On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 11:54:44 +0000
Denis Hennessy <dhennessy(a)valista.com> wrote:
I'm trying fedora on an IBM X31 laptop which has no native serial
port*. I've tried various kernels including 2.4.22-1.2135.nptl,
2.4.22-1.2149.nptl and 2.6.1-1.53. After running for somewhere between 3
hours and 2 days, the machine will lock up hard. X will freeze and
nothing short of a power cycle will get any response. Sometime, the caps
lock light will be flashing.
The only other wierdness (I'm not sure it's related) is that
applications will occasionally exit for no reason. [...]
First I should say I'm not too optimistic about it, because
applications dying randomly usually point to a bad SODIMM. So, in the
end, it's not likely a console can help a lot. Both 2.4 and 2.6
crashing tells us something too.
That said, try to set up Ingo's netconsole. At least you should be
able to see the oops when LEDs flash. I do not remember if netconsole
is enabled in Fedora. It might need some rebuilding, but this is what
I would do. Start here:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/netdev/archive/2001-09/msg00107.html
Do not go for USB serial console, it's pretty much useless for
cases like this.
Good luck,
-- Pete