I am trying to compile the kernel on an arch machine. Specs are as follows

Gigabyte GA-7VTX
256MB PC2700
Thunderbird 1400 (stock speed)
Thermoengine w/ delta screamer
ati 8500lele
pinnacle pctv pro
netgear fa311

anyway, whenever I try to compile the kernel, I get segfaults on random files. The machine passes memtest with flying colors (0 errors after 80 passes [took two days])

I'm reset the cmos, made sure everything was on seriously conservative settings, did a clean install of arch, and I'm still getting segfaults on the files (gcc errors).

Does anybody know what I should do?

tia!

try replacing RAM chip

According to his post, it passed the memtest.

It could be a problem with the kernel though. I had strange problems when I had the wrong IDE chipset picked in my kernel. Are you doing this from a bootable CD or from the OS itself? What version of kernel are you trying to compile?

Later

Hmm can you send us a config listing of kernel?

Which kernel do you want? The one I'm running or the one I'm compiling?

I'm running 2.6.7, off the hard drive. This is arch .6 (ftp current)

I had the same problem with my PC. It segfaulted randomly when I compiled a new kernel or installed new programs with APT. I found out that it was my moderbord that was broken. I bought a new one and now everything works perfectly. I even ran memtest with the old moderboard and it gave me no errors.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hardware error. :/

I'm quite certain it is a hardware problem, but I'm having a hard time narrowing it down to which piece of gear. This is all crap that I had laying in the basement, and I'm performing an HTPC experiment with it. There are only two known good pieces of gear in there.

To start I am not an linux expert and I don't normally go and recompile the kernel. I think that has no place in the realm of the desktop user. I am though competent in managing linux boxes and I have nearly 20 years of experience in computer software and hardware going way back to the early days of DoS.

The memtest86 program will test ram quite sufficiently although if there are errors it may not always report them. If memtest86 does report errors you can count on them unless the problem is with some other component on your motherboard and/or your processor.

I've had many cases where no matter how many times you swapped ram out and ran memtest86 it came up with errors consistently at certain addresses. I'd then taken those ram sticks out and tested them in other boards and they passed.

In those cases the issue was with the processor itself. In all but one case they were intel processors that had failed but didn't appear to fully fail. In the one case where it was an AMD processor the processor seems to be fine, except it doesn't like certain motherboards.

How does this apply to his problem? Recently when working on a new linux box to be setup as a series of dedicated gaming servers for a LAN, I had a problem where no matter how many times I tried to resolve some segment faults they wouldn't disappear until I swapped the processor. In this case I swapped a 2600+ for a 2500+.

Try switching out your processor. The cost of today's processors are very cheap, indeed. You can get a 2600+ for under $90.00. Other processors are cheaper. Your mobo/bios will dictate which processors you are permitted to install. You may want to look for a bios update for your mobo to see if they have added any additional processor support.