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GCC Instability Problems With SuSE/AMD K6?

Posted by Cliff on from the what's-the-failure-point dept.

cmickelson asks: "I've been running SuSE Linux 6.x on my laptop for over a year now and everytime I would compile something I would have to run make several times because of errors during compiling. Now my laptop is very unstable, Windows is unusable because of constant crashes, but Linux generally runs well except for Netscape core dumps, and the compiling problems. Anyway I just assumed the errors were due the system's instablility. However, I recently assembled a new desktop computer and installed SuSE 6.4 on that and the same thing happened when I tried to compile Samba. I had to run make five times before the whole source tree was completed. Is this typical? I find it hard to believe that gcc/gpp could be that unstable, but why else would this happen with two different systems? Is this due to the AMD K6-2 processors (which both laptops have), or is SuSE the problem?"

2 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe hardware by levendis · · Score: 3

    It is possible that its related to hardware. Check out http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/ - grep the page for "K6". If you get a signal 11 (no, not the Signal 11), its almost always CPU or memory related. I have an AMD-K6 350 that exhibits the same symptoms, unless I disable the CPU cache in the BIOS.
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    ---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
  2. Re:It happens to me too! by shepd · · Score: 3

    Your problem was probably the mixture of SIMMS (72-pin) and DIMMS (168-pin).

    SIMMS run at 5 volts. DIMMS usually run at 3.3 volts (unless you spent a lot of dough on them, they will be running at 3.3 volts). Running a DIMM at 5 volts will either cause it to burn out, or will cause it to be unstable.

    Running a SIMM at 3.3 volts will certainly cause it to be unstable, but will not cause it to burn out.

    Since I have never, ever, heard of even the most expensive motherboard supporting both SIMMS and DIMMS at the same time (unless they are all 5 volts... which is why some manuals say they can use both at the same time), I would say your board didn't support it.

    So, you were either ruining your DIMMS, or not supplying enough voltage to the SIMMS. Since you say the DIMMS and SIMMS by themselves appear to still work, I'll assume the latter. You're pretty lucky actually... :-)

    [if I'm wrong, please correct me...]

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