stability of RHEL ES 4 (was: RE: trouble installing/running the Domain Name Service Configuration Tool)

[Rick Stevens]

Ed McCorduck wrote:
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com 
>>[mailto:redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of 
>>Rick Stevens
>>Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 1:01 PM
>>To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
>>Subject: Re: stability of RHEL ES 4 (was: RE: trouble 
>>installing/running the Domain Name Service Configuration Tool)
>>
>>
>>Ed McCorduck wrote:
>>
>>>Tesekkür. This Linux novice has now gained another bit of knowledge 
>>>the hard way, i.e. with a little embarrassment over my 
>>
>>ignorance. Not only do I now know how to spot source RPMs but 
>>I know what to do with them, too, so again, tesekkür.
>>
>>>But before I could try your solution, for the third time my Linux 
>>>system has crashed with kernel panics and file system 
>>
>>errors that have 
>>
>>>again left me with a nonbooting system, so I'll need to reinstall 
>>>Linux one more time. With my limited capabilities I can't 
>>
>>tell if the 
>>
>>>problem is with my computer's hardware or with the Linux system 
>>>software itself, but one thing I can do is this: I'd like to ask if 
>>>any of you have also experienced major problems keeping Red Hat 
>>>Enterprise Linux ES 4 stable. I downloaded the installation 
>>
>>files for 
>>
>>>the "Update 1" version of RHEL ES 4 and it has usually 
>>
>>installed fine, 
>>
>>>but after a short time (a couple of days or a week) of 
>>
>>doing anything 
>>
>>>with the system it crashes into uselessness.
>>
>>The first thing you should do is boot off the first CD and 
>>run memtest86 on your machine.  Many times this sort of 
>>instability is caused by flakey memory (Linux beats on memory 
>>much harder than Windows).  You should also take the time to 
>>do a little maintenance on your machine.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks, Rick. That was something I wanted to find, a good Linux disk utility/tester. Just one question: do I need special parameters for memtest86? I ran it off the boot CD as you suggested, and now it appears it's repeating itself after already having gone through each of its seven or so tests. I make that newbie judgment by noticing once that after "Test" it read "98%" and was on "Test #7" but now it's back to 28% and on "Test #4" (I actually did catch it running Tests #1 and #2 again, too). 

memcheck86 will loop until you stop it, so what you're seeing is normal.
If you look at its display, it shows which key to hit to stop it (I
think it's "CTRL-C", but I won't swear to it).

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-         Microsoft Windows:  Proof that P.T. Barnum was right       -
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