Hi, My mandrake 8.2 stalls constantly while reading/writing files--during bootup, rpm installs, file access, Net surfing etc.-- and always does so at a different location, with the HD pilot light lit up. I have to use the power switch to reboot. It makes no difference whether I install in ext2 or ext3. Has anybody had similar experience with the new release? It seems the new kernel 2.4 read/write parameters are out of sync with my system hardware settings (300mhz mmx, ide hd 128mb ram). Would appreciate any insight or remedy. Thanx a million.

I have Mandrake 8.1 which would not install from my main CD-ROM/DVD on IDE 2 master. It would fail at random points. It eventually installed via my CDRW on IDE 2 slave funnily enough. I think your timing diagnosis is spot on. This install I have now seems OK although it does seem to 'churn' at certain disk operations but hasn't hung up yet.......I know that with Window$, DMA on certain drives can cause this lock up problem. My system is dual boot with WIN98se and LILO. Perhaps you could try disabling DMA through the bios as a temporary test, Try your hard disk first, set to PIO Mode 0 then boot into Linux. I'm probably barking up the wrong tree here but you never know. Either that or ring Alan Cox ;-)

Thanks, Dave. Hastily tried out your suggestions, but the malaise doesn't seem to abate. I haven't tried swapping primary-sec belt clips yet, and, oh, ringing up Wiz Cox ;-) Thanks again.

Hi Can u specify in more detail what exactly the problem or status after booting ur mandrake like the screen contents, failure demons.... Frequent Crashing can be avoided 1) install or uninstall any package thru the Utility. For Red Hat we have Red Hat Package Manager, For Windows we have Add/Remove Programs... Rather than Deleting Manually. 2) Donot Shutdown the system ubruptly or Direct power OFF. 3) if Power goes off than run scan disk i.e # fsck /dev/hda(partion in which u insatalled linux) and # sync . 4) Always have a backup copy of configuration files which are available in /etc directory for which u edit frequently with .bak as ext for convineance. 5) Frequntly check the log file in /var/log Right now look for these options Based upon ur reply i can tell u many more........

Thank you, Satya, for the diagnostic list. I have to use the power/reset switches because, once one of these routine calamities hits, no key press gets any response..ctl-alt-backspace/del. No error message is ever posted. It seems the kernel falls into a ten-mile deep blackhole in total coma. After rebooting at least a hundred times in the last two weeks or so since mdk8.2 came out, I don't bother with fsck any more, thinking ext3/journaling will do the job since it announces "complete recovery" on crash-booting. Could the cause of it all be some instabilibity lingering in the new kernel 2.4? or Could it be, I wonder, my second video card, real3d starfighter, which mdk does not seem to take in kindly? I'd love to hear from fellow mdk users about the components of their trouble-free systems, especially the video cards, on mandrake 8.x. Again, thanks a lot to all.

that it is the same for me . pc 350 pII 128 ram . I hate the 8.2 version . in fact I have installed 8.1 again bruno

I have the same problem with one of my box. I have found it was just limited to one of my servers. I was able to get 8.2 to work on my other server box and workstation. I will explain further, but want to warn this is a length description since I have tested this from Day one of the official 8.2 release. To explain my 2 boxes: The box having a problem (reference as Blue Box) -- an Abit BP6 motherboard with 2 celeron 433 processors with 768 MB RAM and a regular hard drive (I have it connected on the ATA66 side of the mb and even tried it on the ATA33 side as well), and a 16 MB graphics card TNT2 type. My second box (referenced as white box) not having a problem is a Mainboard motherboard K7AMA with an Athlon XP 1300 CPU, 512 MB Ram, same hard drive and video card as the other box. (I swapped them from box to box as I was testing things). No matter now much I install on the blue box or what processes runs, I am locking up in the exact same spot. It does not matter what disk structure I use ext2, ext3, lvm (ext3), etc. I run MandrakeUpdate and successfully configure a location for updates. The program points up there are updates I need, I select them, and as it is saying it is download them, it locks. As ben stated I can not type the keyboard now can I use the mouse. I have to reset from the power switch. The reboot is successful in coming back. As I run MandrakeUpdate, I can seen via TOP the box run up to an average load of 10.5 and just increase by 0.1 to 0.08 each second. When it climbs past 7.00 I can not even stop the crash. If I fatally end MandrakeUpdate, TOP still registers an increase in the load average. Basically at this point I have to reboot. If I load the box in a non graphical mode it works find without any problems. It is sad I can not run the update program to finish the updating process. I can live without a graphical mode, but it makes things difficult when updating. I have resulted to do it manually myself. The white box runs with the same processes as the blue box without any problems. Remember the video card and hard drives where the same as the blue box -- I swapped them between the 2 boxes. The blue box is running 2.4.18-6mdksmp kernel and the white box is running 2.4.18-6mdk kernel. As to fuel that 8.2 does work, I have a workstation which is an Asus mb (A7V133) with 1.5 GB RAM, 120 MB harddrives, G400 Dual head video, and Soundblaser Live soundcard. It is using 2.4.18-6.mdkenterprise kernel. It never crashes. I prefer to run the blue box than the white box because the 2 CPUs give me a faster response with all the tasks. I have taxed the white box up to a load average of 37.2 and it has come back down to 0.80 without locking. [NOTE: the box averages upwards to 0.8 when idle.] As the load increases on the box it makes the server run real slow when I am using as a file server (samba), Domino server, DNS server, Apache web, postfix mail, MySQL, and a few other processes. Under 8.1 the box rocked with the above services. The blue box can run everything in 8.2 but I have to avoid the graphical screen. I would like to hear more from people who know what else I could check. I would like to know if it is X Windows or the kernel. Cheers,