> I know 2.0.30 (as bundled in redhat-4.2 has some serious memory errors)
> but even if I compile a 2.0.30+pre-patch-7 or even a 2.0.29 or 2.0.27
> kernel on another machine and then use that kernel on the 486DX-100
> machine
Kernel-independent? Sounds like a hardware problem. If you can, watch
the disk light; does it stay on solid for about five seconds after the
"hang" (while the disk stops doing anything), then turn off? My IDE
CD-ROM does that to me occasionally, but afaik linux recovers from that
just fine...
> no oopses, nothing spewed to the log files, nothing, not even
> ctrl-alt-del
> works on the box.
Can you still change VC's? Does a program running in the background
but visible (e.g. "print all the positive integers less than MAXINT,
one per second") keep running?
> Can anybody tell me why this happening? I can't seem to get around it.
> Its especially a pain in the ass since I'm scheduled to meet with a
> PC/104 company tomorrow to see if linux will run on there hardware but
> it'll be a waste of my time if linux just locks up again. (And it will
> look bad for linux :-(
fsck. Try lower CPU clocks, PIO modes, etc. Check your gzip and tar
binaries, just in case. Try a different hard disk.
Keith