X died overnight

[Gary Hodges]

On 3/14/06, Alan McKinnon <alan at linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 March 2006 17:37, Gary Hodges wrote:
> > Second time this has happened.  First time was a few months ago.
> > The following repeats thirteen times at irregular intervals over a
> > three hour period in the log file.  I edited out the time hacks to
> > make it more readable.
>
> Gary,
>
> I can't tell what the problem might be from the log, but the
> irregularity of it does ring a loud alarm for me. Highly erratic
> problems without apparent triggers or causes are more often than not
> hardware-related. The common suspects are failing RAM and power
> supply.
>
> RAM is best tested with memtest, run it more than once to have a valid
> test case. If you prefer the box to stay up the old-fashioned way of
> compiling big packages like a kernel over and over is still an
> excellent test. Power supplies are best tested by replacing them.
>
> This might not be your problem at all but there's nothing worse than
> trying to find a weird software fault only to discover after much
> effort that it's hardware after all.

Hi Alan,

What do you make of the free swap space going to zero?  I'm with you
on hardware related problems.  I've had my share: power supply, hot
CPUs, flakey memory, etc.  In fact, just last week I replaced the PS
in this computer.  I might chaulk it up to replacement PS, but I've
had this same thing happen months ago.  This is actually the third
time it has happened.  I posted here the last time but got scant
replies.

Gary