From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1HswNt-0003xN-2h for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Tue, 29 May 2007 07:44:49 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with SMTP id l4T7gtC3023303; Tue, 29 May 2007 07:42:55 GMT Received: from smtp.nildram.co.uk (smtp.nildram.co.uk [195.149.33.74]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id l4T7gsfT023296 for ; Tue, 29 May 2007 07:42:54 GMT Received: from wstn.prhnet (prh.gotadsl.co.uk [81.6.251.123]) by smtp.nildram.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6526E4CBD6 for ; Tue, 29 May 2007 08:42:52 +0100 (BST) From: Peter Humphrey Organization: at home To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] System crashes when idle Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 08:42:10 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 References: <465BCF5E.8020109@isis-papyrus.com> In-Reply-To: <465BCF5E.8020109@isis-papyrus.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200705290842.11058.prh@gotadsl.co.uk> X-Archives-Salt: d8b0e557-a8e2-4d23-8aae-e125f3961774 X-Archives-Hash: 43fceb18f8662c1eb33f352fdd320ec1 On Tuesday 29 May 2007 07:59:42 Michael Ulm wrote: > Hi, > > I seem to get system crashes on my machine when it is idle for > some time. Here is a typical crashing session: [...] > Maybe it's the hardware, but what kind of hardware issue could cause > these symptoms? > > Any ideas anyone? A couple. Either RAM or hard disk would be my first suspect. You can check the RAM best by compiling any large package, such as gcc itself. Memtest and its like can only find the most obvious faults and in my opinion aren't worth their salt - if they can find a fault, it will already be obvious to you. Secondly, with the advent of SATA I'm suspecting a new class of fault in hard disks. Not only do we have the traditional transfer errors, but now I suspect it's possible for some faults to allow voltage spikes to be imposed on the line driver and cause random errors in other subsystems. I may be wrong, but I've had one experience of this already, and I'm currently working to eliminate another disk as the cause of weird problems I'm having. Oh, and there's always the power supply. If that goes wonky it can cause all manner of problems. You could well suspect it if problems don't occur until after the system's been running for quite a while. -- Rgds Peter Humphrey Linux Counter 5290, Aug 93 -- gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list