From: reames@aries.towson.edu (John W. Reames III)
Subject: misc linux problems.
Reply-To: reames@aries.towson.edu (John W. Reames III)
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:13:14 GMT

I think that first off, perhaps i should describe my system... 
80486DX-50Eisa motherboard [opti chipset, "free" is the name of the
        mfr.]
adaptec aha1742a scsi controller [properly installed in a bus master
        type slot] [enhanced mode]
16 megs ram [4 4megx9 70ns simms]
teac 1.44 meg and 1.2 meg floppies.
maxtor lxt-535s hard disk [id=0]
ati vga wonder clone [chipset revisiion 4]
dtk 2 serial board, 8250@com1[standard address and IRQ] 16550afn@com2
        [ditto]
generic 2s/1p/1g board, parallel at lpt1, irq7, first serial, 16450
        com3 address, irq5, 16450 com4 address, irq9
[i doubt these have any bearing on any of the problems, but here the
        rest is]
NEC Multisync GS [an oldie]
focus fk5001 keyboard.
us robotics courier HST 14.4k/v.42bis
logitech [low cost, old m-8 series i think] mouse, seems to be a
        microsloth clone]
tower case, 250 watt p/s, etc. 

hard disk is partitioned as followw
70 megs ms-loss 5.0 [sda1]
16 megs swap [sda2]
16 megs swap [sda3]
400+ megs linux efs [sda4]
all the partition types are correct, etc.

okay heres the problems list... 
[this is in both turbo [50mhz] and "slow" [8mhz]
gcc wont compile very much at all [gcc2.3.3, i486 binaries]
any files over about 20k and it utterly gags. it doesntmatter..
textmode, x, kernel, it doesnt care... mileage varies, the caus
varies. usually it is gcc having a fatal error, sometimes cpp, usually
cc1 got fatal signal 11 [i have also seen 4 and 6] [why would it seg
fault? i have at least 8 megs free ram and the swap is untouched [it
all shows up in free]
i would like to compile the kernel but have been unable to with 
.99pl2,3,and 4 sources.... 
make config.. okay no problem
make dep... oops it always dies.. the furthest it has gotten was to
the scsi or sound support. it has sometimes died as erly as the third
line.

i also see "unable to handle kernel paging request" a lot...
[usually when i see it, all the vc's are locked, adn the system is
totally hosed. [hard reset is all i can do] [this happens at pretty
much any point... exiting emacs [only if i edit a file, save the
buffer and then exit, it usually doesnt happen when i kill the buffer
first... and i reinstalled the binaries..] x has caused it.. when it
is idling.. it will just lock and die and leave me in text mode with
the paging error...  that seems to be all i can recall at this
point... [oh! the errors occur with .98p5 kernel, .99p2 kernel [sls]
and .99pl4 kernel [which tree@midget.towson.edu was kind enough to
compile for me...] 

other than that the system is nice. pretty speedy, x works well, lilo
[0.8] works  fine, etc. emacs works *most* of the time... 

[after those problems get straightened out, i will worry about getting
term to work...] 

i have seen no references to these problems recently, although i did
see a post a while back about the gcc problem.. with 2 megs ram and
little swap, and that it dissapeared with more ram... but i havent
seen anything about 16 ram and 32 swap.... 

any and all help is appreciated... 
thanks in advance. 
-john.
[if you prefer to use email for the replies, reames@midget.towson.edu
will work pretty well ;-) ]

Panama plutonium Soviet Kennedy colonel Nazi Mossad nuclear bomb DES
Rule Psix cryptographic Honduras strategic Treasury

-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
John W. Reames III       | "If we get too much attention, it gets hard to 
reames@midget.towson.edu | overrule, so often fragile power turns to scorn
s72trea@toe.towson.edu   | and ridicule." -Rush