Subject: Re: Debugging possible hardware problems
Organization: Andrews University
From: hernandz@andrews.edu (Aldy Hernandez)
Lines: 27

>>I suspect the external cache, but I have no real evidence for this.
>>
>>	. Suggestions about the cause of the problem
>
>	Bad memory, bad motherboard, bad cache.
>>
>>	. Suggestions about how to debug the problem
>>
>
>	turn off cache.

GCC and other big programs seemed to crash about 15% of the time for me.
gcc gave something like "program as got fatal signal 11" and when doing
anything past the complexity of elvis, kermit, etc, I got kernel general
protection faults at *least* once a session.

I disabled my cache as suggested, and bingo, Linux is as stable as a rock
(it hasn't given me a core dump or kernel error yet).

Does any one know why the cache would do something like this?

Aldy
--
hernandz@andrews.edu
--------------------
If programmers are paid by the hour, how do you suppose the array
X [1..1000] is initialized?-- "More Programming Pearls"
