[linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-user] disaster day #1

[Paul Winkler]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 08:40:31AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Greetings:
> 
>  Interesting stuff. I'm learning more about mobos than I ever wanted to 
> know.  :)
> 
>  However: No brown goo on the caps, no bulging components, so I don't 
> think it's the capacitors. The fact that the machine is dying right at 
> the start seems to indicate that the problem may be either RAM or the 
> power supply. I'll check the RAM in another machine within a day or two, 
> if it's okay then I'll try switching out the power supply.
> 
>  What a PITA.

Yep, hardware failures are no fun.
I'd guess the RAM too; I had a bad stick several years ago that
gave me gradually increasing kernel panics. Stupidly, I had no way
to back up everything at the time, only small documents to floppy,
and a forced reboot after one panic triggered a fsck on startup
during which the system crashed AGAIN rendering the disk unmountable.
That was fun I can tell you.  I did eventually retrieve all my data
after replacing the RAM, but it took about two days of nonstop work.

since then I have set myself up with redundant hard drives, 
occasional CD-RW and DVD-R backups, and journalling filesystems :-)
 
-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com