[ltp] Linux not stable

[Charles E Taylor IV]

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002 00:40:49 -0400 (EDT)
"surferjeff@excite.com" <surferjeff@excite.com> wrote:

> I have been experiencing a lot of instability using Linux.  I am trying
> to use Linux to specifically get away from MS's unstable products.

Mandrake's not exactly known as the most stable distribution of Linux ...
:)  Still, you shouldn't be having that much difficulty with it.

> For example, when I shutdown machine, I think my machine actually
> completes the shutdown process only about 30% of the time.  Usually it
> hangs on PCMCIA (even though there are no PCMCIA cards installed) or it
> hangs on the stopping logging part.

I noticed on an older (7.0) Red Hat that my system would take a long time
to shut down if I had plugged and unplugged any usb storage devices.  In
my case, a USB Zip drive and/or a Jamp3 MP3 player.

> Also, yesterday, I was browsing the internet (actually, MSDN) and the
> system just totally hosed itself.  It started reading and writing to the
> hard disk like crazy, and the whole system slowed to a crawl.  I did a
> "shutdown now", and it never really made it into the shutdown process.

I agree with the other poster who suggested that your system might not
have crashed, but you might have gotten hit by the "updateb" cron job. 
Best to just disable that entirely on a laptop.

-- 
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*  Charles Taylor <tomalek@mindspring.com>
*  Chemistry teacher, Linux enthusiast!
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*  College Chemistry website: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/
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