Is my computer dying?

[Walter Dnes]

  Thursday evening I decided that I wanted to go from...
  - 10 user consoles and one X session  (and kernel messages going to
    console 12), to...
  -  9 user consoles and two X sessions (and kernel messages going to
    console 12)
on my machine named "m1800" (1800 mhz speed... dohhh).

  This would accomadate Gimp editing digital photos at 1600 X 1200, and
regular X usage (surfing, etc) at a more reasonable 1152 X 864.  To get
rid of console 10, I deleted the appropriate line from /etc/inittab and
rebooted, and waited for m1800 to come back up... and waited... and
waited... and got "L 99 99 99 99"... etc. after the PCI device listings.

  After a couple of unsuccessful reboot attempts, I had a look at the
BIOS.  The clock was correct, but the BIOS couldn't find my hard drive
or my CD-ROM burner or my DVD-ROM.  I switched over to "m450", my "hot
backup" machine, a 6-year-old Dell 450 mhz PIII with 128 megs of RAM.
Let's just say that working on a 2560 X 1920 digital photo in Gimp is
not "fun" on that machine.  Oh well, thanks to redundant backups, I only
lost a few days of email.

  I've started looking for a new machine.  I downloaded and burned the
Gentoo 2005.1 ISO, to be ready when I got the new machine.  I tried it
on the "dead machine" and got various failures.  After a bit of screwing
around with BIOS settings, I managed to get it to recognize the CD-ROM
today, and boot the Gentoo install CD.

  The hard drive looked OK, I got the CHS (Cylinder/Head/Sector) numbers
from "fdisk -l" and rebooted and entered them manually into the BIOS, but
no luck.  I booted the install CD again, chrooted as per the install
procedure, ran lilo, and rebooted... successfully this time.

  I'm sending this email from m1800.  Was that a "cosmic ray" event?  Do
I trust it, or do I keep looking for a new machine?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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