hardware problem
 

guys, besides the /var/log/messages are there any where else we can get a description on a certain part of hardware failure in the system from the OS?

Depends on the type of hardware. For hards drives there's smartctl if the drive is S.M.A.R.T. capable. You might be able to run stress tests (e.g. Prime95) to determine if a component is bad. In general, however, the kernel doesn't have any ways of determining hardware health, it just sees the symptoms when things go wrong.

Most distributions also have /var/log/dmesg, and if not, just use the `dmesg` command from console or terminal.

There are some utility programs for this:
lshw, lspci spring to mind.

Thanks guys, but my system doesn't have the smartctl command, plus, i already looked into the dmesg, it doesn't show anything wrong...
Funny thing is the problem looks like an I/O error. which is tied to a particular disk section.. but the dmesg has no errors at all on this.

Try booting into single user mode (or off a Knoppix disk, which is the safest way) and run badblocks on your hard drive. if there is a bad sector, it should detect it. Don't run badblocks while your system is fully booted up and file systems are mounted read/write.

You should also fsck the partition in question (fsck /dev/whatever) after finishing the badblocks scan,

Thanks BT! appreciate it!