by My linux box (an AMD486 DX280 w/ 16MB RAM and 1Gig HD) has an irritating
habit of crashing intermittently. The crashes are not any particular type
of crash, although recently there have been several similar ones. Sometimes
there will be a kernel panic, sometimes the whole thing will lock (this
occurs most frequently in X), sometimes most of the applications will be
unable to function (emacs exits with a segmentation fault before anything
is seen)
Crashes are (on average) once every one-two days. Recently, it crashed
(kernel panic) during the reboot while messing around in lilo (unrelated
to lilo, it booted fine on the next try). The characteristics (varying and
intermittent) lead me to believe that it is a RAM problem rather than
other hardware problem, but I am far from an expert. Can anyone out there
give me more info about what to look for, give me a diagnostic program
which would check my RAM (either DOS or linux-based is fine, as long as
it is able to search the entire memory space), or tell me what is going
on?
Scribbling all of the info that the kernel panic gives me is a real pain
in the butt, so if someone can give me pointers on what is useful for
solving my particular problem and how to use it...
Any help will be greatly be appreciated...
I do happen to speak for the owner of this computer...