Mysterious Freeze

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

I am experiencing a mysterious freeze on both my laptop and my desktop since I've installed Gentoo a few months ago. The symptoms are that the screen freezes and the computer stops responding to keyboard AND mouse. If xmms is playing, it continues. It happens very sporadically, it hasn't happened on either machine for several days, today it's happened three times on the desktop. The only thing to do is a hard reboot. There is nothing in /var/log/messages that helps. The only thing I can do is try to eliminate causes. This is what I've eliminated:

- Hardware: it happens on both laptop and desktop which have totally different processors, mobos, and memory.
- Kernel version: it happens with all 2.6 gentoo kernel versions I've used so far. Including several revisions of 2.6.7, and 2.6.8-r1. The only difference is that with 2.6.8, there will be a purple-blue bar down the left side of the screen. I suppose I should try a vanilla source and see if it still happens.
- X version: the laptop is running xfree and the desktop is running xorg. I don't think the error is there unless it's in both
- Load: for a while, I thought it was happening only at heavy loads, today it happened while just running mozilla.
- Uptime: for a while it was only happening after the system had been on for a day or more, today it happened minutes after boot up.
- Software: I had thought maybe gdesklets had something to do with it (random I know, but maybe) since in the past I was always running gdesklets when it had happened. I've tried not running gdesklets and it didn't happen for a while, but it happened today while running only mozilla and xmms. The only things that were always running when it happened are mozilla and xmms. I suppose I should try not using them (in particular mozilla), but I really like mozilla, obviously, since I use it all the time.

Has anybody experienced anything similar? I've seen threads about lockups but the symptoms are different: there is still response to the mouse.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Thanks.

etnoy · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:09 pm Post subject:

I don't know if it will work when your system has locked up like that, but try enabling "Magic SysRQ" in your kernel (Kernel hacking -> Kernel Debugging -> SysRQ). Then try using the "magic" keys when the system has gone down and extract some information.
Also, you could have your system for a few days in console mode with X in the background. Then any kernel panics will be seen there.

Best luck!
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

Yes, I have.

During my use of the 2.6 kernel, I've noticed this sporatically. Sometimes after watching movies with gtv or kmplayer, I'll hit the close button and BANG! What appears as a lockup. The mouse still moves, but nothing is clickable. The keyboard locks up solid. I used to just hit the reset button, but the one time I tried SSH'ing into it, and to my suprise it worked. All processes were fine, except for X, which was using 100% cpu load. After zapping X, all is well until it does it again. I do leave my box on with X running 24/7, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I usually restart Xfree every 3 or 4 days now because of it. As far as I know its not a hardware issue, as this box used to run W2K and XP without issues. HTH.

--beugh

PS: KDE or Gnome?

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

Thanks for both replies.

I am using gnome. I'm wondering if switching to a different (lighter) desktop environment will help. The problem seems more prominent on the older of the two systems, so if it has to do with 100% cpu load, that would make sense.

PS: Beugh, which kernel did you switch to? Back to 2.4? The problem ended in that case?

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

It does stop when I boot into 2.4. But I find just logging out and zapping Xfree every few days usually prevents it from happening. I'm on KDE, too. Its a pain, but it also clears out the slow memory creep that I find Xfree (or KDE) has.

--beugh

PS: Speaking of it happening, I was about to log out from KDE. I close firefox and bang, lockup. Except I couldn't kill Xfree this time. I only had about a 30 day uptime

. I'm going to wipe it soon anyways when I get my next computer.
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ikokai · n00b Joined: 10 Nov 2003 Posts: 14

I am experiencing also something similar on my gentoo machines (laptop and desktop too). Randomly the X server freezes with the symptomps described above: I can move the mouse but that's all, if I ssh to the machine everything is just fine X is running on 100%. I can kill it remotely and work with the machine remotely, but on the local screen I have the frozen X... so I just shutdown the machine...

On the laptop I get this usually while scrolling with the mouse wheel in firefox... First I thought it was the driver from ati what I use on my laptop (Acer travelmate 800Lci) but in my desktop I have an old rage128 where I use the x.org drivers. Ohh and the laptop has xfree the desktop x.org

I only have this problem with 2.6.x kernels too...

This is driving me crazy, because I just cannot really debug this because it happens in a random way...

ikokai · n00b Joined: 10 Nov 2003 Posts: 14

Oh yes, and this happens with different window managers (I don't use gnome or kde) e.g. ion3 and pekwm....

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

I found this happens even with the 2.4 kernel. I'm reinstalling xfree on my desktop. It hasn't happened on the laptop for many weeks, since I stopped using gdesklets.

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

I'm still having this problem. After some time, Xorg will just freeze. The keyboard locks, and all I can do is ssh in and kill -9 X. Logs show nothing. I'm wondering if this is a 2.6 issue, as I never had this happen to me on 2.4.

I'm not using gdesklets, and I still see this issue.
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

Wow, 3rd time today... looks like X just runs away and takes up 100% cpu usage. All I was doing was watching a movie in realplayer.

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val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

I realized later that my problem is really the same as the problem in a lot of other threads. Sometimes the mouse sticks, sometimes it doesn't. It's only happened on my laptop once in the past couple months, since I stopped using gdesklets. At the moment it happened, I was opening a menu in emacs.

I switched back to xfree on my desktop and it hasn't happened on the desktop since. If you want to switch back to xfree do:

emerge -C xorg
emerge xfree
emerge gentoolkit
revdep-rebuild --usepackagenames -p
revdep-rebuild --usepackagenames

I realize the beginning of that may be obvious but I had a lot of trouble afterwards and then found out about revdeb-rebuild. Someone else had similar problems. I may have typed the usepackagenames flag wrong, btw, so check the man page.
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

Thanks a lot for the tip val, I'm rebuilding it now.

Edit: It worked, but I have to reinstall cedega-cvs. Hopefully this will put an end to the freezing.
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

So I come back to my computer this afternoon and its frozen again. This is seriously driving me nuts.

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val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

What, it froze with xfree???

I was starting to wonder if these freezes have to do with compiler flags. Just a hunch. I don't have any specific reason to believe that except that I've heard that compiler flags can make things unstable. What do you think? Maybe if your system compiles things quickly you can try compiling with no flags at all and see if it's better?
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

I've just done the following for testing another issue (java crash forcing firefox to exit) ... but I'm debating on reformatting again

umemerge blackdown-jre firefox
emerge sun-jre firefox-bin
block xorg from installing via /etc/portage/package.mask (edit: which fixed that problem, yay! )

I'm not using any flags, except for the defaults. Here's my make.conf:

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

Believe me, I was only using the default flags until recently. My x's were all compiled under the default flags. But I've heard that -fomit-frame-pointer causes problems in k3b (when you burn an audio cd it's cause it all to go on one track or something). So why couldn't it cause trouble in x?

Then again, I'm sorta talking about my arse on this one. It's basically just a wild guess. So I have NO idea.

I don't know what smb flags are. Actually I don't know much at all about compiler flags...
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My log saw what happened to Laura Palmer. Go ahead. Ask it.

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

hmm... well thanks for the input val, maybe this problem will get solved one of these days... (or it will just go away)... :lol:

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val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

Though, come to think of it, the one time it has happened on my laptop recently was after I did an emerge --emptytree world with a new compiler and compiler flags, so maybe that is actually the problem.

My laptop has much newer hardware, so it's less susceptible to 100% cpu usage problems, I think.
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

I don't think its hardware related. My pc is in my sig.
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aslinth · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 27

I'm having this problem with 2.4 on a desktop P1 233 mmx machine, and I don't have any window manager installed. After a few hours of usage the keyboard just freezes...

aslinth · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 27

I'm having this problem with 2.4 on a desktop P1 233 mmx machine, and I don't have any window manager installed. After a few hours of usage the keyboard just freezes...

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

I'm gonna try to rebuild everything on this machine, hopefully this should do it...

benne · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 19

I am getting the ecactly same symptons as you. I thought ihad tracked it down to the nvidia driver. I use Xfree86.

I described my problem in https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=237053.

Do you use a nvida card? This does not happen for me when I use the slower nv driver instead of nvidia. I have not been able of solving it, I have not yet tried Xorg. My laptop runs Xfree86 with a graphics card from trident, this does not happen there.

Execuse my bad english,
Benne

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5937

Yes, it happens in both. I started off with xorg and moved back to xfree to see if it was an xorg problem. Its not an NVIDIA specific problem, as I've seen topics regarding this with ATI cards too. I believe it might be a x11 issue.
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smithj · Retired Dev Joined: 24 Sep 2004 Posts: 111