after a minute or two, everything hangs -- no mouse, no keyboard, no gkrellm monitoring, nothing -- total lock up (flux in RH9).

i upgraded to a new processor when this started happening, and the new CPU (XP 2100+ overclocked) runs hotter than my old one (1600+ overclocked also). i thought it was cooling related (still might be), but now when i put the old CPU back in, it still locks! it *never* locked before with my 1600+. newb question: do you need to reconfigure anything when you upgrade a CPU???

needless to say this is getting very frustrating, because i am forced to be in windows all the time now. help!

Try Memtest86, a standalone memory diagnose program. You can get it at :
http://www.memtest86.com

Put it on a floppy disk (see instruction on the site) and let it run for a while on your computer. Check if your computer gets also hot and/or crashes.

already ran memtest -- no errors. prime95 runs in windows fine for 20+ hours, no errors there, either. in fact, the only trouble i've had despite the high temps has been running linux. i assumed it was because of higher CPU utilization in linux? but prime95 is a pretty strong test, and i thought i'd be fine.

update: i set everything in the BIOS back to default (no overclock), and still no go. i find it hard to believe i can run prime95 with no errors in windows for almost a day during a 90+ degree heat wave, but with no overclock i can't even boot into linux. what am i missing? or is the CPU just too hot for the way linux uses the resources?

Does Red Hat Linux 9 crash only in graphical mode (runlevel 5) after a while, or also in textmode (runlevel 3)?

To go to runlevel 3 type :

"su -"
<your root password>
"init 3"

(let in run for a while in this mode)


To go to runlevel 5 type :

"init 5"

hmm, it says:

bash: init: command not found

???

the CPU must be overheating, as it is cooler out today and i have been in fluxbox for the past half hour without lock up. haven't tried going into KDE yet...will check it out right after posting this. thx.

/edit: okay, i'm in kde now, and things seem to be working okay. yesterday i couldn't even get past the splash screen. gkrellm won't display my temperatures for some reason, though, so i can't be sure it's from the heat. i guess that is my next task, figuring that out.

ps., the init 3 worked when i put /sbin/ in front of it. do i have to put that in a PATH command in a file somewhere so it will work without having to type /sbin/ everytime, for all of those commands? appreciate.

I think you used "su" and not "su -".

There's a difference between using "su" and "su -". I'll give an example :

First I'll login with only "su", and then logout :

$ su
Password:
# echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:
# exit
exit

Now I'll login with "su -" :
$ su -
Password:
# echo $PATH
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:

Do you see the difference? When you use "su -" the environment of the root user will also be loaded (the environment includes the path to various system tools, for example "init"). When you use "su" you only get the rights of the root user and not the environment settings.

ps. The reason I asked to check if runlevel 3 also has this problem is that it is interesting to see if the problem lies with the videocard driver or the videocard RAM.

cool! thank you very much. you were right that i didn't know about the dash, but it is working now using it.

i've been in linux all yesterday and today with no locking up problems yet, so i guess i will just wait until it gets hotter again. if it gets hot out and linux starts hanging again, i'll go to runlevel 3 and see what happens then. thanks for your help.

By the way, heat problems may be solved for once and for all when the new Linux (kernel) is out. The new Linux kernel will contain much better support for systems with ACPI.

You may want to take a look at the ACPI team project homepage :
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/

To get an overview of more good stuff coming into the next release of the Linux kernel, take a look at the following page :
http://www.kernelnewbies.org/status/latest.html