On Aug 06 2001, Ryan Golbeck wrote:
> Firstly, I compiled a 2.4.7 kernel and I set the CPU to Althon/Duron
> and everytime I booted it seemed that either the kernel would segfault
> or some of the startup processes would and aftre the system got booted
> random software would segfault as well. Like vim would segfault as
> I was editing or scrolling a file.
Well, just for the record, I'm using an Asus A7V board (which
uses the VIA KT133 chipset) here with a Duron 600MHz (not
overclocked), with kernel 2.2.19 and 2.4.7 (switching all the
time between a potato and a sid install that I have, since
I've acquired a DVD player) and I don't have any problems. In
fact, the system is quite stable and good.
I'm moderately conservative with the settings that I use to
build my kernels, though, and I only compile extensions for
Pentiums.
> Now, I tried 2.2.19-reiserfs (with zoltan's reiserfs boot disks) and
> this didn't seem to happen (that much) and I've tried 2.4.7 compiled
> for a 386 processor and it seems to work okay. The only problem I've
> had with these two kernels seems to be with mozilla, in that the
> run-mozilla.sh scripts sometimes segfaults, apparently on line 72,
> which funny enough is the opening brace of the first function in the
> shell script. Which is really kind of odd. But then if I try running
> it again it works.
Does mozilla die on the first invocation? I did see mozilla
dying with a segfault in the script, but only after I've been
browsing a little bit and I suspect that the segfaults are
actually not in the script, but propagated from one of the
mozilla modules (otherwise, I'd say that bash would have the
segfault).
> The problems seem so random and inconsistant that I don't want to
> blame it on the hardware, but... I just can't figure out what's
> going on. In my experience with hardware problems, if it were
> causing segfaults due to bad memory or the motherboard then they
> would happen consistantly and there's no way my box would be up for
> the 2 days it's been up now.
Ooops! Not that fast! I've seen things quite strange in the
past when memory and cooling get unreliable. With unproper
cooling I once had with a server (its fan died), even emacs
was segfaulting, which is weird.
So, there may be a pointer to you. And since a Duron 900MHz
would get much hotter than my Duron 600MHz, I do think that
cooling would be one possibility.
Another thing that you'd might want to check would be the
memtest86 program to rigorously test your memory. It will get
hot and stress-tested if you run it for a few days
continuosly, so you can see how reliable it is. Search google
for memtest86 and grab the latest stable version.
> But if it's not hardware I don't know what it is. Anyone have any
> ideas or had any experience with asus via133 motherboards?
Well, I hope that my comments would give you a hint of other
places where the problem could be.
Hope this helps, Roger...
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Rogério Brito - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/
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