So Unstable and driving me mad!!

[Mark Haney]

Sven wrote:
> On 11/20/08, WipeOut <wipe_out at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> [...]
> 
>>  Firefox crashes all the time.. Thunderbird occasionally crashes..
>>  Openoffice freezes or wrecks documents.. Printing is a nightmare with
>>  errors or not printing correctly or at all..
>>
>>  I have used this exactly same hardware for 7.10 and its was fine.. About
>>  6 months ago I started having issues with Firefox on 7.10 but on 8.10 I
>>  just seem to have issues all the time..
>>
>>  So the fist thing I would like to do is make sure my hardware is good..
>>  Are there any system stress test apps that I can easily run to make sure
>>  its not a hardware issue??
> 
> Hi
> 
> What is your hardware vendor? Try using hardware diagnostics software
> from your hardware builder.
> 
> You don't need to do stress testing[0]. Stress testing doesn't
> diagnose hardware issues. With stress testing you can see whats the
> maximal load/users/connections/... on the system.

I disagree.  Stress testing can most definitely tell you if you have 
hardware issues.  Especially with memory and network.  You wouldn't 
believe how many times I've load tested a server and found memory that 
was bad on the upper address regions where normal usage wouldn't touch.

Not to mention the number of times I"ve found flaky network cards (and 
cables) by stress testing a system.  Running the devil out of a system 
(I'm rather partial to memory testing by compiling a large app (KDE, or 
something)) can tell you all sorts of things about the stability of the 
system.



-- 
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Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

Call (866) ERC-7110 for after hours support