HP Compaq DC7100: Fedora 3 crashes all the time

[Mogens Kjaer]

Anyone managed to install FC3 on
a HP Compaq DC7100?

My system crashes every few minutes!

Sometimes, just mozilla stops.

Sometimes, the X server restarts.

And sometimes, the kernel panics.

I've tried memtest86 (v3.2), but this will
not start at all. It lists available
memory (1G), amount of cache, but no
tests are started, and the menu doesn't
appear.

I've tried memtest86 on another dc7100
running W2K without problems, there it can't
start either. Maybe a memtest86 problem?

Very strange.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

try to *replace* RAM chips

[Mogens Kjaer]

I found the bug in memtest86; I let it run
overnight.

[xyko_1]

Hi,

Fedora Core 3 runs series 2.6 kernel. I've had some problems with old kernel 2.6 on machines that gets very hot (I don't run fedora).

In general some warnning messages appears on /var/log/message before the system craches. Did you saw your log ?

Try to upgrade your kernel to see if solves your problem.

regards,
Xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

memtest86 ran 15 hours, 50 passes, no errors.

I don't think this is a hardware/temperature
problem.

[xyko_1]

Hi Mogens,

I'm not saying that your hardware has a serious temperature problem. What I'm saying is that, in my case, the kernel that I was running, for a reason that I don't know, pehaps a bug, was posting warning messages in /var/log/messages about cpu errors and in many cases the system crashed. I was thinking in that time that it was due a high temperature. My computer is a desktop and I have also winXP in dual boot and XP was running with no problem. When I updated my kernel the problem disapeared.

So my suggestion for you is to see if there is any kind of error message in the log and, if possible, upgrade to the latest kernel version.

regards,
xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

No error messages in /var/log/messages,
except when processes die without
taking the kernel with them.

The kernel is the latest FC3 kernel.

I've tried disabling accelleration
for the i810 X11 driver, but this doesn't
help either.

I'll try to manually increase the fan speed
(this is done in the bios), and see if this
helps. But I doubt it, the machine doesn't
feel warm inside.

[xyko_1]

Hi,

I guess temperature is not your problem also.
Does your system problems begins just after installation or did it runs well for a period of time before problems ?
Does the problem generates a core dump ?
Have you tried to address your problem directly with fedora people/forums ?

It's not a simple problem, unfortunately.

Xyko

[Ted M Johnson_1]

Try a Knoppix CD. If Knoppix will run for any significant length of time, dump Fedora/RedHat.

[Johann_5]

Mogens

I know this may not be very useful to you, but my FC3 installation runs almost flawlessly on a dc7100 bought just before Christmas. The only slight worry has been a few unexplained restarts of init in the first few days, but nothing recently. It is summer where I am and the box runs quite hot in a stuffy room.

Johann

[Mogens Kjaer]

Hm, it seems like a hardware problem.

The problem started to show up in w2k
as well.

I had the motherboard replaced, it seems
to run better now.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[Mogens Kjaer]

The restarts of init is probably done
by the prelink script in

/etc/cron.daily/prelink

This can give messages like:

Jan 19 04:03:20 mol1 init: Trying to re-exec init

when the script does a "telinit u".

Nothing to worry about.