Re: System Locks up after kdevelop install

[Ross Drinen <drinenvr@yahoo.com>]

--- Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 07:55:01 -0700, Ross Drinen wrote:
> > I installed debian/gnu linux for the first time a couple of
> months
> > ago for the first time. (I had been a redhat user formerly.  I
> got
> > kde, apache2, ftp server, mail etc working and all was well. 
> Then I
> > decided to install kdevelop and its recommended packages.  After
> > that, the system started locking up periodically.  I can operate,
> > sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a day, but eventually it
> just
> > locks up, often (but not always) upon opening a new window, or
> when
> > resizing a window.  
> > 
> > By "lock up"  I mean the mouse will move, but has no effect on
> any
> > windows, often a window will be outlined, but its contents will
> not
> > be painted.  No keyboard action has any effect, including
> switching
> > to a virtual console.   And ftp, samba etc connections from other
> > systems do not respond.  Sometimes it will get a bit sluggish
> briefly
> > before locking up, sometimes it's without warning.
> 
> That kind of behavior could have many different causes, it might
> even be
> a hardware problem. You could try to install an ssh server so that
> you
> can log in from another computer when it happens the next time.
> (ssh
> should be more robust that samba or ftp access, and you get full
> shell
> access with all diagnostic tools.) It could well be that X locks up
> your
> system by using nearly 100% CPU. I have had such cases, due to
> problems
> with the driver of my graphics card, and then I could always use
> ssh to
> log in and kill X. It might also help if you post your lspci output
> and
> your X configuration; maybe someone has had similar experiences
> with
> your specific configuration.
> 
> You should also check the log files after such a crash (and a hard
> reset
> I assume) to see if you notice anything unusual. If you can't make
> sense
> of the logs you can post the last 10-20 lines here.
> 
> > I have deinstalled kdevelop and all that went on with it, to no
> > avail.  I've used top to try to see if I can find memory leak
> > indicated etc, but see none.  I'm at the point of reinstalling
> the
> > operating system from scratch, then staying away from kdevelop.
> 
> My gut feeling is that kdevelop is not really the cause of your
> problem.
> Hopefully one of the things I have suggested above will turn up
> something useful to diagnose this better.
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
>           Florian
Thanks for the suggestion to establish ssh connection.  That yields
the following further information on the problem.
When the system "locks up", top shows XFree86 running 100% CPU Usage.
 Killing that process frees up the screen, and it goes back to the
KDM login screen, from which I can login and function again until the
next  "lock up".  
When locked up, the mouse pointer moves about the screen normally,
but no mouse clicks or keyboard actions have any effect.  
It looks to me like when I installed kdevelop, I also changed X
somehow (this all started when I installed kdevelop) and removing
kdevelop didn't undo whatever changed in X.
How about i remove X (and KDE?) and reinstall them?



Ross Drinen
drinenvr@yahoo.com