Seeking explanation for "freeze"

gohmdoree · Guru Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 533

I am using a Core 2 Duo Mobile cpu. The mobo is an abit il90v, which is a media mobo.

I haven't flashed the bios yet, but was curious with this behavior that freezes up my machine.

I experience a freeze sometimes when I am doing "too much" while in xorg. ie. firefox is loading a bunch of pages, with flash, etc.

An alternative situation, I will try and update and everything seems to go fine for a while. Then, it'll stop. I do see the blinking cursor at the bottom, but its just stuck like that. Hitting any of my keys doesn't do much.

I'm sure there is a lot more necessary information, but wanted to try and get some feedback to explain what might be happening. I don't have any heat sensors for the cpu, so that might be one guess. When I was using a Core Duo, I never had such an issue. So, maybe I need to update the microcode for the cpu?

Could it be a heat issue? i purchased some new heatsink fans that I will be trying to swap soon.

Thanks in advance.

Ryhajlo · n00b Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 31

It sounds like heat could very well be the issue, especially with laptops. By flash the bios do you mean update it? Because those updates are usually released for a reason :lol:

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:18 am Post subject:

When is the last time you blasted the heat sink with canned "air"? That's important, especially if you have smokers in the house. A dirty heat sink is a bad thing, and can destroy chips, especially AMD chips.

Blessed be!
Pappy
_________________
This space left intentionally blank, except for these ASCII symbols.

gohmdoree · Guru Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 533

I did think it might have been the heat. I am using the stock heatsick fan that came with it. I do have something more robust that I haven't swapped out yet. I will blast it with some compressed air.

By the way, it is a desktop setup, and not a laptop. Just using laptop components. Basically, put together some extra parts to replace a laptop I was using. I think down the road, going to have to build another machine.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:28 pm Post subject:

Ah, a Frankenstein machine! I like those. I knew someone who had a machine that had all of its parts screwed into a piece of particle board. Cool!

If you have anything that will do a better job of cooling than what you have, now would be the time to do that update. Burned out chips aren't pretty.

Blessed be!
Pappy
_________________
This space left intentionally blank, except for these ASCII symbols.

x22 · Apprentice Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 208

gohmdoree · Guru Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 533

i'll look into that temperature thing.

lol at your comment pappy_mcfae. pretty is something like that. haha. hopefully i can get it solid.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject:

Awesome! You're my kind of geek!

Blessed be!
Pappy
_________________
This space left intentionally blank, except for these ASCII symbols.

gohmdoree · Guru Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 533

wanted to give an update on this machine. it sat off for the longest time.

as per the temperature advice, i ordered a new heatsink and fan from zalman, got a northbridge fan and replaced all of my case fans.

i rebuilt the machine just for the sake of and it kept on freezing.

instead of using the onboard video, i bought a pci-e 1x his radeon. after a lot of back and forth, it turns out that when this card is in/being used, the machine almost definitely freezes. i did change the pci-e transport from 4096 to 512 and that seemed to be okay for a bit then had the same problem, just a lot slower. i was thinking of trying to reduce it some more, but just expecting it to freeze up.

anyways, any idea on why this would be?

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

I would assume your ram is running out and then it needs to load some stuff to the harddisk... and that is verrry slow stuff.
try echo 70 > /proc/sys/vm/swapiness (will flush somewhat more often apps and might eliminate the problem you expirience)
If it does so, than add in /etc/sysctl.conf vm.swappiness = 70

That was a wild guess. Indeed more info is needed. Next time start htop or top and look what happens during the freeze.

gohmdoree · Guru Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 533

i have about 2gb of ram on the machine. i'll be sure to try that out when i can get around to it, and post it up on here.

otherwise, with the onboard intel video, it never happens.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 5:28 am Post subject:

Well, from what I've seen in the forums, you're better off with the intel chip. The xf86-video-intel drivers are a lot more stable and forgiving than the ATI or the nvidia stuff.

Blessed be!
Pappy
_________________
This space left intentionally blank, except for these ASCII symbols.

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

ati for linux is like nvidia for windows... I am a fan of AMD, yet I am a bigger fan of the hate club of ATI linux developers.