[CLUE-Tech] Detecting possible hardware failures

[Jed S. Baer]

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> 
> *snip*
> 
> > Nope. I've since had it up sufficiently to snag a few files and print
> 
> Hmmm. How long did you leave it down? Long enough to cool down for
> any amount of time?

Long enough.

> > > It definitely sounds like a hardware problem. I'm tempted to say it
> >
> > Well, considering how flaky it's been this morning, I agree. I suppose
> > it could be memory, or the mobo.
> 
> Good luck tracking it down. Post to the list when you figure out what
> the issue is, I'm curious to find out what it is.

At this point, I'm pretty certain it's the mobo. Swapped memory around,
and it made no difference. Well, except that on the last reboot, I got
some fs corruption:

EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,8)): ext2_free_blocks: Freeing blocks not
in datazone - block = 1735549216, count = 1
EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,8)): ext2_free_blocks: Freeing blocks not
in datazone - block = 1852140917, count = 1

Several of those. I don't think I'll be booting it again without new
hardware. Fortunately, I'd already put the "noauto" on the data
partitions in fstab, so whatever it is, worst case it's a reinstall. I'm
assuming those are the major/minor device numbers, so I'll be able to
tell which partition to look in, once I can examine it again.

A google search on that error message got only a bunch of reports,
mostly on experimental kernels or RAID, and no "layman's" explanation of
what's happening. Oh, well.

Later,
jed