing fan that even with ball
> bearings only lasted me 1.5 months. Since I did not want to wait for a
> warrenty replacement and I did not want to have to use a fan of the same
> crap size and design, I attempted to pry off the glued on heatsink so I
> could use a better heatsink fan combo, and I managed to chip ceremanic off
> the corner of the cpu. There were no exposed wires or silicon and after
> I replaced the fan the systems worked fine for months after that. I am
> very tempted to just replace the motherboard and see if this stops the
> problems I am having but I wanted to make sure that it's not another
> problem that is giving the same symptoms of a bad motherboard. Thanks for
> any help and God Bless.
>
> P.S. if this letter gets me booted off the mailing list or is ignored, I
> understand completely but this was my last ditch cry for help before I
> give up and jump off a bridge or save up for a athlon.
>
> Jason Salopek
>
>
>
>
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