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

[Rich Young]

Hi, I'm new to the list, and sorta new to the LUG.  I've been tinkering with
Linux for a year & a half now, but recently have started to use it more
seriously.  I am currently setting up a box for development & testing of a
new version of our website, which is my first taste of administering a Linux
box that is being used for a serious and productive purpose, unless you
count my KRUD laptop.  

I'm curious whether any of you might have an insight into this problem I've
been having.  The machine is a Compaq Presario 4716, P200 w/ 64M RAM.  (Of
course, it's my test platform not because I chose it, but because it's the
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,
it won't give me any display.  I've ended up hard-cycling the power, and
then (sometimes) having to screw around with fsck to get the thing up and
running again.  

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

Any help y'all could offer would be greatly appreciated.

--Rich Young (rich at ExperiencePlus dot com)
Web & Database Admin
ExperiencePlus! Specialty Tours, Inc.
http://www.ExperiencePlus.com