Followup: Can an installation "deteriorate"...?

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Author: Siri Amrit Kaur
Date:  
To: plug-discuss
Old-Topics: Re: Can an installation "deteriorate" over time?
Subject: Followup: Can an installation "deteriorate"...?
On Sunday 16 January 2005 10:07 pm, der.hans kindly wrote:
> Am 15. Jan, 2005 schwätzte Siri Amrit Kaur so:
> > 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.
>
> The main ways a system can 'deteriorate' are:
>
> 1. further software installs
> 2. software updates
> 3. software, especially kernel drivers, getting wedged
> 4. hardware flaking
>
> 1 and 2 can cause conf file, lib and /dev changes.

I didn't do 1 or 2. Tried once, broke stuff, reinstalled and left it
as is.
>
> 3 can cause 4 and vice versa.
>
> Rebooting ( as much as I hate recommending it ) can fix 3 and maybe
> 4.
>
> > 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.


I finally got around to rebooting my computer (I hate doing that).
First, I rebooted into SimplyMepis, where my cdrom performed
perfectly with KSCD. Then, I rebooted back into Slackware, and now it
plays fine again! The physical drive is fine. What causes a "kernel
wedge"???

> > 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!
>
> Sounds like Kmail ( or some lib ) had marked the connection as
> being down and changing the default reset the flag.


I think you were right about this, too. I've since noticed that it
changed the default again on it's own. It still works, though.

Thanks to everybody who replied.

Siri Amrit
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