I'm hoping that someone will be able to help me with this. If you *really* need the full skinny, I had another topic that was named the same thing as this one, just without the 'part 2'.
The short story, is that I built a nice little Linux server using Mandrake 10 and a P3-500 and the longest it's stayed up is about 3 days (It is not duel boot). Various possibilities were mentioned about why that might be, and someone told me that the noapic option should be used. The server is still crashing, but I found the following info in the /var/messages when I rebooted.
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: ACPI disabled because your bios is from 1999 and too old
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: You can enable it with acpi=force
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: Built 1 zonelists
{{Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=301 devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 noapic}}
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: Found and enabled local APIC!
Feb 21 19:16:29 localhost kernel: Initializing CPU#0
As you can see, somehow, even though the lilo.conf file tells it not to, something is re-enabling apic. At least, that's how I've read this log. Since getting the noapic option to work is an important trouble shooting step, I'd love to know how to keep it turned off. You'll note the line above surrounded with the {{}} is proof that I used the noapic in Lilo and that the lilo.conf file was recompiled.
Below, is the lilo.conf file:
boot=/dev/hda1
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
nowarn
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hdd bios=0x82
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 noapic"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk
label="263-7"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 noapic"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 devfs=nomount noapic"
read-only
If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can make this server stop crashing, I'm all ears
I'm not a newbe, but I'm no where near guru stature either. If I can't get this to work, then I'll give another distro a try in hopes that it's not my hardware that's crashing out.
Thanks for listening, and I appeciate you're help in advance!