It seems that the SMP kernel installed on 7.0 locks up solid (even network access is off line) if the netscape window is resized. Both myself, on an Abit BP6 with 128 MB ECC RAM, IBM deskstar 20.5 GB disk (IDE) and matrox G400 video card, 3com 10/100 NIC, with dual celeron 500's non-overclocked and my colleague on a DELL server (all SCSI, I think 1 GB ram, 3com 10/100 NIC, hot swappable 72 GB drive, and all kinds of power suplies and fans) had the same behavior. I happen to run kde, but root might fire up in gnome by default. This is very repeatable for both of us. Also the kernel hangs when unattended (automatic power management problem?). Regards: Bill Maniatty
Abit BP6 is not the stablest mobo in the world - I happen to own a good one, but there are reports of unstable ones, they apparently had a problem with a capacitor on one serie of boards. Also the APIC to processor connection is marginal, generating ocassional checksum errors. 1) Try to eliminate some possible problem sources - if you are using AGP (is agpgart loaded?), DRI etc., turn it off, set some very basic X configuration and try again. 2) Check in BIOS, whether your voltages are stable. If the +-5V, 3V or processor ones (ca. 2V) jumps more than a few hundreths of Volt, you have a problem. 3) Try running the kernel with "noapic" parameter - this is known to help some people. 4) Alternatively try some of the 2.4.0-test kernel and search for lines such as Jan 4 16:08:52 trillian kernel: APIC error on CPU1: 00(04) in the /var/log/messages. A few a day are unfortunately normal for BP6, more is not OK. FWIW: The netscape did not lock the kernel for me - Abit BP6, 128 MB non-ECC RAM, IDE IBM Deskstar 13.4 GB, 433 Celerons overclocked to 506, Matrox G400, noname NE2000 card. I used the 2.2.18 for a few days only, now I am running 2.4.0-test12 without problems.