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From: Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Random reboots.  Where to start?
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 23:51:51 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <201103012351.52033.peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201103012314.24652.michaelkintzios@gmail.com>

On Tuesday 01 March 2011 23:14:12 Mick wrote:

> Ha! I remember on an old machine when in WinXP would rarely if ever
> crash, while in Gentoo would crash every time.

My machine is only about a year old, built by a specialist builder of high-
performance systems, so it shouldn't be experiencing hardware failures.

> Different OS' use memory differently.

Indeed they do. My experience is the converse of yours: Gentoo does not 
hang, while Fedora and Mandriva do. It's not a problem with a particular 
area of the disks, as I've installed them both in different partitions and 
got the same result. I assume that some kernel options don't suit my 
motherboard. Don't all laugh, but it's an Asus P7P55D.

> After a year or so though the WinXP installation eventually corrupted
> itself irreparably, while Gentoo (on reiserfs) soldiered on. Eventually, I
> bought new memory modules and there were no more crashes.

Maybe I need to replace the memory. That's a bit drastic though when I 
haven't actually proved it faulty.

> memtest 86+ showed no errors, so I didn't know what to blame for all
> these crashes.

It's well known that test programs can't stress a computer the way real life 
does. It was true of Ferranti Argus 500 systems in 1974, and I'm sure it's 
still true today.

> After close observation I discovered that the machine would crash the
> moment it tried to start swapping.

Interesting. As far as I can tell though this box doesn't swap often - it 
can go weeks without doing so. As I said the other day, my 4GB is enough to 
contain the work I usually do.

> This would typically happen in the middle of an emerge, which was rather
> annoying, and/or when updatedb was running.

At least you could re-run an aborted emerge; when my box hangs it just stops 
responding to keyboard and mouse, and the network interface stops receiving 
packets so I can't ssh in from another box to shut it down neatly. It's BRS 
time.

-- 
Rgds
Peter



  reply	other threads:[~2011-03-01 23:53 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 38+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-02-25 15:33 [gentoo-user] Random reboots. Where to start? Dale
2011-02-25 16:56 ` Helmut Jarausch
2011-02-25 23:06   ` Dale
2011-02-26 15:33     ` Yohan Pereira
2011-02-26 15:46       ` Dale
2011-02-27 17:52         ` Jason Weisberger
2011-02-27 20:12           ` Dale
2011-02-27 23:32             ` Peter Humphrey
2011-02-28  1:38               ` Dale
2011-02-28  7:03           ` Dale
2011-03-01 23:25             ` Jason Weisberger
2011-03-02  0:53               ` Dale
2011-03-02 14:15                 ` Paul Hartman
2011-02-25 17:08 ` [gentoo-user] " Grant Edwards
2011-02-25 23:10   ` Dale
2011-02-26 22:20     ` walt
2011-02-26 22:40       ` Mark Knecht
2011-02-26 22:52         ` Dale
2011-02-25 17:14 ` [gentoo-user] " Mark Knecht
2011-02-25 18:03 ` Paul Hartman
2011-02-26  0:18   ` Dale
     [not found] ` <4d67fbde.83a0df0a.5870.3917@mx.google.com>
2011-02-26  0:24   ` Dale
2011-02-26  9:27     ` Mick
2011-02-26 14:28       ` Dale
2011-02-27 17:15         ` [gentoo-user] " Grant Edwards
2011-02-27 19:43           ` Mick
2011-02-27 20:23             ` Dale
2011-02-27 23:34             ` Peter Humphrey
2011-03-01 23:14               ` Mick
2011-03-01 23:51                 ` Peter Humphrey [this message]
2011-03-02 15:51                   ` Mick
2011-03-02 16:29                     ` Neil Bothwick
2011-03-02 16:37                       ` Mick
2011-03-02 16:51                         ` Neil Bothwick
2011-03-02 16:52                         ` Alex Schuster
2011-03-02 23:52                         ` Peter Humphrey
2011-02-26 16:18     ` [gentoo-user] " Volker Armin Hemmann
2011-02-27 10:02     ` Volker Armin Hemmann

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