What could the problem be?

[Judd Montgomery]

Robb Bossley wrote:
> I have an older computer which I have utilized for the past couple of years.  Recently, I reinstalled Linux on it for the Nth time, this time utilizing the fact that I have two scsi drives and making all but one partition part of a RAID array.
> 
> My question is this.  I have tried to copy the latest kernel (2.6.6) in bz2 form onto this computer, both from my usb storage device and from a one time writeable disk.  Each copies just fine.  However, when I go to untar it (tar -xjvf), I get a complaint that the headers?? for the bz2 format are corrupted.  The odd thing is that each time was from a different download, and the downloads are fine because they work on other computers when unzipped just fine.
> 
> What would this indicate, and is there any way to fix the problem?  I suspect a failing hard drive may be the culprit, but I'm not sure.  Is there a good way to test the harddrives?  All I want to do is upgrade the kernel.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Robb

I had an Athlon 700 that developed this problem.  I suspect that it was 
the processor, or possibly the motherboard.  Everything else I had 
swapped out.  I could make the problem worse by doing processor 
intensive tasks such as ripping mp3s.  It also would fail while 
compiling the kernel and a simple restart of the compile would go 
further and so on until it was done.  I underclocked it and used it for 
another 6 months and it started happening again.  I sold it on ebay with 
full disclosure.

Judd