Intermittent System Lockup (long)
I'm hoping someone here might be able to give me a few pointers on how to
track down a strange system lockup.
When the lockup occurs, both monitors drop to power saving mode and the
system from what I can tell is dead to the world (no network connectivity
and completely unresponsive to local access), and both IDE CD drives show
momentary access. The system does still have power as the CD drives
respond appropriately to their eject buttons.
The system itself is a Dell Precision Workstation 220 with the following
hardware:
- Dual 19inch monitors (not using Xinerama)
- Matrax 400 32 Meg (latest drivers from matrox Beta 2.0)
- On board AC'97 Audio (using Alsa 0.9 drivers)
- Adaptec 7892A SCSI Ultra 160 controller
- On board 3Com 3c905 NIC
- Western Digital 40 Gig HD (hda)
- Lite-On LTN483S 48x CD ROM (hdc)
- SONY CD_RW CRX140E CD ROM (hdd)
- Fujitsu MAG3091MP 9 Gig (sda)
- 256 Megs Memory (2x 128 Meg RIMM)
Software:
- Debian Woody (updated regularly)
- Kernel 2.4.16-686
- Devfs v1.3.25-1
- Psi v0.8.4-2
- GKrellM v1.2.10-1
- Sylpheed v0.7.4-3
- Rxvt v2.6.4-5
- Blackbox v0.62.1-1
- BBKeys v0.8.4-1
- SSH v3.0.2p1-9
- Apache v1.3.23-1
- xdm v4.1.0-14
- Mozilla v0.9.9-6
- Nedit v5.2-1.1
- Dillo v0.6.4-2
- VMWare v3.1.1 build-1790
I have not been able to really pin the problem down to one particular
application. I have however noticed the problem more when I am using
Mozilla to browse. Frequently when I click on a link in Mozilla the
system will simply drop. However, I have seen drops when Mozilla was not
in use.
Originally, I suspected the problem had something to do with system load
and that it was simply happening more often with Mozilla due to the load
that Mozilla placed on the system. Then I suspected that the problem
might be memory related and only showing itself when the system was using
large amounts of memory. I have however tested the system's memory using
MemTest, and found no problem.
In some cases the system will go days/weeks without exhibiting the problem
and sometimes I'll see it several times in one day.
Any ideas on how to pin a problem like this down? Possibly how to track
what the last few actions a system made before dropping out?
If there's any other information that I can supply that may be useful,
please let me know.
--
Jamin W. Collins
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