Hi,

I know this might sound highly improbable but Linux has been locking up randomly. Heres details of my problem:

Hardware: - P4 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB Northwood processor with HT - 256MB Hynix RAM in single channel dynamic paging mode - Intel D865GBF motherboard - 120GB Samsung SATA Harddrive - 80GB Seagate PATA Harddrive - 20GB Seagate PATA Harddrive - Sony DVD writer ( new ) - Netgear WGR311v2 54Mbps wifi card - Dlink 538TX 10/100Mbps wired network card - ATI Radeon 7000 AGP card

All hardware is about 2 years old except the one mentioned as new.

Software: - Fedora Core 2 - Windows Server 2003 - Windows XP

Symptoms: - The system has been locking up randomly after the addition of the Sony DVD writer.

- One peculiar symptom that my system has been exhibiting with / without the writer is that the display doesn't come on at boot up. The monitor's LED just keeps on blinking. The keyboard doesn't respond at all and the harddisk LED just keeps on glowing as if it is accessing something. - Recently dmesg shows these suspicious entries: EXT3 FS on sda3, internal journal device-mapper: 4.3.0-ioctl (2004-09-30) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com Adding 522104k swap on /dev/sda2. Priority:-1 extents:1 program scsi_unique_id is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO program scsi_unique_id is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO .... ( 10 msgs repeatedly. No where else are these messages repeated ).

I understand the the swap part but why is it complaining of deprecated API? As I understand its seeing my SATA HD was a SCSI HD. But I've been using this harddisk for a while now and I haven't seen these messages appear - ever! :(

- I've seen only 1 kernel panic and it was related to some SCSI function. I dont have the exact message but thats all I remember!

Troubleshooting: - For the first problem, I've observed that after disconnecting the writer, the system is stable for a few hours now. But can't say with certainty if it will remain so. Will continue to test. - I've tried removing all component from the system and keeping the bare necessities i.e. just the keyboard, monitor, RAM, processor. The system still exhibits symptom No.2 though randomly. This problem has been occurring on and off. Initially I thought it might be due to loose contacts, dust etc... Yet even after cleaning the system and securing all components properly, the problem persists. So I'm inclined to think that the new hardware has nothing to do with the problem. - I've also replaced the harddisk cables just incase but to no avail. Rather the system works better / stabler with the old ones in place. - I have only tried troubleshooting on Linux. I have to yet boot into Windows and see if the same problems occur. In my opinion this can't be software specific bug which is causing the lockups. I am stumpted on problem No.1

Any inputs would be appreciated.

Bye! :)