How can I find what is crashing my system? When I boot up for the first time each day I can run for about 20 min. then I get a hard crash everything freezes and I have to reboot, but when I reboot it will run for hours and never crash!! I just want to know if there is a log that I can view so I can find the offending problem and fix it.

mandrake 9.2
athalon 2.4
512 ram
albatron mother board

Thanks

As a disclaimer, I want to warn you that I don't know a lot about troubleshooting problems like this. But I think I can help you gather some relevant troubleshooting info that might trigger some assistance from someone in the know...

After the problem happens, reboot and as soon as you can get to a terminal, type 'dmesg' and check that for anything problematic. Also, check your /var/log/syslog after the reboot. When you find something like a kernel panic or something, capture the text and add it to your thread here.

Also, what exactly makes you think it's a 'hard crash'? Like can you get on another computer and ssh into this box? Can you request web pages from it or anything like that? I'm wondering if you're not just having a problem with X-windows. When it's in this state, try a ctrl-alt-backspace (or delete) to see if you can kill the X session.

Another thing is to edit your /etc/inittab file and change this line---
id:5:initdefault:

to look like this--

id:3:initdefault:

Then cycle the power on the computer or whatever it takes to normally get the 'hard crash' to happen. If your computer chugs along beyond the normal time required for the problem to manifest, then at least you've seperated the problem out to be possibly X-related. You see, that line I recommended you change will have your computer boot without the X GUI. You'll just have a terminal. For fun while you wait the 20 minutes, maybe run "top" to see if any process is spiraling out of control.

Post more evidence from your investigations here. Perhaps someone will get a better idea of the problem you're struggling with. I apologize that I have absolutely no idea what you might be up against.

di11rod

dmesg actually isn't going to help. dmesg works only for the currently running kernel. look in /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog for errors after a crash. Also look in /var/log/XFree86.0.log.
As mentioned, it could be a problem with X11. If you have access to another computer, try connecting (or even pinging) your locked computer after a crash but before a reboot.
How do you reboot (keyboard or reset key on the computer)?

I just had another crash and I checked the syslog and the messages I can see no errors they both show a restart but nothing else. I will try to ping the machine the next time and see what happens. I have to restart with the reset button on the machine. The keyboard locks when it crashes and some times the capslock and shift lights will be blinking at me. I belive that says kernel panic?

Yeah, usually (always?) das blinken lights means your kernel is crying for help. In one kernel, the lights actually blinked out the kernel oops in morse code, but I think that was removed pretty quickly.
I'm guessing a hardware problem, but don't know where to start. You'd have to describe your computer setup.

I had similar problems once. It was a dying motherboard chipset fan. It eventually fried my mobo and cpu. Check your power supply, CPU fan, chipset fans, etc.

Hope this helps.

Siri Amrit