Computers Gone Wild!

[Shane Hathaway]

Steve wrote:
> Pretty much the rest of my problems sound like an IRQ issue especially
> since my Kernel options have to include irqpoll or the computer won't
> even consider booting.  But what about my phantom drive.

The CD driver can react to a strange interrupt any way it likes.

Is your power supply dying?  A dying switching PSU tends to produce
noisy power, leading to bit errors in random parts of the system.

The IRQ theory is still interesting though.  What do you see in
/proc/interrupts?

> Could this be a malware problem?  If what are best practices for
> checking a Linux system for malware?

Run rkhunter and chkrootkit from a live CD.

Shane