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pierric
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Joined: 24 Jul 2002
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2002 5:31 pm    Post subject: unstable system? change your kernel! Reply with quote

Hi,

I like Gentoo and its concept. I was agreably surprised as I saw Mozilla making anti-aliasing for the first time, as well as gabber now supporting special characters, which didn't work with the slackware packages.
But my system so often crashed! While trying mplayer with a DivX, it would crash the X server (4.2.0) with more than 50% probability. Sometimes, while just playing mp3s, the complete system would hang on... I thought it was X-related. And it's well possible that it also does something, because I still get some X crashes sometimes while trying "funny things". But anyway:
I switched from the 2.4.19-gentoo kernel back to the 2.4.18 "vanilla", and compiled with the same config. And now it's almost perfectly stable again!
For information, my system: Athlon XP, Nvidia TNT2, 256MB DDR, ext3fs, XFree 4.2
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reverius42
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Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 166
Location: Tucson, AZ

PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2002 7:06 pm    Post subject: Re: unstable system? change your kernel! Reply with quote

pierric wrote:
Hi,

I like Gentoo and its concept. I was agreably surprised as I saw Mozilla making anti-aliasing for the first time, as well as gabber now supporting special characters, which didn't work with the slackware packages.
But my system so often crashed! While trying mplayer with a DivX, it would crash the X server (4.2.0) with more than 50% probability. Sometimes, while just playing mp3s, the complete system would hang on... I thought it was X-related. And it's well possible that it also does something, because I still get some X crashes sometimes while trying "funny things". But anyway:
I switched from the 2.4.19-gentoo kernel back to the 2.4.18 "vanilla", and compiled with the same config. And now it's almost perfectly stable again!
For information, my system: Athlon XP, Nvidia TNT2, 256MB DDR, ext3fs, XFree 4.2


By any chance, did you use the pre-emptive or realtime options in the Gentoo kernel? They're what makes it special! And by special, I mean unstable as hell. Especially using XFS. I'm surprised you're using ext3... I haven't heard of any problems with ext3 and the Gentoo kernel.
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dioxmat
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Joined: 04 May 2002
Posts: 709
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2002 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

note that you can have mozilla aa without gentoo patches :)
this is how mozilla mailnews look on my lfs box... :)
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debian
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Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Thu Jul 25, 2002 1:00 am    Post subject: Re: unstable system? change your kernel! Reply with quote

pierric wrote:
I switched from the 2.4.19-gentoo kernel back to the 2.4.18 "vanilla", and compiled with the same config. And now it's almost perfectly stable again!
For information, my system: Athlon XP, Nvidia TNT2, 256MB DDR, ext3fs, XFree 4.2

Actually, if you found gentoo-r7-source unsuitable to you, you may consider trying mjc-rc1 source(emerge -s source). It not only solves some of the compilation problems I encountered, it runs faster and smoother. (note: just a surjective first-personal experience. :) )

Besides, it's an optimizied kernel source like gentoo's, so before you try vanilla, why not try it first. (fyi, I run dual athlon-mp)

One more thing, it may not apply to your situation, but I found that the instability sometime due to hardware problem. Open your box to see the arrangement inside. Once we opened a box of an infamous unstable server at work and we found that the small heatsink glued on the mobo chip falled off. It might due to mishandling or air pressure in flight. Nevertheless, the system runs very stable when we glued it back.

Check the fans, small heatsinks(display card has one or two, too) and the big heatsinks on your CPU. They might account for the instability
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