Re: X hangs (ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7500 on Sony VAIO PCG-8A6M, GRX316G with X)
On Mon, 2002-09-02 at 19:45, Jaye Inabnit ke6sls wrote:
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> On Monday 02 September 2002 12:28 pm, Mariano Kamp wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am not sure how to describe this problem properly. Basically my machine
> > hangs every now and then. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, sometimes five and
> > it is also sometimes running for 60 minutes until it hangs. Hangs means, I
> > cannot do anything anymore. At least CTRL+ALT+DEL/BS and CTRL+ALT+F1 do not
> > work anymore.
>
> Then if you press CAPS LOCK, the caps lock LED comes on? This is usually the
> sane test to determine if your cpu is locked. Yet you confuse me by telling
> me "it takes 20 minutes, sometimes five. . ."
I'll try that. But I know for sure that the machine is still pingable
after a crash.
With 5/20/60 minutes I want to say, that it doesn't seem to happen every
time after 5 minutes. And it always happens when I am doing something.
It would be an interesting test to let the laptop run the whole night,
but I am afraid to do that, because I read that my laptop will burn when
ACPI is not working properly and I learned that there is no out of the
box ACPI and I would need to learn how to patch a kernel etc. first.
>
> > I do have the feeling that it happens usually when I am also accessing
> > the disk, but it is very hard to be sure with these things.
>
> Right, my laptop has died many times as I configured it over this weekend,
> sometimes the DISK LED would stay on, sometimes it wouldn't. In each case,
> however, the CAPS LED would night turn on, nor could I get pings back from it.
I do get pings though.
>
> > Is there any log I can have a look at? /var/log/messages and
> > XFree86.0.log doesn't seem to have something meaningful regarding the crash
> > in there. The last possibly relevant message is: xfs: ignoring font path
> > element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID (unreadable).
>
> Good idea to start there. My box was crashing as it started run level 2,
> right at the very end. What confused me was that my screen would have white
> lines in it as if X was trying to start. Turned out to be pcmcia trying to
> run, and that is completely unrelated to X! :) Syslog is what I used to get
> an idea of where/when/where, and why. Another trick I use with syslog is a
> command 'tail -f /var/log/syslog &', this pops every event to your console as
> it happends and runs in the background so you can still use the console.
Ok, I will try that.
> > I do currently have X11 configured for "vesa". Is there any better driver
> > for my card? How do I know?
>
> I have never had good luck with VESA. The last box I used it on would end up
> with weird memory errors from out of nowhere. Memtest86 reported the memory
> was perfect. This *could* be part of your problem.
>
> The last suggestion is running top. Keep a top window open and see if there
> is a program going crazy and swamping the cpu. I have read many times of
> programs taking all the cpu for no apparent reason.
Ok, I will try that.
Thanks very much for your help and encouragement.
Mariano
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