History:

I've had MDK 10.1 Running on this sytem for about six months, never had any problems. About a month ago, I upgraded to Mandriva 2005LE. Re-started, ran fine. I had 18 days of uptime with no issues. Then one day I came home, and the box was froze solid. No combo of keys would work, couldn't ssh in from anywhere, nothing... Did the hard reset. I got an error that my hd was full. That's odd, I thought. I reparition and give / another 1Gb so I can boot. Once I'm in, I see that the file /var/log/messages is about 2Gb. That's *really* weird, I didn't even think I could have files that big! The file is full, as in every single line, with messages from my firewall. I block the addy, and another appears, and another and another. Finally, after blocking about ten or so addy's, the messages stop appearing so fast, although they still appear quite frequently now.

The problem:

Since this event, I've been unable to maintain any sort of uptime. My box freezes solid *everytime* after about two hours. I can't figure it out. There's nothing out of the ordinary in any logs that I've looked in. Here's what I've tried:

1. noapic, nolapic boot option
2. removing all sorts of services including power management
3. uninstalling the nvidia drivers (NForce MB only, not the Gforece video drivers)
4. running memtest86 for hours
5. blowing air conditioned air directly from my AC vent to the open box via a 15" fan (in case it was over heating)
6. and finally, I tried every cron job on it's own to make sure those weren't doing it.

I'm running out of things to try. Short of completely re-installing the OS, I don't know what to do. At this point, I'm pretty much willing to try anything.

Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Jeremy

When you say froze solid do you mean like no keyboard response? (i.e. hitting caps lock doesn't toggle the light). If thats the case it could be your power supply, I had that happen to me a few months back.

There is no keyboard response in that hitting crtl+alt+bksp or alt+f1 doeesn't work. I'm not sure about the caps lock, I will check as soon as I get home. How do you know it was your power supply? What was the problem you had with it? Was it not supplying enough power or something? Should I get a bigger one? I believe mine is 480 W. That should be more then adequate to support my system, right?

Jeremy

The problem with the power supply was it just up and decided to die. I had assumed it was everything but the power supply, I discovered it by a tip from a friend who had had a similar problem. Wattage really isn't an issue, 480W should be more than enough, but if its going bad that won't matter at all. If you have the proper electrical insturments you can check to see if the power supply is running OK or not.

Shane

I have a volt-ohm meter.Can I use that to test it? I don't have an oscilliscope or anything like that.

Jeremy

Thats not my area of expertise, but it wouldn't hurt to check to see if the power supply is putting out the proper readings that are stated on the power supply label. Other than that I would recomend getting a spare power supply and seeing how long you can go for without freezing (granted that its only giving you two hours you could even borrow a friend's power supply or purchase one from a computer store with a lax return policy to test).

Dust can also be a cause of unusual problems, particularly smoke - which contains carbon dust.
Dont be afraid to lift the bonnet of your machine periodically and get in there with a vacuum cleaner and a fine soft paint brush ( earth yourself first with an earth strap ) particularly in the PCI slots and look carefully at PCI & AGP boards that are next to something with a fan as a fan can splat dust onto other boards.

Another thing is that you may have been cracked. Rock on over to the Linux-security forums and read up about using programmes like root-kit etc

good luck and I hope you've not been cracked, dust is easier to fix.
floppy

Floppy,
I dusted off the inside of the case when all of this started, as I thought it might be over heating. I used compressed air and vaccum, pretty much the same thing. Also, this box is less then a year old, the dust accumulation wasn't even that great.

I'll try the chkrootkit tonight.

This is getting frustrating!

Jeremy

Update:

Reformatted HD and re-installed Mandriva. Still with the freezing. I'm about to go Commodore 64 on it's a$$ (that's old school ).

I'm going to try to re-install MDK, since it ran fine for months.

Jeremy

Re-installed Mandrake 10.1. Working great. Damn Mandriva!!

Jeremy