It's been my experience that hard locks are due to hardware failures,
sometimes intermittent -- which are the best kind. Is the network alive
still, e.g., can you ssh in or ping it?

Assuming a hardware failure, and with windows running OK, it would be
hardware used just by linux, which would be your disk drives.  You said
you ran checks on the data partitions but did you check the swap?  Try
creating a new swap partition, switch over to it, and make sure you're
not using the old.

It's a bit of a long shot, but could be the problem.

 -gordon

On Mon, 2002-10-14 at 08:17, Victor Odhner wrote:
> No response from the list after some 35 hours.
> I'm still twisting in the wind with this one.
> Any ideas, anyone?
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RH 7.3 Locking Up - Help!
> Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:55:22 -0700
> From: Victor Odhner <vodhner@cox.net>
> Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> 
> Hi, folks.  I need some diagnostic tips here.
> 
> Tonight I have found that I can no longer work
> under RH 7.3 on my dual-boot system.  It keeps
> locking up, very early into each session,
> whether working in X or at the console prompt.
> Win98SE is running fine.
> 
> I think I'm always hitting the disk when it
> happens.  The mouse and keyboard stop
> responding to all input, and the reset
> button is the only way out.
> 
> X is running in every case, but I can hang it
> without even logging onto X, instead working
> in a console window.  In that case, my lockups
> generally happen when I CD to a different
> volume, or once when I tried to mount one.
> In many cases this is a VFAT or FAT-32 volume,
> because I have all my Win98 volumes mounted.
> 
> I'm running three IDE drives.  Because I had
> to shut it off rudely, I ran the "File System
> Integrity Check" which went through all my
> mounted volumes.  The Linux volumes are Ext3.
> I also went over to Windows and ran Scandisk
> on all three physical drives, though not on
> all partitions.  No sign of disk trouble.
> 
> I'm guessing some sort of kernel corruption.
> 
> I have very, very little time to tinker
> with the system, so this is killing me.
> 
> Ideas on how I can diagnose this?
> 
> I'm thinking that installing RH 8.0 might
> possibly overcome the problem.  That's a
> very Redmondian Voodoo approach, but I
> have no ideas at this point.
> 
> I sent this as a separate follow-up message:
>    Note -- I just ran in single-user mode to save
>    my work over to a Windows partition, and there
>    was no problem with that session:  cd, mount -a,
>    editing on fstab, all went fine.
> 
> Vic
> 
> http://members.cox.net/vodhner/
>     -- or --
> http://www.newearth.org/~victor/resume.html
> 
> 
> 
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change  you mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>