by Over the last few days I've started getting General Protection errors
from the kernel (2.0.35 or 2.0.33 I can boot with either and it makes no
difference).
The error is :
general protection: 0000
CPU: 0
Followed by various register dumps.
I know that this is usually (always) indicative of some form of
"amnesia" on the part of the machine (a 1.5 year old P200-MMX w. 96Mb).
The following may be relevant (or not):
1) The errors seem to be more likely to occur if the machine has been up
for some time (until this started happening I used to leave it on 24/7
unless I was away for > 1 week).
2) Sometime last week the power supply fan became noisy.
3) On trying to shutdown after a failure (which tends not to bring
everything to a total halt) the shutdown usually hangs on "Turning off
swap".
The question is is there any good way to verify which hardware is the
problem (the options seem to me to be power supply, ram or cache) other
than systematically swapping components until it stops breaking? Or
failing that suggestions of probabilities
[My conjecture - which may well be well wide of the mark - is that the
system is getting too warm because the fan isn't working as well as it
should (it is still running) and thus the memory is getting flaky].
TIA
James Tappin
--
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin, | School of Physics & Astronomy | O__ |
| Ph: 0121-414-6462. Fax: 0121-414-3722 | |
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------+