[GLLUG] apt died... and I killed it.

[Sean O'Malley]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Thomas Hruska wrote:

> Usually Linux will refuse to boot (kernel panic all over the place) if
> there are hardware problems.  It isn't very tolerant of hardware
> failures.  And the latest kernels pick up and enable SMP automatically,
> IIRC...and a LOT of people would be running into problems with apt-get
> if problems were SMP-related.

Only if it is trying to -use- the bad area of memory. If it is a
loaded library that stays loaded and never gets used, it won't bother a
thing. You wont know it until the load order changes and something else
gets loaded in that spot then you get crashes.

If it is in the upper part of the memory, then it will randomly start
acting flaky when you are doing something resource intensive like
compiling KDE or Gnome.

On that particular hardware, I -believe- it was pretty picky about having
to use low-density memory. You couldnt use the cheap high density memory
without errors. However, you could also use a faster CAS latency and you
can use pc133 ram in it. There was some early pc100 ram that wasnt up to
spec, and didnt work right in that generation machine. Also just from
experience, the Apple system will report less memory then you physically
have when it is going bad so if you put in a gig of memory and it is only
showing 768, then you know you have bad memory. :)

It might not be the issue either, but linux is infamous of keeping stuff
in memory until it needs to use that memory, so that may explain the
continuous errors like that or may not. =)