Hi neocode,
It turns out that AMD Athlon has some issues with 7.3 and in
particular with the kernel, but I could be wrong. In times like these,
your best bet would be to post to the many linux newsgroups. They are
found under the common heading of comp.os.linux.* In my message below,
I'm reproducing some important posts that were made in regard to a
similar question raised a while ago. If your situation matches any of
the posts, you might want to do as advised and let me know if it
worked.
First, the link to the start of the discussion:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=sjgufa.4ra.ln%40hairy.machine.org&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dredhat%2B7.3%2Bathlon%2Bproblems%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dsjgufa.4ra.ln%2540hairy.machine.org%26rnum%3D1
Now, a list of diagnoses offered by posters in reply to that question:
1. "
Im guessing its locking up in X windows. Did you install KDE or GNOME
as
the default windows manager and which are you trying to use. I have
RH7.1 and gnome and kde are both installed but gnome is the default
and
kde has never worked properly. Try the other one and see if you have
the
same problem.
When the machine locks, try dropping to a console, CTRL+ALT+F1 and try
loging in there. Then to a top to see if something odd is running, or
if
something is eating huge amounts of cpu/mem. If you are new to the
console, use the man pages (man topic) to get some quick info on
commands."
2. "
The first thing I'd do is get the updated non-athlon kernel, install
it,
get it set up as a boot option and boot into it. If it doesn't lock
up,
there's your problem.
You could also try reinstalling with 'linux noathlon' at the boot
prompt,
but that would only test the same theory. You'd still have to set
everything up again. Getting the kernel would let you test it without
losing anything.
There have been a lot of on-going problems with the athlon. A lot of
people don't seem to have problems. About as many do.
May not solve a thing. But it's certainly common enough to at least
chance
that as a fix."
3. "The 2.4 kernel has a problem with the AMD chips. Use a non-AMD,
i586 or
something. AMD and the hackers, AFAIK, are working on the problem."
4.
"> It APPEARS that the problem is related to a single website.
Amdzone. I
> have been web browsing, usenetting etc. no problems all afternoon. I
go
> to Amdzone and BOOM.
>
> I suppose I can just skip that site, it seems most people do anyway
:)
Steve,
Does amdzone use Flash with sound? The Linux Flash player tries to
grab
an exclusive write lock to the sound device, and I know that under
Gnome
at least this would hang my browser."
Now, here's some advice I can give you from my own experiences with
Linux. I have used Linux for the past 5 years albeit on an ix86
architecture. At the outset, I've had absolutely no problems save a
few hiccups now and then.
The thing to realize about Redhat's releases are that, except for the
x.2 all the versions have been known to be rather unstable. Redhat 7.3
is no exception. I've heard that 8.0 is really stable and sleek too.
You can either downgrade to the stabler 7.2 or upgrade to 8.0
If you didn't know it already, the kernel mailing list, in spite of
its heavy traffic, is the best place to look out for messages
regarding generic errors (that is, after you have determined that it
is indeed the kernel that is at fault).
The linux kernel mailing list can be found at:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/
I have a gut feeling that the problem has got to do with either the
video card or the kernel. They are usually the culprits.
I'd dig up more if I could have more information about your setup. But
let me know if any of the above pointers worked, and I can then post
this as an answer (with a few more touches up).
Regards. |
