[linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] disaster

[e. j. branagan - the MUSE]

LinuxMedia wrote:

> Dave,
>
> Before my suggestion... just a quick note of moral support... Please 
> don't let it get you down too much. Think about all the may times 
> there's a (seemingly impossible) problem and how it always works out 
> in the end. And we all seem to learn so much from these things.
>
> Ok... So... It's not the mother board... It's not the Power supply. 
> You're getting there. How about buying new ram, putting the old ram in 
> static safe packaging. If the problems go away... Then you only paid 
> for ram. Beats buying a whole system.
>
> And as people mentioned, not all memtests detect bad ram anyways. So 
> if problems still occure with new ram, you now have extra ram. I have 
> tons of "parts" and many times have been able to use some later. If 
> the (old) ram proves good, maybe you can use it for a machine you're 
> building for a friend, (or your next machine). Same with Hard 
> drives... replace... test... and if problems still occure, you now 
> have extra drives (I'm not helping am I... hehe). You can save tons of 
> money by building a system from scratch. So extra drives and ram are 
> good in that way.
>
> Btw... I see they have "cases" for IDE drives to convert them into usb 
> drives. Don't know if you have a use for them, but I use them to back 
> up drives. This is good because they aren't connected to computer (so 
> electric storm can't fry your back up drive). I have two so that 
> there's always one that's not hooked up to the computer. Haven't tried 
> the IDE/USB "cases", so I can't vouch for them.
>
> It's amazing what could cause a problem. My brother tore my sister's 
> machine apart and replaced "this" and "that" and after all, it was the 
> bad sound card that was causing (both) windows (and) linux to crash. 
> Prior to that, I had no clue a soundcard could cause 2 OS's to crash. 
> And now (for instance) if I hear a soundcard making weird sounds, I'll 
> know to watch for weird system behavior. So at least we learn things.
>
> I've had 2 Maxtor drive fail on me. I will never buy Maxtor drives again.
>
> Good luck
> Rocco
>
I had similar sounding problems with 3 P4 machines I brought up on 
Fedora Core 3; they froze up so bad in X, I couldn't get apt to download 
upgrades successfully.  After bringing the machines up in run level 3, 
doing the apt-get update/upgrade, etc. and loading the FC3 Planet CCRMA 
kernels, and software the problem went away.

In my case I was sure the problem was not hardware, since FC1+Planet 
CCRMA would still run stabily for days at a time, whereas FC3 straight 
off the ISO would always freeze up in less than an hour.

If your running a 2.6.9 or earlier kernel, I'd try upgrading.

-- 
e. j. branagan
the MUSE § Nashville, TN