Newcomers questions

[Robin Green]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 05:32:30PM -0400, Neil B. Cohen wrote:
> Issues:
> 
> 1) Instability - the system hangs - seems to be random but it locks up
> completely. Mouse freezes, screen saver freezes, keyboard is gone - have
> to power cycle to get it back. Sometimes it happens repeatedly - every 5
> minutes or so. Other times, it will go for 1-2 days without any problem.
> No idea what is going on - nothing in the log files that I can identify
> as a problem.... 

Difficult. Wild guesses:

1. Check that the CPU fan is working. Don't overclock!

2. You said it's built from parts. Check that everything is screwed in securely.
If an expansion card comes loose, it can crash the machine.

3. Stick fedora CD 1 in and type memtest86 at the prompt. Leave it running overnight,
or for a long time. That should tell you if you have any bad RAM.

Those are easy things to do, though could be a kernel bug of course.

> 4) Printing - I have an Epson C80 printer - CUPS identifies it,
> configures it and lpc tells me my test job is printing - but the printer
> never starts - I don't know much about CUPS - any suggestions on
> troubleshooting would help - I doubt this is a Fedora problem...

Argh, printing nightmares, I hate 'em. Had plenty of problems setting up printers
myself. Have a grep through /var/log. There is a web interface to CUPS though I've
rarely found it helpful.

> 5) Access to the box - I have ssh configured and I can ssh out of this
> machine to the rest of my house. But from the other machines, I can't
> get in... I can ping the box, but when I try ssh - I get the message "No
> route to host" - again, I doubt this is Fedora - but any suggestions
> would help...

That's probably because it's firewalled - either you have configured a firewall,
or your ISP has. If the latter, get another ISP, or edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config
to use a port which the ISP _will_ allow you to use.

-- 
Robin