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Old 09-23-2003, 06:02 PM   #1
bruce1271
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I am screwed...Cant enter Root password.


Well,

It finally happened, my machine hung on its fifth day..I had to power off(hard), and re-boot. Now I have a corrupt drive and i cant do a damn thing..Wont mount partitions and I cant login (safe mode) to fix em.

It was due to happen. For months my linux machine has needed re-booting every 2-5 Days. I do not know the source.
What happens is I cant login at all. web server stops serving, email stops as well. the only thing that works on it when it hangs is that it allows the internet to work. Meaning..Linux still routes my port 80 requests to my local lan through iptables. So, I can browse the web without problems for an extra day or say, then that stops as well. then I have to yank the plug.
Also, There is no kernel message anywhere about it.

My old 500mhz K-7 ran for 6 months at a time. But I go and buy a new xp2000,ak35gt2 motherboard and 1 gig of Ram and I cant keep it up for more than a week(har har).

So, It looks like I will need to re-build. Any ideas on the cause of this?

My guess:
1) Hard drive - either drive itsself or properties in BIOS.
2) Bad memory
3) Motherboard.

Since it happens after a period of time every time, My guess is either HD or RAM.

anyone have comments on stability issues they have seen?

Last edited by bruce1271; 09-23-2003 at 06:06 PM.
 
Old 09-23-2003, 07:04 PM   #2
muflon
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xp2000 has a older core and can get very hot even with teoretically enough cooling. my xp1800 runs @ 70 degrees celcius @ idle with (on paper) proper cooling. That might be one thing to check.
Bad memory should deadlock you entire machine imo so I do not bet on that.
 
Old 09-23-2003, 10:16 PM   #3
bruce1271
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Yeah,
I actually switched that out with an new core xp2100 and same thing. So I switched it back. I also ran seti on it for 3 days then rebooted to check the temp and it was 46-48C. 70 Is awefully high, you should use some liquid silver or something to cool it more.

I have an update on my machine.
I rebooted again tonight and it let me login as root. I commented out my fstab to only load a few partitions, and I was able to get in clean. I had to create a new journal on one partition and e2fsck a few others.

I have a memtest on my linux I loaded that checks for bad ram. I found one of my 3 sticks had errors on it. I now removed that bad ram. It is micron ram, so that pisses me off a bit. I will have to return it for a new one.

Some reason deep down Idont feel like that was the problem though.

Anyone have nay optimal BIOS settings tomake linux run rock solid? I can spare a few% decrease in performane for stability.

thanks.
 
Old 09-23-2003, 10:18 PM   #4
cetialphav
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This can be so many things; it really is a nightmare to diagnose. I've had this happen because of flaky memory modules. I've also had this happen when a fan in the power supply started failing. It couldn't cool the power supply off, so it was not a stable power source. Changing the fan out fixed this.
 
Old 09-24-2003, 12:32 AM   #5
bruce1271
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Well,
I am sure it is not my PS. I changed the case out 3 times. I have a 430 Watt antec PS in there now. The problem happened on all 3 Different Power Supplies.

I think it is left between my Hard drive and My memory modules.

IS there a procedure out there somewhere that "cleans" your memory without a reboot. What I mena is release the unused bits back?

Thanks for your suggestion it was a good one.

Anyone else have any comments?
 
Old 09-24-2003, 04:10 AM   #6
faheyd
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I'm for the ram being the #1 problem.

But if you're looking for other problems, make sure you have the Following on:
reserve IRQs for VGA and USB
Following off:
No caching of video ram or system bios
Let the BIOS auto setup for memory speed settings via the SPD chip, unless you are 100 percent positive of the mem chip hardware settings.

Next, have some confidence in yourself on what you just accomplished :
Swapped CPU, no change
Swapped case and PS no change
Ran Memtest and found bad mem chip, success!!!
Pat yourself on the back and take a break. Give it a few days/weeks/months and then work on it, if a problem shows up again.
 
Old 09-24-2003, 11:50 AM   #7
bruce1271
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Thanks for the reply.


Now I have library issues.

My apache and postfix would not load-Missing lbddb-4.0.so.
So, I had to load a lbddb-4.0.so from the lbd .rpm form Redhat 9.0 cd ROM. I fired up apache and postfix and I was in businees...until I rebooted one last time to make sure everything was clean on its own.
Now, I get an immediate segmentation Fault when trying to start ssh,postfix,apache,startx. proftp works. Any ideas how to fix this?
Do I have to re-install my libraries? If so, anyway to know which one is common to all these services?

thanks
 
Old 09-24-2003, 02:42 PM   #8
faheyd
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Don't take the following as bible, as there are many reasons for 'seg faults'. But while you had bad memory, some things could have been corrupted on the hard disk. Not very likely, but 'could' be. If this is not a mission essential box, and now that you have only good memory installed, I'd probably reinstall everything from scratch, just to be 'safe'.
That would then give you a known good box to work from as far as any future problems.
Geez, when it rains, it pours, no?
 
Old 09-24-2003, 03:53 PM   #9
randyriver10
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did you add RAM? take a stick out and try....this happenend to my friends PC
 
  


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