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

[Robert Dale]

On 5/6/07, Andrew Perrin <clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu> wrote:
> 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.

In my case, once it was a power supply, another was the mobo.
You probably could find someone to load test your power supply.
Hopefully, you don't run into the second situation.  Luckily I was
just outside of my house when I heard the smoke detector go off.  Ran
inside to the smell of burnt electronics and black smoke.  The mobo
had literally exploded.

-- 
Robert Dale