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

[Ed McCorduck]

> -----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). 


Ed McCorduck
Department of English
State University of New York College at Cortland 
Ed.McCorduck at Cortland.edu 
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu 
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager  
AIM: EdMcCorduck