GNOME: Total freeze during network file transfer

defcon3 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

Hello:

I installed Gentoo 2006.1 on my new system (ASUS P5B Deluxe + E6400). Gentoo is installed on first SATA drive, so issues concering the infamous JMicron "controller" (to my mind) do not apply here.

I have a number of machines at home, one of them running Windows XP. When I try to copy files from it to my Gentoo machine, the transfer starts OK and somewhere along the way (no rule really) the machine freezes to COMPLETE halt, nothing responds - keboard, mouse, CTRL+ALT+DEL, nothing but the reset button (reboot).

I installed syslog-ng to inspect the problem but the only messages prior to the freeze are

Hagar · Guru Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 445

I've seen this happen on one of my systems, this was caused by a unstable NIC.
During intense transfers it would lock up the whole system.

Try to switch to another NIC, borrow one if you have to and see if it keeps crashing.

defcon3 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

Hagar, thank you for the perfect insight! It was indeed a problem with the NIC. I replaced the LINKSYS using TULIP driver with a good ol' REALTEC 8139C and now it is rock solid!!!

Kudos on the perfect answer! Thank you. :wink:

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defcon3 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

I did add [SOLVED] to the title some days ago but now the system crashed AGAIN :roll:

The (current) NIC is Realtec 8139C and is currently running on the 8139too driver. As I already noted, no logs show anything suspicios. The only (new) thing to the puzzle is the fact this sudden freeze happens when I transer either lots of data or single big files. The memory usage (as desplayed by the gnome-panel gadget) increases, eventually reaching
89% used for cache / 11% used by programs...
some time after this the whole desktop is frozen. This is absurd on a system with 2Gigs of RAM... My other machines run flawlesly with 256/512 RAM... Is there a way to optimize the use of memory, assign dynamic "empty" of cache or smth like that...

Any input on the problem will be of great help.
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Hagar · Guru Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 445

That is optimized usage.
What good is ram if it's empty?

The kernel caches data in memory.
If <app> wants the data again it can be pulled out of memory very fast.

This does not mean the memory is in use !
If <app> needs memory the cached data is discarded and overwritten.
Discarding the data and overwriting it is much faster then pulling it from some slow IO device.
It's practically as fast as memory that's not in use at all.

defcon3 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

I know why RAM is used as much as possible (unlike Windows, where page file is huge and HDD is working while RAM is empty)...

Thing I am trying to relay is I am so confused and so discouraged in finding the cause for this I am already looking into absurd solutions... This weekend I am planning to dismantle my machine and put it back together just to make sure everything fits perfectly in place and it is not some loose contact issue...

Regards
Smith
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Sachankara · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:50 pm Post subject:

Put in the Gentoo CD and run one or two memtest86 passes.
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Gentoo Hardened Linux 2.6.21 + svorak (Swedish dvorak)

defcon3 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

memtest86 runs on, and on, and on... no issue there. RAM is hand-selected twin pair of SuperT CL4s.

I noticed I made a mistake in my kernel config file - i missed to enable

~L~ · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:18 am Post subject:

I have a similar problem, this also happens if I copy / unrar large files (msi k8t neo, sata drives on promise controller).
This only happens to me if I use >2.6.18 kernel

2.6.17-r9 works fine. You might perhaps test that. I do not know what the problem is...

~L~