[CentOS] I have a test system that hangs hard...

[Kay Diederichs]

Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> I have a test system:  Centos 5.2 on an OQO, that has been hanging 
> hard.  I have to unplug it and pull the battery so I can then cold start it.
> 
> This last time all I did was open a terminal window and SU to root, then 
> start the lastest build of SIP Communicator (which uses JRE 1.6.0_10).  
> I was not even making a test phone call at the time.  Oh, and the system 
> only runs IPv6, no v4 addressing.
> 
> So how do I find out what is causing the hard lockups?

if the problem is triggered reproducibly by building SIP C, then just 
don't use X when starting the build; change to a console (Ctrl-Alt-F1) 
and watch out for kernel messages indicating a software (kernel) problem.

If the problem is due to hardware, there is a chance that memtest86+ 
will find bad memory. If it's a bad disk, you can check with smartctl. 
There's are burn-in programs available; I use burnCPU to put load on 
multi-core systems. Compiling the Linux kernel a hundred times in a row 
is also a good test; not a single build should fail.

HTH,

Kay