7.2-STABLE i386 box crashing -- clues?

[Peter Jeremy]

I can't offer any solutions but I have some more questions...

On 2009-Nov-11 09:37:47 -0800, David Wolfskill <david at catwhisker.org> wrote:
>Every once in a while, it just crashes -- hard.  It loses video output
>at that point; Ctl+Alt+Esc doesn't appear to change anything; entering
>(say) "reset" blindly at that point has no apparent effect.

Roughly how often?

Has anything unusual happened lately?  Brownout, blackout, power surge,
lightning, heatwave, ...

>accordingly, had attached a SCSI host adaptor via PCI riser card.  Since
>I had nothing actually connected to the card, I pulled it out of the
>machine before bringing it back up.

Did you also pull the riser card?  Riser cards don't have a spectacularly
high reputation.

> (I also fleft around for
>excessively warm spots; nothing.  All fans spin up, as well.)

I don't suppose you also studied the capacitors on the motherboard.
Are any showing any signs of bulges?

Have you tried reseating everything?

>Flaky CPU?  Flaky power supply?  How might I tell?

CPU shouldn't go flaky unless it's been overheated.  In my experience,
PSUs are the least reliable part of consumer-grade hardware but about
the only way to check is to swap it.  If you've got a DMM, you could
check all the rails but there are lots of failure modes that won't
show up that way.

Have you checked the voltage/temperature screen in the BIOS?  Does
anything look abnormal?

Are you using a PS/2 or USB keyboard?

Are you running X?

At this stage, my suggestion would be to try swapping the PSU.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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