[lug] debian with 2.4 kernel

[David Morris]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 08:23:08PM -0400, Hugh Brown wrote:
> Any ideas on where to go next?
> 
> This is on a Dell Inspiron 8100.

I would tend to suspect hardware myself.

I have the Dell Inspiron 8100 running the 2.4 kernel (my own
self-compiled image) and never had a single problem.  The
laptop runs a *lot* better on 2.4 overall than on a 2.2
kernel.

I would start out with memtest86 to test the RAM...that is
the most common cause of problems.  Also look in dmesg when
running the 2.2 kernel, on occation I've seen error messages
appear there that don't make it into the syslog, though I
think that might have been only on a sparc.

Also, can you identify an exact point where the system stops
responding?  I believe the problem is it stops responding to
keyboard input, so try hitting a key (such as 'd') to find
out when the system fails if it isn't obvious from watching
the screen.  From there, you might be able to guess what
hardware is failing, what driver is conflicting, etc.

There is also a Dell Laptop usergroup on Yahoo Groups, I'm
not finding the address in my email archives at a quick
glance (must be in permanent archival), but a quick web
search should find it fairly quickly....lots of great help
there.

Good luck!

-David