linux box won't work

Hi,

i have this major problem, that's keeping me from having a web server at the office for test purposes. i hope some of you can help me.

i had this linux box (pentium 100, 128 ram, 6.0Gb HD, redhat 8) working fine, until one night. i turned it off for some reason, and when i wanted to turn it back on, it just didn't start.

i turn on the computer, i see those bios things, drives detecting and so on. then i see lilo boot, hit enter, linux starts:

> starting linux
> loading vmlinuz, ok
> ok, booting the kernel

and then there's a single monitor blink and it hangs, with the NUM, CAPS and SCROLL LOCK blinking.

i asked a friend what it might be, and he tells me "when those 3 lights blink, there's something very serious about your kernel..."

ok, i loaded a rescue disk, started the box and the same thing happens.

i boot from the rh8.0 installation CD, and the same thing happens...

conclusion: it's not the kernel...so another friend of mine tells me it might be a hardware problem. he suggested i tried with another OS to make sure the hardware is fine.

so, i boot from a dos disk and the pc works fine!!!

i don't have a clue what to do next...any help would be much appreciated. thanks

best regards,
cabral

i also bet for hardware problems. probably your ram burned or your mainboard.

using a boot-disk with the same result was imho enough clue therefor. (if the boot-disk did work earlier and does not boot your harddrive installation...)

DOS, in this context, is no OS. for testing, you would need at least W95 and install all drivers for the hardware. better W2K/XP, but these probably won´t run on a machine this old.

thanks for your reply.

i didn't mean pure DOS. it's a winMe rescue disk...does that make any difference?

no. it is still DOS.

well... time to find a new (old) pc for my linux box...

thanks for your help

best regards,
cabral

How many RAM sticks do you have? You could test them by pulling them a pair at a time and seeing if it works at some point. After all, if you just lost a RAM stick you're looking at a $5 fix. Of course, as old as the computer is, I suppose the question really becomes whether you think it's worth your time to try and fix it

i'll try that and let you know later of the results.

thanks

The lights on the keyboard flashing normally refer to a kernel panic which is caused most often by faulty hardware.

DOS is a workstation OS. It doesnt do any checks on hardware, it just crashes when you access the faulty hardware.

Linux is a server OS, it does look at the hardware since it wants to make sure the system is okay to run and there are no faults.

problem solved!! thank you all for your help.

the problem was in a RAM stick. just replaced it and everything is working fine!!

again, thanks for all your help.


best regards,
cabral