John Hearns wrote:
> Michael Hannon wrote:
>> Greetings.  One of the profs here has a dual-processor (Intel Pentium 
>> D CPU 3.20GHz) Dell workstation.  The prof was complaining about 
>> browser instability when he  was using SL 4.1.  I didn't see any 
>> problems when I used his system for browsing, but I figured that it 
>> couldn't hurt to upgrade to SL 4.4.  We proceeded to do the upgrade 
>> "in place", according to the "For those a little more cautious" recipe 
>> at:
>>
> We have an automated test rig in the lab, where we can network boot 
> machines which have been reported as troublesome. We can then run 
> memtest and stress tests on them for a long period.
> 
> 
> I would advise running memtest on this machine for a day or so, then 
> some CPU heating stress tests.
> Download Stresslinux  http://www.stresslinux.org
> Burn a CD and boot the machine from that, or if you have a PXE setup use 
> the PXE bootable version.
> Boot into memtest first, and let it run for at least 24 hours.
> Then boot up and run cpuburn
> 
> My gut feeling is a saggy powersupply. Either faulty or underspecced for 
> two processors plus lots of RAM.
> I assume from what you say that in the syslogs there is nothing - the 
> system just halts for no reason?

Yes, as you say, the system appears to halt for no reason.  One of my 
colleagues suggested that we pop the box open and look for problems, but 
I also like your idea of running memtest, etc.  Thanks, John.

					- Mike
-- 
Michael Hannon            mailto:[log in to unmask]
Dept. of Physics          530.752.4966
University of California  530.752.4717 FAX
Davis, CA 95616-8677