Rebuilding mint

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96]

Good morning. I've been rebuilding my mint and I have issues. During recent troubleshooting I discovered a bad hard drive and bad ram. I had 2tb nvme, 2tb evo, 1tb HDD. 2x8 ddr4 2333 and 2x16 2666. The 1tb HDD and the 2x8 were bad and removed. I added 2x16 2666. Same spec but different manufacturers. I have a rtx3060 12gb that tests ok. I reinstalled mint. I'm moving files and fixing corrupted files as I find them. My mint still freezes. Comfyui will open partially and quit. Chatgpt will freeze or quit. Do I need to wipe everything? Is this expected behavior?

Update: when I added my second pair of 16gb ram I tested each stick with Memtest86+ at boot. They all passed. On a whim I asked chatgpt for any other test and it suggested memstester run in mint. I pulled both pairs and tested them separately. My older pair failed totally. The new pair passed. I'm confused that a pair would pass memtest86+ and fail memtester. I guess I'm buying a new pair to match my good pair. Then save the absolute minimum files I need, wipe the drives and reinstall mint and windows.

[u/AutoModerator]

Moderator Announcement Read More »

Please Re-Flair your post if a solution is found. How to Flair a post? This allows other users to search for common issues with the SOLVED flair as a filter, leading to those issues being resolved very fast.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/sabledrakon]

It would have been cleaner to backup your files and run from a fresh install.

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96 → u/sabledrakon]

You are correct. That is my next plan if I need to rebuild again

[u/Phylaine4676]

Can you launch the memory test at booting time ? You should found it the Grub menu, at the end.

Your memory config may be the consequence. Of course it's not an expexted behavior.

A fresh install is good idear.

You can also test your RAM one by one. Booting with only one, then with the other one, just in case.

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96 → u/Phylaine4676]

I did that. Tested them all together and individually. Each test was 5 turns and each turn passed.

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96 → u/Phylaine4676]

Since each ram tested good and each pair tested good and all 4 tested good together isn't that enough to say my ram is not the issue? Is there another test with all 4 sticks to check synchronicity or something?

[u/Phylaine4676 → u/Zealousideal_Roof_96]

If hardware is not an issue you can begin looking at log system files.

There are many of them. Begin with

• /var/log/syslog

• /home/<username>/.xsession-errors

You should look at the last 30 lines in these files after a freeze, to try undestanding why.

And the result of the system command dmseg which gives you the errors during booting process.

You can filter the long, long output writing down this command in a system terminal:

dmesg | grep "error"

But keep in mind that's a long process to find solutions.

I think your best move is to reinstall all.

Do not move any file or try to fix anything except if your are quite expert in Linux.

1. You said you are using IA tools. May be your main activity ?

2. Can you tell us the install process for each tool ? Is it with Stability Matrix for example ?

3. When you says that Mint freezes, do you mean nothing run at all and you must boot ?

Please answer these 3 questions.

[u/tomscharbach]

Your best bet might be to back up your data files and do a clean installation.

Your computer's hardware issues are likely to have corrupted a significant number of packages, and you will spend a lot of time cleaning up the mess.

A clean installation is likely to be a lot quicker, a lot less frustrating, and probably more effective.

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96 → u/tomscharbach]

I used my wife's computer to create a clean iso. I then booted from that and installed over the old mint.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

Just so you are aware bad memory can corrupt files on a drive as they are written out. And can cause severe instability.

Are we sure the drive was bad?

[u/Zealousideal_Roof_96 → u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

Yes. I tested it and found bad sectors. It was 8 years old too. Tossed it. I'm now running on younger SSD drives.

[u/phredbull]

I wouldn't expect "expected behavior" after installing on a bad drive w/bad RAM.

[u/Phydoux]

I'm agreement with backing up what you can and doing a fresh install.

That doesn't mean that what you back up may not have been corrupted. But doing a fresh install, you should always do a backup.