MiTEG's Journal: Bittorrent causing kernel panics?

BitTorrent is an awesome idea. If you haven't tried it, next time you download something big, check it out. It's use has skyrocketed, ranging in use from the perfectly legitimate to things of questionable legality.

There are a couple of reasons why I love it. The biggest is that I can run it with no GUI and just ncurses and python2. Very cool. And setting the max_upload_rate to prevent saturating the upload is easy.

But I have one big problem. BitTorrent seems to randomly cause kernel panics in my system, which is ... inconvenient. The torrent-talk Yahoo group doesn't seem to be much help, but I haven't posted a message there yet.

I have a feeling the problem is in my hardware. The system hangs at the bios initialization unless I give it a gentle *WHACK* before powering on. Journal recovery fails a quarter of the time. And the network card's autosensing abilities are fairly dodgy. It's on its final days, a laptop that I acquired in 1997 and probably traveled with in excess of 20,000 miles. The battery died long ago and the hinges are broken. The "manufacturer" went out of business in 1998. But I'm really attached to it, I don't want it to die.

Ahhh, I had a lot of fun time with this machine. It took me all the way through high school. But its brothers were laid to rest long ago, perhaps it is time... *sniff* so many memories.

Whacky

[NaveWeiss]

I have a feeling the problem is in my hardware. The system hangs at the bios initialization unless I give it a gentle *WHACK* before powering

Dear MiTEG.
The problem isn't with your hardware, but the way you treat it. It's obvious that your hardware desperately tries to signal you that it needs more touch, and all you do is just hit it gently. You should make your hardware more happy by caressing it and covering it with a fasionable cover (you removed your PC cover and left it naked, right? I know you did)

Re:Whacky

[MiTEG]

Nope, tis a laptop, no cover to remove. I've treated her nicely, I even stuck a Pentium-III decal on her to make her feel less self conscious about being a mere Pentium. I've slipped a bigger drive into her, upgraded the memory, and done all the other things computers love. Maybe, as a laptop, all she really wants is a lap, but ever since the battery died that hasn't really been a viable option.

It's funny, though, I haven't had any problems since the JE I wrote yesterday. Perhaps the threat of being th

Ohhh

[NaveWeiss]

It's a girl. Why didn't you tell? It changes all the situation. I thought it's merely a good (male) friend.

You indeed treated her sweetly but it doesn't help anymore. Because of that, I guess the only solution will be to terminate that abusive relationship.. I know it's hard to dump a cute laptop, but it's for the best of you both. :(