On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 10:49:32AM -0400, Patrick Stockton wrote: > I've got a Mandrake 8.2 install that periodically will stop reponding after > logging in. It will prompt for username and password and then just sit > there. I can't switch between virtual terminals nor give a CTRL+ALT+DEL to > cleanly shut the system down. The only thing I am able to do is power cycle > the box. > > This happens no matter how I'm logging either via the console, graphical X > via KDM, remote SSH, or a Webmin login. > > Now even though the login I'm attemping has stopped responding all kernel > level networking still works because the box still acts as the internet > gateway for the rest of my client boxes just fine.
I had a similar problem once; it turned out to be my cheap Maxtor hard drive that claimed to support DMA, but would hang every now and then. The symptoms were that the system seemed to be running okay, but any process that needed to use the disk for any reason (including being swapped in) would hang. CTRL+ALT+DEL wouldn't work because it would try to load /sbin/shutdown from disk, and hang. Also, the disk activity LED on the front of my case was on solid when this happened. If the symptoms persist, try disabling DMA on your hard disk(s) and see if the crashes end. Mandrake uses /etc/sysconfig/harddisks for IDE disk parameters. -- Samuel Merritt PGP key is at http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~merritt/snmerritt.asc Information about PGP can be found at http://www.mindspring.com/~aegreene/pgp/
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