[Techtalk] mysterious system halts - how to prevent/fix/detect?

[Mary]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 05:41:38AM -0700, Julie Meloni wrote:
> * Sunday night at 8, I rebooted at 4 the next morning .
> * Then Monday night at 7, I rebooted at 4 the next morning.
> * Yesterday it halted at 4 in the afternoon, I rebooted it at 8pm.
> * Just five hours later it halted, I rebooted it, and it's currently
> still running.
> 
> This is the current output of free:
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:        261732     258348       3384          0      91568     132760
> -/+ buffers/cache:      34020     227712
> Swap:       238936          0     238936

Can you tell us which kernel version? (uname -a will tell you)

I'm by no means an expert on this kind of thing, but certain kernels are
more prone to this kind of thing than others. Mind you, if you haven't
compiled a new kernel for that machine, and it stayed up for 8 months
with only 1 reboot, then it is unlikely to be the kernel...

-Mary.