Hard crashes, what should I be checking for? [SOLVED]

Illiander · Apprentice Joined: 22 Feb 2011 Posts: 255

For a while now I've been getting hard crashes* when playing certain games in wine, I wasn't too worried, as I figured it was a bug with running wine-9999.

But I recently tried to emerge the latest gcc, and every time I try to emerge it, it does the same thing partway through the compile.

If someone could give me a checklist of things to check to diagnose this, I'd appreciate it.

I'm not a total newb with linux, but I have't had to dig around in gentoo's internals much, so tell me what you need to know to help.

*no shutdown time, the machine just stops, as though someone flipped the power switch.

Quincy · Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 11:49 am Post subject:

Not a list, but my first guess:
Playing games and compiling --> high CPU load --> temperature problem?!

Illiander · Apprentice Joined: 22 Feb 2011 Posts: 255

And what do you know, I open up my tower, take off the heatsink fan (there was a layer of dust trapped *under* it), take a vacuume to the whole thing, and now I get through a GCC compile without any issues.

I've been running for a few months since the first time this happened. Are there any tests (other than just waiting to see if it happens again/running a kernal compile lots) to see if this has done any permenant damage?

I'm running a 6-core system, so I suppose if one processor's broken, I'd be able to disable it?

Quincy · Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:38 pm Post subject:

If it locks down I would not expect any permanent damage. Most possibly there is a shutdown temperature set in BIOS to protect the CPU from overheating. If the CPU is broken the system won't even boot at all, I never heard of any spurious bug caused by overheating.

Illiander · Apprentice Joined: 22 Feb 2011 Posts: 255

That's good to know, Thanks

meradz · n00b Joined: 21 Jun 2010 Posts: 4