[TriLUG] How would you diagnose "random" system hangs?

[jbrigman at nc.rr.com]

Andrew - do you have any removable-media CD or DVD devices
installed?

I once saw a case where a particular CD-RW device won't play
well with a DVD device. It jumps off-and-on the IDE bus and
when that happens, the system locks up with NO notification
whatsoever.

This would be applicable only if you have a DVD and CD device
on the same IDE channel, one primary, the other secondary.

The "fix" was to remove the CD-RW device and/or replace both
with a new model DVD-RW.

The only way I was able to identify the problem was that the
device "disappeared before my eyes" while I was watching, and
after putting a CD in the media tray. The only way I was able
to isolate it was to reassemble the system a piece at a time
out of the case, on the work

JKB

----- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Perrin <clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu>
Date: Monday, May 7, 2007 12:04 pm
Subject: [TriLUG] How would you diagnose "random" system hangs?
To: trilug at trilug.org

> My home system has been freezing up at apparently random times -- 
> usually 
> when I'm at work, so I come home to a frozen machine that has to 
> be 
> cold-booted. How would you go about checking this out? I've let 
> memtest86 
> run continuously for 24 hours with no errors, so I don't think 
> it's 
> memory. I have the sensors reporting hourly to a log, and there 
> are no 
> temperature concerns (generally between 37 and 40C). There's 
> nothing of 
> interest in syslog that rings any bells to me. Any ideas?
> 
> The machine is an ASUS A8N-E, nForce chipset, with an Athlon64 
> dual-core 
> CPU and 4GB of RAM in it. It's running debian etch, but with a 
> home-compiled kernel 2.6.20.7.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - 
> http://perrin.socsci.unc.eduAssistant Professor of Sociology; Book 
> Review Editor, _Social Forces_
> University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA
> New Book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/178592.ctl
> 
> 
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