David Freeman wrote:
All,
I have done what I thought was impossible. I have managed to get Linux to crash! I was simply writting an email and sudenly the Harddisk went into major hammering mode and the machine locked up. I had to do a hard reset!
I had thought this was impossible!
Linux can be fairly unstable depending on lots of factors! (but still more stable than Windows) usually it will be some dodgy modules in your kernel (you are running a stable kernel aren't you?).
Loads of our developers used kernel 2.3 when it was being developed (prior to it becoming 2.4) and they had no end of problems, things like NFS being broken and also hard disk corruption. There are also some very strange bugs in different versions of the kernel although an upgrade to the latest version can fix them, it can of course also cause more new problems though.
The final thing I could suggest is that maybe you have some faulty hardware? or are you overclocking your machine? I had a Solaris box fall over the other week and after a thorough examination came to the conclusion that a stray cosmic ray must of hit it and caused it to bork!
Adam