On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:04:47PM -0400, Harry Prevor wrote: > So a few weeks ago, I decided to install Debian Wheezy (then unstable) > on a computer I built for my brother. The normal images didn't work > for some reason now forgotten, so I had to use the unofficial > installation images that included nonfree drivers. I had some problem > (also now unforgotten) that made the computer take ~20 minutes to boot > up for the first time, but after that Gnome 3 was working fine. > Because my younger brother uses this computer and the free software > drivers didn't do the graphics card in it (NVidia GTX 660) justice, I > had to install the nvidia proprietary drivers as well a few days later > if it matters. I pretty much followed the instructions verbatim from > <http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers> (the Debian way), and > the drivers were working fine for a few weeks. > > I can't remember how many times I rebooted the system during the time > when it worked, but it was a few times. I had sometimes gotten similar > messages upon boot, but I had always assumed it would be like my first > boot in that I would just have to wait thirty minutes for the boot, so > rather than waiting I typically did a hard reboot (upon which I did > not get the message and the system booted immediately). However, > recently I did a hard reboot and I kept getting the same messages, > over and over, and they didn't just stop after twenty minutes, making > my system essentially bricked. OK. It looks like you're getting general protection faults. It's hard to tell exactly, because we don't see the top of the oops message (pressing shift+pgup should allow you to scroll back). I would suggest, though, that you've possibly got a corrupt disk. Probably during one of those hard reboots. > > Because it would be rather tedious to type all these messages out > manually, I have compiled a video for you all to demonstrate the > problem (please mute the audio): > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYNd5p5TvA > > Sorry for the shaky camera; I could not find a suitable place to rest > the camera. > > Any ideas as to how to debug this? I could probably burn a live Debian > USB to debug the issue but I suspect that the live system would not > work without the proprietary drivers included in the system. If the only proprietary driver you need is the Nvidia X driver, then a rescue disc will work fine for you. You're likely to be pottering about at the command line anyway. I would start by checking SMART logs on both drives (in case they've failed badly), then try fscking the filesystems. Then try something like "debsums -c" to search for changed files. With luck, you may just need to re-install the kernel.
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