on Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 09:22:57AM -0400, Steve Gran (gashuffer09@home.com) wrote:
> Hello all,
> I'm still trying to chase down some freezes on my box. For sake of
> clarity, I'll try to give the relevant details all at once. About a
> week and a half ago, I started having total lockups on my box while
> running X. It's never happened outside of X, and at first it only
> seemed to happen while I was also running XMMS (admittedly, I run it
> quite often while I'm working). I tried removing XMMS, and it still
> hung. The freezes are total, i.e., no keyboard access, mouse is
> frozen, etc.
How about networked access or serial port? If you don't have a network
but do have a Palm or Handspring, get a terminal emulation package, run
a getty on your serial port, and log in. Then try to replicate the
crash and check for response.
Good news is that a GNU/Linux crash almost always indicates a problem,
usually hardware, some bad kernel drivers, or a bad X config.
> Can't do anything except hit the reset switch. I'm keeping an eye on
> the memory usage to see if that's the problem, although I have a fair
> amount so it shouldn't be. Anyway, here are some details:
>
> uname -a
> Linux gashuffer 2.4.7 #1 Tue Jul 24 14:29:31 EDT 2001 i686 unknown (running
> woody)
>
> Box is a PIII chip, Via Apollo chipset on the board, hard drives, CD
> Drive, SCSI CD Burner, USB interface for superdisk. Rage 128 video
> card, SBLive sound card. Up until this I couldn't have been happier
> with the setup[...] I have looked through the various /proc files, and
> don't see any obvious interrupt conflicts or other such obvious clues,
> and the various /var/log files also don't seem to have anything
> obvious in them.
Clue for log files:
- System crashes.
- Boot into a shell, as root, with:
LILO: linux shell=/bin/bash vga=ask
...this both prompts you for screen resolution -- pick something like
80x50 or 80x60 so you can see more, and it gives you very minimal system
functionality, but *no system logging is started*, meaning you're pretty
close to where the system was when it crashed (you can get a similar
effect by booting from a rescue or recovery disk). Go to your logs
directory and run:
$ ls -lt -I '*.gz' | head -40
...varying the lines to suit. Start poking through the logs that have
been most recently active, particularly messages and kernel logs. You
may get some precursor clues. I'd also look at the XFree86* logs.
> I'm assuming that the system is locking before it can write to syslog.
> The only obvious error messages are from the XFree86.log, and are as
> follows:
>
> Operating System: Linux 2.2.19 i686 [ELF] - Shouldn't be right, as I'm
> running the 2.4.7 kernel (although I think this may have been the first
> kernel I installed - I did it from an old Slink disk)
Installing a kernel and getting it to run requires three things (I'm
assuming you're running lilo, details differ for grub, though general
concept is similar):
- Install kernel (put in on disk).
- Update /etc/lilo.conf
- Run 'lilo' to update the MBR (master boot record).
...the kernel should come up, or at least show up in the kernels list on
your next boot.
I haven't installed a stock Debian kernel for a while, but doing so
*should* handle most of this for you. I roll my own using make-kpkg.
> (WW) Cannot open APM - should be fine, the board uses ACPI, and that's
> enabled in the kernel and seems to function normally.
You have to enable APM at boot time on stock Debian kernels. That's
either:
LILO: linux append="apm=on"
or a line:
apm=on
...in your /etc/lilo.conf (don't forget to re-run 'lilo'). See
/usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt.gz for more details.
> (WW) System lacks support for changing MTRRs - I don't know what this
> means at all.
I don't really either, but you can read about this in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/mtrr.txt
On Intel Pentium Pro/Pentium II systems the Memory Type Range
Registers (MTRRs) may be used to control processor access to memory
ranges. This is most useful when you have a video (VGA) card on a
PCI or AGP bus. Enabling write-combining allows bus write transfers
to be combined into a larger transfer before bursting over the
PCI/AGP bus. This can increase performance of image write operations
2.5 times or more.
> PEXExtensionInit: Couldn't open default PEX font file Roman_M
No clue.
Google, however, turns up the following which should be reassuring:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2001/debian-x-200102/msg00060.html
HS> PEXExtensionInit: Couldn't open default PEX font file Roman_M
HS> ^^^^^^^
The PEX extension (PHIGS over X) is misconfigured. As the PEX
extension is all but obsolete (nowadays, people use GLX instead),
this doesn't matter.
If you're using 4.*, you might as well comment out the ``Load
"GLX"'' line in your config file to disable PEX altogether. I don't
know how that's done with 3.*.
> error opening security policy file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/SecurityPolicy
> - both seem like minor errors, but again, I don't know.
Does the file exist? If so, permissions should be -rw-r--r--. If not,
try reinstalling the xserver-common package.
Note also that /usr/lib/X11/xserver should be a symlink pointing to
/etc/X11/xserver.
> Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/, removing
> from list!
> Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/, removing
> from list! - both of these should be there, as I can see them quite clearly
> with ls.
Again, Google is your friend. Pumping the first error message into the
search turns up:
http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/xpert/2001-January/004679.html
Open your XF86Config file and add the following lines:
Section "Module"
Load "type1" # Type 1 font rasteriser
Load "speedo" # Font-Server for Speedo-Fonts
# From the following TrueType-Font-Modules only one could be used:
# Load "xtt" # TT-Font-Server of XFree86.org
Load "freetype" # TT-Font-Server of freetype.org
Wolfgang Pichler
> XFree86 is 4.0.3, and I run two Window managers - Sawfish 0.99-1/Gnome
> 1.4.0.4-4 and Enlightenment 0.16.5
Try WindowMaker ;-)
> Any ideas, as I'm running out? Memory usage does seem to be a bit
> high (~148MB as of right now, but again, I have RAM to burn in there
> from when a friend parted out an ex-graphics workstation. Thanks in
> advance,
It might be helpful for you to post your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org
Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
Attachment:
pgpLJU2829AKc.pgp
Description: PGP signature