[lug] hardware problem? / software problem?

[D. Stimits]

Ben Luey wrote:

> I'm wondering if I have a hardware problem, and what part it might be, or
> if this could be software.
>
> I did a fresh install of Mandrake 9.1 with what potentially might be a
> corrupted CD (the 3rd cd was, but things seem mostly ok if I only used the
> first 2 in the install).
>
> Symptoms:
>
> Sometimes when I press the power button to turn on the computer, the fan
> turns, but the monitor doesn't get a signal and nothing boots. 


This sounds like hardware failure. Power supply or motherboard.

> Pressing
> reboot fixes this problem. It has happened a few times before the upgrade
> and a few times after
>
> After installing Man 9.1, I compiled a new kernel which worked fine for a
> few reboots. Sometimes when I boot I get kernel module loading errors on
> startup (unresolved symbols) (but everything works) and half the time I
> get that error, the computer crashes right there on startup. But often I
> don't get those module loading errors and everthing seems fine.

Unresolved symbols might not be a "big" problem, it could just mean your 
System.map file is not correct for that kernel. Unfortunately, that 
doesn't sound like the case, since it would do this *every* time you 
boot to that kernel (but never when you boot to the kernel with the 
right System.map). How many kernels are involved?

>
> Galeon / Mozilla is very very unstable. (even if I delete my .mozilla,
> .galeon directories) Konqueror seems fine, as does evolution.

Bad ram or a number of hardware problems could cause this or anything 
above (with the exception of the first power up problem...in that case 
power supply seems likely, but not definitive).

>
> Any ideas on what to try to try to find out the source of the problem?

I think booting from something unrelated to the operating system and 
hard drives might be a useful test. Run memtest86 on it (which boots to 
its own version of a mini-o/s), see how it runs that for like half a day:
   http://www.memtest86.com/

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com