Re: [gentoo-user] New Gentoo system has become unstable and unusable - help, please!

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>]

On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Alan,
> 
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 10:50:46AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Friday 12 February 2010 10:54:53 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > > Hi, Gentoo,
> > > 
> > > My new Gentoo box has become unusably unstable.
> > > 
> > > The first sign was when the compiler threw a segfault whilst emerging
> > > the xfce window manager.  I "solved" this by emerging Openbox instead.
> > > 
> > > Then I got another compiler segfault whilst emerging firefox (yes, I
> > > know there's a binary for this).
> > 
> > everything you mention below is indicative of failing hardware,
> > especially RAM closely followed by PSU.
> 
> Yes, you're right.  :-(
> 
> When I run memtest86 from the gentoo boot disk, it signals millions of
> failures in b11 of 32 bit words.
> 
> I'll try unplugging and replugging these.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.
> 
> > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

you can try upping the voltage of the ram by 0.05V. I had a stick that threw 
errors unless I gave it a bit more. After that the system was stable and none 
of the memtesting apps found any errors.