Re: The stability crisis

Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com)
Tue, 29 Jun 1999 23:37:36 +0000 ( )


On Tue, 29 Jun 1999 donthomp@luna.cs.unm.edu wrote:

>
> On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
>
> > The machine is a Cyrix 6x86MX (no SMP) running RedHat 5.1 with most of the
> > packages at either 5.2 or 6.0 versions. MTRR is enabled in the kernel but
> > I haven't used it for anything yet so I would assume that it is not
> > causing problems. I don't run X. No quotas.
>
> I had a machine with a cyrix 6x86 pr200+ in it. I could barely get a week
> uptime out of it without it crashing on 2.2.x kernels. However, the
> crashes occured in a pretty regular pattern. It happened during periods
> where the cpu had been been hammered on for several hours (0.50 load or
> above). The cyrix 6x86 series have a real problem with overheating. The
> set6x86 program is supposed to help keep the heat down, but when the load
> is high it does absolutely no good. I finally decided to just spend $50
> and replace it with a 233 pentium MMX chip. Same hardware (other than
> cpu) , same kernel, haven't had a glitch in well over two weeks. Before
> assuming its kernel code, I'd check to make sure your processor isn't
> overheating. Put plenty of cpu grease between sink and processor, make
> sure its making good contact, etc.

I don't think it's heat. Usually oopses occur when broswsing the web with
netscape displaying its output on another X server or when I'm writting
email. I've never got an oops from encoding MP3's or accidentally running
infinite loops for hours.

>
> > [aaronl@vitelus aaronl]$ gcc --version
> > egcs-2.91.66
>
> You should probably be using gcc-2.7.2.3 .
>
> -Donald Thompson
>

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