[ILUG] A frustrating system (hardware?) failure: any tips on how to resolve

[paul at clubi.ie]

On Sun, 5 Sep 2010, Michael Conry wrote:

> crashed after only a little bit of use (just small stuff like Web, 
> email, etc.,).  Trying to reboot, it failed.  Then tried safe mode, 
> and it worked, though I've since found that that was a red-herring. 
> The shut-down is a bit random, and may happen during first stage 
> boot (after grub, before splash), may come during fsck, or may come 
> after using the system for a few minutes to half an hour.
>
> If the failure happens early in the boot, I get a stack-trace with
> contents that I could only photograph.  I'll transcribe some bits here
> in case it means anything to anyone...
> lots of irq stuff...
> ret_from_intr+0x0/0x11
> <EOI> <#MC> [<lots of address stuff>] ?panic+0x111/0x137
> ?panic+0xa1/0x137
> mce_panic+0x1e32/0x210
> do_machine_check+0x7d3/0x820
> machine_check+0x1c/0x30

> I am now thinking the problem is hardware related.

Probably. The machine paniced cause of a Machine Check Exception 
(MCE). These are raised by the hardware for uncorrectable hardware 
errors, such as ECC failures, temperature limits, etc. There may be 
further information logged regarding the MCE.

The way it crashes after different periods of time reminds me of 
problems I've had with temperature - if you let the machine alone a 
while to cool and start it does it get further than if you restart it 
immediately? As others have said, did you check the fans?

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
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