[plug] [OT-ish?] Need help diagnosing unstable computer

[Nima Talebi]

Try running a memory test first

memtester or memtest86 - both debian packages.

Also might want to search through the kernel logs, or get it to log to
console to see if it gives you anything useful just before it crashes.

Nima

On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 19:42, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> G'day all,
> 
> Apologies for what is probably an off-topic message, but I'm hoping that
> some of the PLUG hardware experts can help me out here...
> 
> Last weekend I upgraded my home computer; while it was initially a pain
> to get going I thought I'd ended up with a stable system as it hasn't
> crashed all week ... *cue eerie music* ... until today, where it has
> locked up hard four times in the last few hours.
> 
> I'm reasonably sure that this is a hardware issue - the machine didn't
> respond to Ctrl-Alt-{Backspace,Delete} or SysRq-B, and the keyboard
> lights weren't doing the kernel panic thing.  The crashes seem to be
> occurring more-or-less randomly.  (I don't have The Other OS installed
> to make a comparison w.r.t. stability so it may well be a software
> issue.)
> 
> Anyway, I'm not sure where to start looking for potential problems; for
> the record, the new components were:
> 
> - Nforce 2 motherboard (Asus A7N8X)
> - Athlon XP 2600
> - 2x 512mb DDR 2700 (passed Memtest86 on Monday, although I didn't leave the
>   test on for very long, and this doesn't sound like a RAM issue)
> - Radeon 9200
> - 19" monitor (this shouldn't affect things but it means that I'm now
>   running at a higher screen resolution and may be stressing things out
>   more / tickling XFree bugs)
> 
> Ob-on-topic: Plus I'm using a new kernel version - 2.4.21 with preempt
> and low-latency patches.  (Compiled with gcc 3.3.1 in Debian sid,
> although there have been some posts on debian-devel lately which suggest
> that this is not a good combination... on the other hand I've been using
> the same kernel+gcc version on another machine for a few weeks and it
> has been perfectly stable.)
> 
> Another random observation: has anyone else noticed that the DVI
> connector with a DVI-VGA adapter has a poor picture quality at high
> resolution (>1152x864) compared to the VGA connector on the same card?
> I'm seeing a slight "flickering" or "wobbling" of vertical lines - I
> don't think it's refresh rate related, and not really awful, but
> noticeably when compared to the other monitor.  And worse, XFree seems
> to insist on using the DVI output as the 'primary' (left-hand) head. :(
> 
> adv-THANKS-ance,
> 
> Cameron.