[sclug] System catatonia

[James Wyper]

>>it only started after I
> upgraded
> > my kernel to 2.6.
> 
> Is that a kernel.org kernel, the original 10.1 release kernel, or
> Mandrake's
> latest errata kernel for 10.1?
> 
> If either of the former options, upgrade to the latest errata kernel
> and see
> if that fixes it.
> 
> 

It's the original 10.1 release kernel (and in answer to Taiyo's
question, this machine was upgraded from Mdk 9 to Mdk 10.1; the whole
distro not just the kernel)

I did try the errata kernel recently because I had an unrelated USB2
PCI card problem (which I'm now 95% certain is a hardware issue).  The
newer kernel didn't fix the USB problem but did break my PCMCIA support
(or ISA to PCMCIA bridge; I forget which) so I stayed with the
original.  I guess I can have another go and see if I can fix the
PCMCIA problem rather than run away from it.

> Enabling magic SysRq and using it in the event of a hang can
> sometimes prove
> useful.

What's this and how do I do it?

> 
> To do a thorough test of your HDD, use 'badblocks'. There's a
> read-only
> mode, a read-write mode, and a mode that purports to be able to do a
> non-destructive write test as long as no partitions are mounted (i.e.
> you'd
> need to run it from a boot disc of some kind).
> 
> I'd also run memtest86+ on your system.
> 

Will do.

To answer another of Taiyo's questions - this isn't just a KDE issue;
I've tried killing the X server before and that didn't fix things. 
Also, my fetchmail daemon which runs every few minutes and puts the
emails thru procmail will stop working which (to my mind) suggests an
issue with loading programs from disk or starting new processes.

Thanks both for your comments so far.

James.


		
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