[CentOS] guest vms crash host systems

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 1:18 PM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:

> Negative wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:41 AM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> >> Brian Mathis wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:16 PM, Negative <negativebinomial at gmail.com
> >
> >> > wrote:
> >>>> I built guest vm's one for Windows 7 and one for Windows XP using the
> >>>> virtual machine manager on a  just updated to centos 5.7, and they
> >>>> are both crashing the host machine. They run only  for a few minutes,
> <snip>
> >> > Is this new hardware?  Have you run any hardware burn testing (CPU,
> >> > RAM, etc...) and/or memtest86+ on the RAM?  This sounds like a
> >> > hardware issue to me.
> >
> > It's about three years old. I had one hardware issue a year ago in which
> a
> > video card fried, but it's been great. I will run memtest this afternoon.
> >
> >> I agree with Brian - it may be coincidental that you built the VMs, and
> >> then it started crashing.
> <snip>
> > -- and that would've been my fault. Then, every time X is running the
> > guest and host crash.
> >>
> >> One other question: is selinux enabled?
> >
> > Yes. No warnings, though.
>
> More and more it sounds like a hardware issue. Hmm, every time X is
> running, and you say you had one video card fried - how did it fry? Also,
> is this machine on a good quality surge protector? Have you had a
> thunderstorm, or power outages recently?
>
>        mark
>

The vendor told me that the particular video card model (I forget which) had
some flaw. In any case the fan stopped running, and it heated up. I usually
use the machine remotely but I was at the console at that moment. The
monitor started flickering and then went gray.

The vendor sent a replacement, but I had thrown an old ATI in before it
arrived. When the crashes occurred now, I finally put in the replacement.
Same behavior.

The surge protector is good. I live in NYC and the biggest environmental
hazard is the cleaning lady, who has in the past tripped the surge protector
switch.

I fear you're right about the hardware. But as far as I can tell everything
else works fine. I went overboard in buying two quad processors -- so I
could live with one if that's the problem.