[Gllug] Random freezes

[Jack Bertram]

* Martin A. Brooks <martin at hinterlands.org> [050124 00:05]:
> Jack Bertram wrote:
> 
> >Ubuntu.  Since then, it has begun to intermittently freeze.  Sometimes
> >this is preceded by the root filesystem becoming readonly.
> >
> 
> Take a look at /etc/fstab and you'll most likely see that your entry for 
> / contains "errors=remount-ro".  From what you've described it sounds 
> like you have file system corruption.  If you previously got corruption 
> on this disk, and you've reformatted, and you're seeing this, then I 
> would be inclined to think that your hard drive is about to die on you.

Yes - fstab does show this.  Interesting.  I hadn't noticed that...

Two things had previously prevented me from considering filesystem
corruption again:

-- It was on a different (set of) hard disks last time, although
admittedly they were newer
-- It was caused by a repeated failure to properly fsck after system
crash, created by poor (home-grown) system init scripts.

Worth checking out though.

> Debian (and therefore perhaps Ubuntu) has a package called 
> "smartmontools" which contains a basic diagnostic util, you may also 
> want to try running the diag tool provided by your drive manufacturer.

I'll try smartmontools.  IIRC, the hard disk in question is an IBM
Deskstar (I try not to succumb to the usual nicknames) 25GP dating from
about 1999, so it may well be getting towards the end of its useful
life.

Still confused as to why this is now causing freezes, whereas before it
was just causing segfaults.

jack
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