On Saturday 15 January 2005 05:26 pm, Vaughn Treude kindly wrote:
> On Saturday 15 January 2005 10:45, you wrote:
> > I'm running Slackware 10.0 and KDE 3.2.3. I had stuff set up the way I
> > like it, and little by little things seem to be breaking. I've noticed
> > this before, and it's almost like I need to do a fresh install to get
> > everything working again. I'm waiting for 10.1 to come out before I do
> > another install.
>
> How strange!  I must admit I haven't used Slackware in years, but software
> rot is something I associate only with MS systems.  I have had some
> occasional trouble with my notebook (RH 7.3) probably due to frequent
> reboots; a while ago the sound stopped working with I think was due to a
> corrupted device file.  (I know the hardware is OK because it still works
> when I boot it into Windows.)   Do you reboot or turn your system off
> frequently?  My two Linux tower systems are pretty much left on all the
> time, and I don't have trouble unless I've done substantial monkeying with
> the libraries.  (That would be a good topic for a talk sometime - what are
> the rules for  compatibility of different library versions, etc., etc.)

I reboot maybe once a month or less often. If we have a bad thunderstorm, or 
if I want to open the case and clean the fan filter screens, but that's about 
it.
>
> > For instance, I used to be able to play music CD's from the CD-ROM drive,
> > either by pressing the play button on the drive or using the KDE CD
> > player or XMMS. I can't do that anymore. It doesn't "see" /dev/hdd
> > anymore. It used to work, then a few months ago it got all glitchy. I
> > managed to reconfigure things somehow in the CD player app and it worked,
> > but now it's failed again. Any apps I try to use generally lock up while
> > searching for the drive. If it finds the disc at all, it plays for one
> > second then stops.
> >
> > When I press the play button on the drive itself, it revs up then slacks
> > off, over and over. It used to work, now it doesn't. I haven't changed
> > anything in /etc/fstab, or anything else that I know of. I know the drive
> > is good because I use it for ripping stuff to my harddrive all the time.
>
> That's strange too.  The only time I've had intermittent trouble with CD or
> DVD drives is when they're on the verge of going bad.
>
> > Another example is SMTP in Kmail. It will work fine for months, then
> > suddenly I can't send mail from tigerflag.com, and neither can my husband
> > in his user account. I get an error message that it can't find the
> > account. This happened a few months ago. At one point I rebooted the
> > computer and things were fine again. When it happened yesterday, I
> > finally toggled the default account to intergate.com (I use two accounts:
> > smtp.intergate.com and smtp.tigerflag.com) and it started working again
> > for _both_ accounts. It was like something got jammed, and once I
> > successfully sent from intergate.com, then tigerflag.com worked again. It
> > doesn't make any sense!
>
> Can you still browse the web when this happens?

Yes, and I can receive mail, too. But when SMTP gets corrupted or whatever it 
is, I have to remove all my mail in the Outbox que, and toggle the default 
SMTP account to get it to work again. Then both accounts work again.
>
> > While I'd appreciate any suggestions for fixing the CD problem, I'm
> > actually more interested in why my setup seems to be deteriorating over
> > time.
> >
> Sorry I can't offer much in the way of advice, but hopefully someone else
> will have a different perspective.  Good luck!
>
> Vaughn

Thanks for your support, anyway. I feel like I'm either going crazy or really 
dumb about something...

Siri Amrit
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