[NCLUG] Intro/ Compaq problem w/RH6.2

[Matt Taggart]

Rich Young writes...

> only idle computer in the office.)  The problem is that the machine keeps
> dying on me -- overnight or during the weekends.  By "dying", I mean that it
> drops my open telnet session, and when I plug a monitor & keyboard into it,

What's the last thing that gets written to syslog?

> I suspect that the problem might be caused by a sleep setting active in the
> BIOS, but I can't get in to find out, because the Compaq boot sequence is
> not letting me into the BIOS.  (I know to hit F10 when the red Compaq logo
> is onscreen, but it blithely ignores me and proceeds to LILO.)

What model is it? Maybe you use a different key to enter the BIOS. If you 
reply with the model number odds are good that someone on the list will have 
one and can confirm/deny using F10.

Worst case it might have a jumper that you could set to reset the BIOS 
settings and then you might be able to get in.

> grounds, I've tried giving it an hourly cron job to keep it busy (ping -c 5
> yahoo.com > /root/junk.txt), but it seems not to help at all.  My next
> approach will be to simply shut down before I go home,

A better approach would be to part it out and get a better system. You could 
buy an equivilent system for <$100.

> but golly, it seems
> like a stain on the reputation of Linux that I can't exceed 24hr uptime!

You mean "a stain on the reputation of Compaq" don't you?

-- 
Matt Taggart
taggart at fc.hp.com