Random Freezes on amd64

billydv · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 1:58 am Post subject: Random Freezes on amd64

Im not sure of where to even start, I have an amd64 install on an amd motherboard with an x2 4200 socket 939 processor and I dont have any hardware not working (or at least no known apparent problems), each time I press too many buttons at the same time on any window or if a program screws up It freezes, also I leave the machine many times only to return to a machine that wont do anything or even allow me to reboot. I really dont know where to even start.
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Billy DeVincentis

mudrii · l33t Joined: 26 Jun 2003 Posts: 789 Location: Singapore

good start is to check I/O
Hdd RAM etc from hardware perspective.
Thank check with running top or htop what process is most active in the system check the logs /var/log messages and dmesg test the hdd with hdparm etc.
give more nfo emerge --info lspci -v lsmod
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gendoo · n00b Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 10

Also try deactivating Cool 'n' Quiet (ondemand governor etc.)

It caused freezes for my AMD64 on an A8V board, both under Gentoo and XP. Maybe it was related to the RAM (as some rumors could be found via google), but in the end that does not matter.

billydv · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 12:51 pm Post subject:

Mudrii, here is what top reads out for me, Im not sure what to make of any of this or what to look for to find a problem. One thing I did notice is that today it didnt freeze overnight when I shut down amule.

As far as cool n quiet, its always been disabled, never had freezes on either xp or vista, or even gentoo x86 all of which are also installed on this multiboot system.

top - 08:48:32 up 11:07, 2 users, load average: 0.25, 0.41, 0.41
Tasks: 126 total, 1 running, 124 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.7%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 96.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2059560k total, 1935688k used, 123872k free, 197548k buffers
Swap: 2104504k total, 0k used, 2104504k free, 1078072k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
6256 root 15 0 193m 67m 9436 S 3 3.3 88:51.67 X
7387 billydv 17 0 201m 41m 20m S 1 2.1 8:50.82 superkaramba
6695 billydv 15 0 205m 47m 11m S 1 2.4 52:55.73 beryl
7525 billydv 15 0 63628 10m 6832 S 0 0.5 0:11.79 emerald
1 root 18 0 2672 612 516 S 0 0.0 0:01.47 init
2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.76 migration/0
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.36 migration/1
6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
8 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/0
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 events/1
10 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
11 root 13 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
69 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
70 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/1
71 root 17 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
170 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
171 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/1
172 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_aux
173 root 17 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd
176 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
178 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
179 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kgameportd
212 root 21 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
213 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.45 pdflush
214 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
215 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
216 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/1
217 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cifsoplockd
218 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cifsdnotifyd
365 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 scsi_eh_0
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Billy DeVincentis

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 1:16 pm Post subject:

try memtest

billydv · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject:

Okay, Just came back and still no freeze, the only difference between today and the time it was freezing up is that amule was running, Any ideas?
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Billy DeVincentis

mudrii · l33t Joined: 26 Jun 2003 Posts: 789 Location: Singapore

firdt try to eliminate all posibil hardware problem,
the top or better htop is showing what prosees is using resources and in case of freaze many times can be very heplpfull to see the root of the problem
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Roman_Gruber · Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 12:03 pm Post subject:

I have only this issue if I have to many applications opened: gimp openoffice, kiso, firefox, nautilus, vlc, ... i think I have to less swap space.

vipernicus · Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 5:15 pm Post subject:

Try booting with acpi=noirq appended to grubs kernel line
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krushia · n00b Joined: 10 May 2007 Posts: 10

For the record I had freezes when I first set up my computer a yearish ago and discovered it was the RAM. I swapped out 2gig Corsair Value with 1gig of something else from another machine and all the problemss went away. The memory wasn't bad, the motherboard/processor just didn't like it very much. Also like you I didn't get the freezes when running Windows XP, and after a lot of heavy reading I came to the conclusion that it's because Windows doesn't use memory as aggressively as Linux does. Even when playing Warcraft3 and EVE at the same time Windows isn't using the full 2gig of memory... but Linux tries to throw everything it can in RAM and will usually utilize it all shortly after booting.

There is a lot of discussion on this around the web. The Athlon 64 is picky about RAM, and apparently more so with my A8N32-SLI board.