There is a reason Linus never "fixed" this...
The solution to my problem was to power cycle the computer. I
had rebooted numerous times when I reported this. Actually
powering down the computer fixed this problem for me. Definitely
a hardware problem.
>Then compiling the kernel as ELF fails to produce a compressed version
>on intel machines because 'arch/i386/boot/compressed/Makefile' does not
>include the rules file, and thus the config information:
>
>========================================================================
>--- linux/arch/i386/boot/Makefile~ Sun May 5 07:05:58 1996
>+++ linux/arch/i386/boot/Makefile Wed Jul 10 21:36:48 1996
>@@ -94,3 +94,5 @@
> rm -f zImage tools/build compressed/vmlinux.out
> rm -f bzImage tools/bbuild compressed/bvmlinux.out
> @$(MAKE) -C compressed clean
>+
>+include $(TOPDIR)/Rules.make
>========================================================================
[snip]
I can (and do) produce compressed kernels without this patch.
>
>I still have some terrible problem with my PPP connections dropping
>every few minutes (at random) while the line stays up; this happens both
>an ISP (demon) and with SLiRP 1.0c, and leads me to suspect that the
>problem is within the PPP code (either ppp-2.2.0f or ther kernel PPP
>code).
>
>
My PPP connection is rock-solid to my ISP. I connect at 28.8K
every time, and aside from *one* node on my ISP's terminal
server, everything works well. Note that 28.8K modems can
cause some *very* strange problems on noisy lines. When
noise levels change, the modem will try to renegotiate its
connection speed. This can cause all sorts of trouble as
the connection can seem to go dead for well over 30 seconds.
This may be wreaking havok on the PPP layer. Your may want
to increase pppd's logging level. This may give you enough
information to isolate the problem.
My guess is that all of your problems are hardware related.
Rob
(rriggs@tesser.com)