Re: Intermittent System Lockup (long)
Sorry for having posted this message twice to the list. However for some
reason the original posting never came through on my end.
Faheem Mitha wrote:
> (I don't want to post this to the list since it isn't very useful, but
> your email address is invalid, so I've no choice).
Note quite certain how my address is showing as invalid as it is indeed
working.
> The first question I would ask myself is whether this was a hardware or
> software problem. Do you experience these problems with another
> operating system? Eg Windows?
Really never ran Windows on the unit. Removed it the first oportunity I
had. I have run Red Hat on the box and experienced similar lockups just
prior to switching to Debian.
> You hardware looks pretty reasonable. Do your system logs say anything,
> eg/var/log/messages?
Nope, nothing there. Most of the time the logs have no entries near the
lockup (other than those caused the by the subsuquent reboot). This is
part of the reason for my post. I didn't know if there was some way to
force the system to log more information.
> I would wonder a little about the sound drivers, but
> that might be because I don't get along with ALSA :-)
Tried using the kernel drivers, but they resulted in very poor stuttering
audio. I use the ALSA drivers on all my other systems (5+) with no
problems on them.
> You say you're using
> beta video drivers from Matrox. Have you tried using the regular XFree86
> drivers and seeing how the system behaves?
Yes, unfortunately the beta drivers are needed as the regular XFree86
drivers do not provide support for the dual monitor configuration in which
I need to use the system.
Karsten M. Sell wrote:
> You've got a tough situation:
>
> - Random lockups.
> - Infrequent lockups.
> - No system state (logs) indicating reasons for lockups.
That's a good summary of the situation.
> - CPU -- a continuous kernel-build loop is a pretty good test. You're
> looking for SIG-11 errors.
I'll give that a try, how long would you suggest it run before considering
this test to have been passed?
> Diagnosing is difficult with infrequent, random lockups. Is there a
> period during which you'll almost certainly see a problem?
I can almost always get the system to lock by using Mozilla heavily.
Other than that I really don't have a "sure fire" way of locking it.
> Try removing everything. Unload all your drivers. Shut down X11. Run
> the system. See if it crashes, say, within a day.
Even running X and most of the applications listed in my original post,
the system frequently lasts for days to weeks at a time.
--
Jamin W. Collins
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