Jeff
jjs@mail-tele.ccbc.cc.pa.us wrote:
>
> First of all, I sincerely apolgise for being off topic here and I don't
> want to bother the great work you guys are doing on the linux kernel and
> system but this is a problem I been dealing with for 6 months or so and I
> am desperate for a answer. Personally I would be happy if my computer
> were to burst into flames, at least then I would know what I have to
> replace. IF YOU ARE TOO BUSY TO HELP WITH A HARDWARE PROBLEM, PLEASE DON'T
> WASTE YOUR TIME AND READ ON :) I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE BUSY
>
> Oh I forgot to mention I fix pc's for a living and been using linux for
> almost 4 yrs so I am not a newbie.
>
> MY SYSTEM
>
> -AMD K6-2 400 BOXED CPU (NEVER OVERCLOCKED)
> -SOYO 5EHM MOTHERBOARD - VIA MVP3 CHIPSET, AT STYLE 1 MEG L2 CACHE
> -2 32 MEG PC100 DIMMS
> -WESTERN DIGITAL 10 GIG HD UDMA33, (ALSO HAD THE
> PROBLEM WITH A MAXTOR 5.7 UDMA33 WAS IN THERE INSTEAD)
> -CREATIVE LABS TNT 16 MEG AGP 2D/3D CARD - NVIDIA TNT CHIPSET
> -AUREAL VORTEX1 CHIPSET PCI SOUNDCARD (ALSO HAD THE PROBLEM WITH A
> ENSONIQ AUDIOPCI ES1370 SOUNDCARD IN THERE INSTEAD)
> -NETGEAR FA310TX 10/100 PCI NETWORK CARD - PNIC TULIP CLONE CHIPSET
> -NO CDROM CURRENTELY INSTALLED DUE TO FAILURE
>
> If my wording looks weird or does not make sense it's because my nerves
> are shot over this. Please feel free to ask me what something means
>
> [Software]
> WINDOWS 98
> Slackware 7.0 BARE.I bootdisk glibc based distro and Slackware 4.0 rescue
> rootdisk libc based distro. GNU SHRED from unstable fileutils series
> statically compiled in a redhat 5.x or 6.0 glibc system.
>
> Okay I few months ago while doing a disk shred for various reasons
> (no not porn or hacking darnit!) using GNU shred, a file/device shreder,
> Linux just suddentely crashed for no apprentely reason. From then on,
> win98 began to just freeze after sitting for a while or while doing
> something intensive like a 3d game or demo. Linux off a bootdisk would
> sometimes fail to uncompress the kernel due to crc errors or refuse to
> load a ramdisk due to invalid size, both of which point to memory
> problems. Windows 98 or Linux would just sometimes reboot by themselves in
> the middle of stuff. Windows98 would sometimes bomb for no apprentely
> reason. The system would sometimes even crash before it started loading a
> os and would freeze in the middle of printing a bios message sentance.
> Sometimes reseating the ram, playing with buss speeds, etc would seem to
> make the problem go away but this was always temporary. Well after many
> months of problems I finally got desperate and took the system compleately
> apart, cleaned all the pci card contacts and dimm memory contacts with a
> eraser and then scrubbed the pci cards, motherboard, cpu, and memory all
> with a toothbrush and isopropyl alchol. From then on the system ran fine
> with no problems. That lasted only a few months as we will soon see.
>
> About a month ago while doing a disk shred, the problem appeared again
> and Linux just oop'ed in the middle of running GNU shred, sometimes, it
> would just crash the program, many times the whole kernel would crash with
> "unable to handle null pointer at virtual address, etc" or "stack dump
> process ........" (correct me if I got the messages wrong). I have not
> had windows98 back on the system since the crashes started again so I
> don't know if the problem is back there also but I do know it's not a
> power supply, a pci card or a hard drive bug because all those parts have
> been swapped out before when the problem arose and the problem was still
> there although sometimes it would go away for a while. Just a few days
> ago now, Linux has also begun to blow major chunks just doing a dd
> if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024k on my 10
> gig hd with the process crashing or the whole kernel dying or rebooting.
> I managed one time to get a weird error about LRU TABLE CORRUPT or
> something
>
> After many runs to try to duplicate the problem I finally managed to
> get enough consistant crashes to discover that when the system starts to
> get into one of it's "moods" and crashes almost every time you boot linux
> and run that problem or even just turn on the system and have it crash
> into the middle of bios messages, ALL THE PROBLEMS STOP IF YOU DISABLE THE
> EXTERNAL L2 CACHE. I figured I finally found the source of the problem, a
> bad l2 cache but to be sure I played with the ram, first removing 1 of the
> dimms and it still crashed, then moving the other dimm to that slot and it
> was stable. Now the system is behaving with both dimms in but it has
> pretended to be fixed before and started misbehaving very soon. I also
> noticed the problem seems to go away for a while if the system if left off
> for a while but nothing is overheating from what I can tell.
>
> OKAY!!!! lemme finally end this horribly long message but I am desperate
> for advice. I really suspect the motherboard is shot since I had the ram
> tested and it was okay. I also forgot to mention that my k6-2 400 is a
> boxed cpu which means while you get a 3yr warrenty, you also get a glued
> on small heatsink and a cheap ball bearing fan that even with ball
> bearings only lasted me 1.5 months. Since I did not want to wait for a
> warrenty replacement and I did not want to have to use a fan of the same
> crap size and design, I attempted to pry off the glued on heatsink so I
> could use a better heatsink fan combo, and I managed to chip ceremanic off
> the corner of the cpu. There were no exposed wires or silicon and after
> I replaced the fan the systems worked fine for months after that. I am
> very tempted to just replace the motherboard and see if this stops the
> problems I am having but I wanted to make sure that it's not another
> problem that is giving the same symptoms of a bad motherboard. Thanks for
> any help and God Bless.
>
> P.S. if this letter gets me booted off the mailing list or is ignored, I
> understand completely but this was my last ditch cry for help before I
> give up and jump off a bridge or save up for a athlon.
>
> Jason Salopek
>
>
>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/