I’m not sure where to start since one problem seems to be bleeding to the next.
I recently installed a boxed copy of RH 8.0 on a pretty vanilla Wintel system that is less than year old. I’ve got zero experience with Linux and I seem to be spending every waking hour struggling learn how to configure the OS to perform the most basic of tasks.

The system actually boots now and only freezes up every hour or so. cat meminfo returns nothing out of the ordinary but being a newbie I suppose it’s possible I might be missing something there.

Since 95% of the time the lock-ups occur while I’m in mozilla I though maybe it was just that mozilla was a less-than-completely-stable application. I thought maybe I would try to download and install Netscape 6.1. However, when I click on the download button on Netscape’s site the dialog box comes up asking if I want to save it to disk or whatever and my system immediately locks up. I’ve yet to figure out how to unfreeze, halt, reset or get out of this state once I’m in it. Mouse and keyboard are completely unresponsive. System clock in the lower left doesn’t change.

I thought maybe what was causing this particular crash was that my firewall was set for HIGH security which doesn't allow active mode FTP ( but allowing passive FTP - whatever THAT means ) So I attempted to change the security level from high to medium or even custom to allow FTP. Whatever changes I made using redhat-config-securitylevel Configuration tool never seemed to take effect. Next time I’d open the tool it would show High security level again.

So rather than continue to chase-my-tail I’m hoping there is some way that I can troubleshoot my system using some sort of error log to determine exactly what type of error is causing this freeze–up problem. Is there some funky runtime-level I can test drive the system with or is there any useful info to be gleaned from the extensive system logs redhat provides?

Also – isn’t Cntrl-Alt-Del supposed to work the same in Redhat as in W2K ? You know where it gives you the option to end-task of the application that is not responding? I think this constant hard re-booting is causing the error to occur ever more frequently now.

Any advice would be MOST appreciated.

Thanks,
SlowLearner

There can be many reasons for lockups, bad disk sectors, lack of ram, poor X-windows configuration...
Most log files are located in the /var/log/ directory.
If you open up a terminal window and get a command line, enter
tail -f /var/log/messages

This will allow you to view the log messages as they are printed.
Set the window full size and the Mozilla window half height so you can read the new lines as they appear in the bottom of the screen...
Another file to watch is
tail -f /var/log/XFree86.0.log
which lists information from the X-Windows server...
You can have many terminal windows open at a time...

Ctrl-Alt-Del is used to reboot the system...
Ctrl-Esc will give you the running software and info...

It appears the "security Setting" tool is broken. enter
netstat -anp
to get a list of servers listening for connections. Maybe for the moment "High" security is appropriate...
You can decide which servers you want running and which to turn off...
chkconfig --list
service ~~~ stop
chkconfig ~~~ off

RH8 has some good documentation online .. http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...HL-8.0-Manual/

Thanks Peter- Linux Help Everyone, for getting back to me so fast..

RH8 does have some good documentation that I have been absolutely LIVING in for the last week and 6 re-installs.. But I still have a long way to go.

System quit booting so I did another fresh format/install again from CD's.. Amazingly even with the system up fresh and running fine Ctrl-Alt-Del does NOTHING as does Ctrl-Esc ( Strange - but I'm getting used to strange with Linux) I try this on the desktop.. Inside a terminal window.. inside monzilla and nothing.

Of course the system is still locking up fairly often although I was able to actually begin the FTP process for almost 10-20 sec. once before it locked up. I am getting several error messages from the log files.

kernel: ohci1394: pci_module_inti failed ( which I believe has something to do with firewire which I do not have - and therefore I don't think this is a factor )

modprobe: modprobe:Can't locate module sound-service-0-3 ( which is something to do with the fact that I don't have any sound which I never really noticed before and am not too concerned with just yet.. )

And more importantly-
eepro100: wait_for_cmd_done timeout!
last message repeated 25 times
NETDEV WATCHDOG eth0: transit timed out
xinetd[951] warning: can't get client address: Transport endpoint is not connected

Anyone have any ideas what would cause my eepro100b to intermittently reflect these types of error msgs and lockup the entire system?

Of course now that I write that out it would make much more sense that it is the OS that begins to slow and become unstable, causing the eth0 to start showing errors then finally the whole system freezes. Sometimes the crashing process takes a full 3-4 minutes. Other times, such as when I am attempting to FTP it takes only a fraction of a second.

I need to find some way to isolate the initial cause of the crash.

Thanks,
SlowLearner

check out the log file tail -f /var/log/messages. And send the logs .. or change the firewall settings to custom and allow the connections u want.

Dec 29 01:14:18 localhost kernel: i810: Intel ICH2 found at IO 0xef00 and 0xe800
, IRQ 9
Dec 29 01:14:19 localhost kernel: i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 6 channe
ls.
Dec 29 01:14:19 localhost kernel: i810_audio: Defaulting to base 2 channel mode.
Dec 29 01:14:19 localhost kernel: ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x4144:0x536
0 (Analog Devices AD1885)
Dec 29 01:14:19 localhost kernel: i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 Unable to map surrou
nd DAC's (or DAC's not present), total channels = 2
Dec 29 01:14:19 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-
0-3
Dec 29 01:14:20 localhost kernel: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0,
id 0, lun 0
Dec 29 01:14:20 localhost kernel: sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 32x/32x writer cd/rw xa/
form2 cdda tray
Dec 29 01:14:20 localhost kernel: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Dec 29 01:47:17 localhost su(pam_unix)[1082]: session opened for user root by (u
id=500)

I don't have a SCSI anything.. only IDE.
I don't think I understand firewall settings enough to custom allow connections just yet.. I'm kinda slow you know?

Thanks alot though,
SlowLearner

Do you have a IDE Burner?

If you do the SCSI thing is a IDE-SCSI emulation for the Burner to work. All Burning software I know about for Linux depends on a SCSI Burner. Thus, you have to trick the OS into thinking that the IDE Burner is a SCSI device. Red hat should do this for you on install. If you ever replace a regular drive with a burner you will pull your hair out. Until, you read the docs (RTFM).

Hope this helps...

It sounds to me like you might have an IRQ or memory issue.

If you can, try the following :

Replace your SIMMS. Often the causes for random, but frequent lockups are bad Memory SIMMS. If you can pull something out of a known good machine and put them in your box for testing - that would help.

Remove any PCI devices you're not using. I see you have your sound stuff enabled on your motherboard - turn it off. If you have another network card, take out the one you're using now and test it with something else.

Ctrl-ALT-DEL does *not* work the same way as in Windows. To kill tasks in Linux you can use the command line and kill the process manually :

ps -ef | grep <program>
note PID (Process ID) number of program
kill <number>

If that fails to stop it - kill -9 <number>

is the 'nasty' way of killing a process dead in it's tracks. Think of the first as using 'File--> Exit' and the second as hitting the X on the window box to the right.

I'm not a GUI user on the whole, and I'm not entirely sure how Gnome/KDE handles the ctrl-alt-del thing.

Slick.

Hello,

I too am seeing similiar (if not exact) timeout errors on my
ethernet interface:

*************

eepro100: wait_for_cmd_done timeout!
last message repeated 25 times
NETDEV WATCHDOG eth0: transit timed out
xinetd[951] warning: can't get client address:
Transport endpoint is not connected

*************

..and what I also see as a result is:

>sporadic system hangs
>loss of network connectivity.

The resolution (as far as I can tell) is to install the latest driver for the Intel Pro100 ethernet adapter. I have found reference to it at the following locations (READMEs included):

1.
http://www.intel.com/support/network...linux/e100.htm

2.
http://www.scyld.com/pipermail/eepro...il/000006.html


Hope this helps.