Hi everyone. I think I'm in over my head whith this stuff and was
wondering if anyone could help me out.
I'm using an NEC pentuim 166 box; Even when it's just running Win95, it
gives you that 'dubious hardware' feeling, kind of a gut instinct, ya
know? Well I put RedHat 5.1 on it so I could do some real work, and it
behaves, well, just plain silly. Let me itemise my probs.
1. The problems I do get come and go, seemingly at random, when I
reinstall the system.
2. On some reinstalls, emacs-x11 segfaults (11) immediately upon
execution, on the terminal or X. On some installs, emacs-nox is fine; on
others, it segfaults after a little typing. On one install, it would only
die when I typed the second '<' of the c++ output operator in a little
program I was testing it with.
3. I've yet to be able to compile a kernel completely. On one install it
will always die at the same place; If I reinstall the system, it will die
consistently at a different place. Sometimes the 'make menuinstall' code
will fail to compile. The problems are consistent in a given install;
reinstall, and they are consistent in different way. I read the sig11 FAQ
and tried the memory refresh w/dd, but it came up negative; it still
stoped in the same place.
4. During the actual install process, sometimes important packages will
give script errors (bash, dev, stuff like that); I start over and it's
smooth as silk - no script errors.
5. On most installs, X works but 'netscape' gives me a 'bus error'
response in the xterm, and 'netscape-communicator' does nothing but put
the load meter over the top. On some, no problems. On some, I get the
licence agrement and 2 empty windows that usually ask permission to write
new directories and stuff, then it just sits there.
6. sendmail has worked on only one install. If I try 'sendmail root <
mailtest' it segfaults.
There's other stuff, but these are the most obvious to me. Am I nuts? Is
there such a thing as a randomly consistent hardware problem? It's a RH5.1
stock install w/everything selected. The hardware is all stright-forward
stuff, IDE drive w/2 partitions, ATAPI CD, ATI Mach64 on the MB, just
plain jane stuff. If this stuff sounds like it could happen in the same
reality that most of us live in, please reply; anything short of wild
speculation is welcome, since I've already tried that.
Thanks,
--Drew
