[vox-tech] crashes -- kernel problems?

[Peter Jay Salzman]

charles,

first thing to do is to learn about the magic sysrq key so you can sync
and umount your drives gracefully, in case this really is a kernel
related issue.  make sure this option is compiled into your kernel.
there was a thread on vox-tech about it about 2 months ago, i think.

second thing to do is to ping or try to ssh into the machine to see if
the kernel is really gone or the input system is just hosed (which
happens).  at least then you can perform an ordinary shut down.

of course, there's always your logs in /var/log, but if it's a kernel
panic, the kernel most often goes la-la before being able to pass
logging info to klogd.

there's google groups.  for instance, when i fed "2.4.20 kernel crash
network" to google groups, i learned there might be problems with the
3c59x module.

kernel crashes are really hard to diagnose unless you're willing to
learn alot of information to send a detailed bug report to lkml, but the
bright side is that if the crash is reproducible, someone almost always
helps you out.

jooc, are you running 2.4.20-pre-something or the officially released
2.4.20?

oh, just one more thing, and this might be helpful.  try to make your
system crash while using a virtual console.  the kernel isn't fond of
printing junk into an xterm.  if you can see a message about an "oops",
and have a healthy system.map you might know a bit more about your
problem.

hope something here was useful.

good luck and keep us advised with what happens.

pete


begin Charles McLaughlin <cmclaughlin@ucdavis.edu> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm running debian unstable on my laptop.  I've recompiled my kernel
> (2.4.20) several times in order to get some of hardware to work.
> 
> The system has completely froze several times.  When this happens, I
> can't move the mouse, type, etc.  It seems to happen when I'm doing
> network related stuff, like using Mozilla or gftp.  
> 
> How should I start to troubleshoot this?
> 
> Thanks!
> Charles
> 
> _______________________________________________
> vox-tech mailing list
> vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech

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