[Cialug] Crashing with errors in mcelog

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On 2009-03-03 at 09:32:52, Matthew Nuzum wrote:
>Regarding crashes coming in pairs, is it possible the reason for the
>second crash is a warm-boot vs. cold-boot problem? For example, I've
>seen in several instances where a computer will not properly reset
>itself on warm-boot (reboot command or ctrl+alt+del or etc) and crash
>very shortly after boot. However if you hit the power button and give
>the computer 30s of rest then it works.

I've seen situations similar to what you describe, where warm and cold 
boots differ in their result. In my case the machine crashes too 
totally for a warm boot to be possible, so i reboot by hitting the 
reset button on the front of the case. I didn't power cycle it. But i 
do let the BIOS RAM checks run to completion (does that zero out the 
RAM?). Hitting the reset button in most cases *should* be equivalent to 
a power outage, but i know it isn't *entirely* identical. The hard 
drives keep spinning for one thing, and i'm guessing miscellaneous 
device memory (such as drive controllers, graphics card, sound card 
buffer) might not be reset the same.

After the second boot the machine seems to run fine for awhile. Several 
months ago it had this double crash problem, and then it was fine until 
this weekend. I figured i'd have a few more months again, but then it 
did it this morning. Arrrgh.

I hope the problem turns out to be something relatively cheap and easy 
to fix, like RAM. All the components in the machine are name-brand and 
i've had it running 24/7 for about a year and a half though, so i'm not 
sure why it would start having trouble now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA