Hi all,

I work on a system that will serve in an industrial environment. This is an industrial PC running Red Hat 9.0. No alternatives for the distro, I need some drivers that were pre-compiled for Red Hat 9.0.

Does any of you got tips to make this system very - very - stable? And to prevent system freezes that need a hard reboot? That would be critical since the places where the system is to be installed are quite remote.

The system simply runs a X server (no window manager) and a graphical application over it. It communicates on a few serial ports and a modem and it's sometimes networked by Ethernet.

Any opinions will be appriciated.

Thanks,

cyberblak

Hi Slacker,

Seems to be good advices, this is pretty much what I wanted to do. Simplicity is the best way to reliability isn't it?

Why would I recompile the kernel, though?

Thank you,

cyberblak

In theory you could make the kernel smaller by removing extraneous junk, meaning there'd be less places for the kernel to crash. In reality, though, I doubt this is going to make much of a difference.

I'd also suggest stress testing the hardware with any one of the numerous PC stress testing tools out there (memtest86 is a good start for the memory, for instance). Crashes often come up as the result of flaky hardware. You'll also need to make sure that the computer's environment is kept within its tolerances. Crashes are often the result of overheating so make sure the system is kept in a well ventilated space and that all the internal fans are in good working order.

Hi,

I take good notes of these advices.

However, I experimented a few system freezes when I was configuring it. This couldn't be tolerated, for obvious reasons.

Any idea on how to avoid it?

Thank you,

cyberblak