I've got this machine (Suse 9.3. P1000) sitting in my study - it's been ticking over for a few years as just a home dns/dhcp server - with no problems.

Then for some reason I tried to do a backup from another machine onto this machine.

The backup (rsync) dies at random points. When it happens, I login to the dns server, and cannot run anything.
Anything to do with disk access gives "Input/output error". reboot gives "segmentation fault".

I tried (after a power cycle reboot) to do an fsck - and it still does it (after another rsync).
I tried trashing the backup parition - mkreiserfs /dev/hdb3, etc - and it still does it.

I can't see anything in the log files.
I've tried copying a large file a number of times on this machine (on the same partition) and it seems to be fine. I then tried copying the file a number of times onto the root partition (on same disk) - and again it was fine.

So it's unlikely to be disk.
What should I try next? ram?

Regards,
Ian.

If the disk appears to be fine I'd definitely be looking at DMA, that's memory
then, as a culprit. Next step down (if the box is coming of age and maybe living
in a humid and/or dusty environment) the DMA controller on the board, which would
call for a board replacement...


Cheers,
Tink