My Linux install (Slackware 9.1 with a 2.6.1 custom kernel) keeps freezing. It seems to be related to accessing the harddrive as has frozen while compiling a kernel several times, running updatedb (or locate i carnt rember), during boot many times, when running hdparm -Tt /dev/sda2 a few time seems to freeze it. All of those seem to be harddrive related. I guess it could also be cpu/memory but the computer is mostly stable when in windows and when running X windows it seems fine as well (although i havnt been doing much other than playing some of those games since stuff like my network card isn't working but thats a story for another post

The harddrive is a SATA running on a Promise TX2-Plus onboard controler. I have made sure it wasnt graphic driver related (as i have had lots of problems with graphic stuff freeing systems) i have completely removed framebuffer stuff and all the crashes have occured while in a text mode console not in X.

Is there anyway to find out what is causing my system to freeze (some log i can access or a debug mode i can enable in the kernel for my SATA controler). I understand that the SATA stuff is new so perhapse theres still bug around.

The mobo is a A-Open AK79G MAX.

Have you tried running it off of the regular controller, and disabling promise in the bios? (just to see if you experience the same thing). I don't think there's a debug mode for the driver itself.. could turn it on for ext3, though I'm not sure how much that would help. And there's always strace I'm not sure what else...

Is it possible that it's heat related? Just a wildcard here, but more often than not, my freezes have been caused by heat. To the point where when I start experiencing them, the first thing I do is pop off the case cover and point a fan at it to see if it makes a difference. But I like to overclock, so I guess that's standard practice :P

Good luck!

Carn't run it without the Promise controler otherwise i wont have a harddrive

It shouldn't be heatrelated unless linux runs alot hotter that windows.

I removed ACPI from the kernel as I saw a few posts that said it was a problem. I still get crashes though XWindows is actualy quite stable now that i got it setup properally. Still have problems when doing somthing like updatedb, although the system does seem more stable and does smaller things like compile kernels fine.