Random halts with Gentoo (Asus A7N8X-Delux)

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

After recently installing Gentoo and getting very used to just how damn cool it is

I've been experiancing a few intermiten problems which have become to the point of highly serious.

Right now the entire system seems to freeze at random times, its happened twice in the last two days:

First occurance was when VNCing into my Windows 2000 box, I logged into win2k over the network and the gentoo system froze dead, (No responce to pings or keyboard input)
After hard reseting VNC functioned fine but there was no sign of a error in the logs, the system just froze dead in its current state.

Today the same problem occured only this time while telling Xmms to scan a set of folders for Mp3's to add to its playlist, while scanning the folders the system once again froze dead with no mention in the logs.

Again after a hard reset and repeating the same steps the problem did no reoccure and Im at something of a loss where to start to no type of logs.

My system is currently a:

AMD 2600XP CPU (No O/C)
Asus A7N8X-8 Delux Gold Mobo (No Overclock)
512mb of Crucal DDR4000 ram running at 2,2,2.5 timing settings at 200mhz
A Creative Geforce 4 Ti4200 64mb DDR ram graphics card
Audigy 2 Platium card (Using Audigy 2 ALSA drivers)

System is only using Stable software on the 2.4.20-gentoo-r6 kernel (Autogen using --configure)

Um.. I think thats about it, I know its not a lot of infomation to go on but I hope someone can help, or at least offer a suggestion on where I can narrow down the problem.

barnie · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 21

I have this motherboard too.

There's an error in the SATA driver. If you want to use SATA drives you have to apply a patch.

See https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=111300

Wedge_ · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2003 9:39 pm Post subject:

Check your kernel config doesn't have APIC support enabled - it causes frequent lockups on nForce2 boards.
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Gentoo Radeon FAQ

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

I have SATA disabled totaly due to the fact I dont have a SATA drive and it was causing a large delay at boot when it tried to scan for RAID devices.

Im almost sure ACPI is disabled in the bios as Windows 2000 does not like it either, but I will check today when Im back at the machine

Wedge_ · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2003 11:07 am Post subject:

APIC and ACPI are two different things. ACPI support should be OK, but APIC will almost certainly cause lockups.
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The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ

Nermal · Apprentice Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 259 Location: UK

APIC is known to cause lockups on newer AMD machines

try disabling it in the kernel or booting with acpi=off noapic

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

If your kernel has local apic (IO_APIC) enabled I'd turn that off too.

so to recap, you need to feed the kernel the following parms:

acpi=off noapic nolapic

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

Well I tried disabling APCI and ACPI on the bios, Windows 2000 now refuses to boot with them switched off, and Gentoo still freezes randomly about twice a day

Any other ideas?

Wedge_ · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:43 am Post subject:

Leave the BIOS alone, just disable APIC in the kernel.
_________________
Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

Ohhh, I misunderstood

But can I do that wihtout recompiling the kernel?, Say by passing that

acpi=off noapic nolapic

command into it via Lilo? Or is a recompile the only option?

Wedge_ · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 10:26 am Post subject:

I think that will work. I would just recompile the kernel, but if you don't want to then go ahead and try it that way. ACPI shouldn't actually cause too many problems though, so you shouldn't have to use "acpi=off".
_________________
Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

Disabled ACPI and APIC in different variations from the command line, then compiled a new kernel with them totaly disabled.

Totaly hardlocked again at random

Any other ideas?

Wedge_ · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:11 pm Post subject:

Have you checked your hardware? Do you get lockups in Windows, if you have it installed? Try running memtest86 to make sure your RAM is OK.
_________________
Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ

Markuswu · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

Ran SiSoft Sandras burn in tests and 3dMark for 15 passes nothing crashed, Win2k is solid on the machine and Memtest 86 ran for 16 hours on full deep test with no errors found.

Ran Microscope diags on the hardware for 20 hours, nothing showed up either, the hardware seems solid.

Malakin · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:47 am Post subject:

If everytime it's frozen so far you've been in X try running with the "nv" driver temporarily and see if that makes any difference. You won't be able to use 3d with it but it will narrow down the possibility of what's causing the problem. I'm using the exact same mobo and haven't had any problems, using vanilla sources 2.4.23.