Re: Thinkpad 600X and RH7.2

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Anthony Dardis wrote:

>I have installed RedHat 7.2 on a Thinkpad 600X. I am wondering why my 
>machine crashes sporadically.
>
>Video: Neomagic 256 (for laptop/notebook)
>Processor: P3, 500mhz (120mhz when booting up with the battery)
>RAM: 192MB (up from 64 out of the box)
>Kernal: 2.4.7-10
>KDE 2.2.1
>XFree86 4.1.0
>emacs: 20
>
>When I first put RH 7.2 on the machine last week (when it still had only 
>64MB of ram), KDE was very unstable; clicking on Start, then another menu, 
>would hang up the machine (mouse movement, but no other activity). (I think 
>Gnome was also unstable, but I only tried it once and then went over to 
>KDE.) (This is a dual boot system with 98 on as well, and 98 seems 
>perfectly stable.) I did a few things, the first two suggested by various 
>experiences people have posted:
>
>(1) add a line
>
>	Option		"XaaNoScanlineCPUToScreenColorExpandFill"
>
>to XF86Config
>
>(2) set the BIOS internal pointing device from AutoEnable to Enable
>
>(3) installed 128mb ram
>
>RAM seemed like the most plausible explanation, since (a) RedHat says you 
>want 96mb minimum, and (b) the machine was crashing in various different 
>emacs tasks (pulling down a menu; running LaTeX on a not-very-big file).
>
>After adding ram it got a lot more stable, but it still crashes; the last 
>time after I installed AucTeX for emacs and was pulling down menus fairly 
>rapidly with 5 emacs frames open and a couple of shell windows.
>
>Is this just a ram problem? Why is RH 7.2 so unstable with 192mb? How much 
>ram do I need?
>
>Or is it something else? emacs? the version of XFree86?
>
>Thanks!

RAM is not a problem.  I've got a box with 32Mb of RAM, and 
another with 64Mb of RAM running just fine.  You require at least 
32Mb of RAM in order to install the OS because the installer 
requires that much memory to do dependancy resolution and other 
things.  The OS should run however in as low as 16Mb or so if 
adequate swap is available (however performance would really 
really suck).

If you are using KDE or GNOME however, it is not wise to use such 
low memory as performance will really be horrible.  I don't 
recall what our minimum recommendation is for KDE/GNOME 
workstation installs, however those minimum requirements are made 
to ensure users know what amount of RAM they need for bare 
minimum acceptable performance (which is likely to also vary 
greatly between various users).

In no case should the OS be unstable due to the amount of RAM 
present.  RAM only plays a part in performance, and should not 
affect stability at all.


-- 
Mike A. Harris                  Shipping/mailing address:
OS Systems Engineer             190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie,
XFree86 maintainer              Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3
Red Hat Inc.
http://www.redhat.com           ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris