Topic: brand new install of 4.1.1 keeps crashing

[christina]

I have been running 3.x successfully for a long time, and then finally upgraded to 4.0.1 (I think) in the past month.  Today I downloaded and installed 4.1.1.  The installation went smoothly, the restore worked fine, and when I start it up everything is hunky-dory (including webmail, yay!).  

However, after I completed the install I left for a while, then came back to browse the web from a machine on the network (which has also been working flawlessly).  I don't get anything, can't get on the internet, and can't connect to the e-smith manager.  So I look at the server console, and it's crashed.  I've never seen Linux crashes so don't even know how to troubleshoot them.  

Please help... what should I be looking for in the error messages that are splashed across the console?  I don't know what's important in the error message, and it's a whole lot of text.  I know there was a general protection fault, an "Aiee, killing interrupt handler," and a "Kernel panic: attempted to kill the idle task!"  I will gladly note any other pertinent info.

Unfortunately I have to reboot the server to get back online when I want to send a help message such as this one, so I guess the next time it happens I'll just have to write down as much of the pertinent data as possible and then go searching for a cause.

Thanks for any light you may be able to shed...

Christina.

[christina]

Well, I may have solved my problem..

I searched on the error message I included in my last post ("Aiee, killing interrupt handler," and a "Kernel panic: attempted to kill the idle task!" [In swapper task - not syncing]) and there was one cryptic message concerning a cd-rom conflict with the IDE hard drive.  So I pulled out my cd-rom and lo and behold, no crashing yet.  I have been up for 1 hour and 47 minutes.  If I last through the night I'll consider myself golden.

Guess I just have to be a little bolder about finding out what all those messages mean.  I mean, I can decipher and solve a WinNT BSOD - that's my job.  But Linux is still somewhat foreign to me.  I'm learning.

Christina.