Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 04 Jul 2000 14:55:12 -0600 | From | Warren Young <> | Subject | Re: random crashes, possible hardware flakiness |
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Sean Harding wrote: > > - bunzip on the new kernel failed once (claimed the file was corrupted) but > worked the second time I tried it on the exact same file. > - A few "internal compiler error" crashes when compiling the kernel.
The stack traces are meaningless to me, but these two errors indicate memory corruption. It can either be bad memory modules, a bad CPU, or something in between, like the motherboard chipset, which mediates the transfer of data from memory to the CPU.
You say setiathome seemed to have something to do with it, and in fact it may: if your motherboard has temperature monitoring on it, I'll bet you see your CPU's temp rise 5-10 degrees C over idle when you run high-load processes like that. If the CPU's at fault, raising its temperature may push it over the edge from "functional" to "error-inducing".
The only cheap thing you can do to test your system is to get a DOS memory tester and run it with the "hurt me bad" setting. I use #1TuffTest for that -- a $20-30 shareware thingy. Yes, it's as cheap as it sounds, in a lot of senses. Its memory tester works fine, though. :)
One other possibility is to take out some DIMMs. You say you have 192 MB, so you've probably got three 64 MB DIMMs. You can limp by on 1 at a time for the next three weeks. Run the system hard, and see which if any of them are present when you get crashes. If you don't get a crash within a week, take out that DIMM and try the next one. If crashes occur no matter the memory configuration, then it probably isn't the DIMMs themselves. -- = Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m
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