System crash, or lockup
I have posted about this before, and one suggestion was that I have a
power supply problem. This seems possible, even probably, for some of
my problems, but not, I think, for all of them. Also, I have noticed
additional types of problems since my last post.
Please note: I have purchased a new power supply (with a higher wattage
than my old one) but have not had time to install it, yet.
This is on an up to date Squeeze box running gnome.
Problem 1:
The system goes down, the screen goes blank and then says it is not
receiving a signal. This sounds like a power supply problem and I
expect it will go away once I get the new power supply installed.
Problem 2:
The system simply locks up completely, with no notice, or warning. There
is no response to the mouse, or keyboard. Prior to having hard drive
problems (which caused me to replace the HD and reinstall) this would
sometimes happen. When it did, I could usually ssh in do 'sudo chvt'
and then I would be able to use the desktop again. On checking out the
system, I would find that X had simply gone away on the VT that was
displayed (but the screen still showed everything as it had been, just
unresponsive. Since the reinstall, I have been unable to ssh to the box
in the first place. I get a 'no route' error on my laptop when I try
(yes, I can ssh in at other times). The only solution is a hard
reboot. This does not seem to me to be power supply related.
Problem 3 (NEW):
The system mostly locks up. The mouse still moves, but there is no
response to mouse clicks. The gnome panels go completely blank. Running
programs do not respond to the keyboard, but I can 'chvt' to get to
another X session (there are usually three sessions going at once on
vt7, vt8 and vt9 for myself, my wife and my daughter. I can also chvt
to console sessions. Once I have switched to another session, if I kill
startx and xinit for the locked session (or sessions - sometimes two
sessions will do this at the same time. I think that once, all three X
sessions locked up this way but I was still able to 'fix' things from a
console session.) then the sessions start to work, again. All
applications have been killed, but the gnome panels are back to normal
and the session responds to the mouse and keyboard. This sounds like a
gnome problem. Has anyone else had a similar problem?
I hope to get the time to install the power supply and (fingers crossed)
solve prolem #1 tonight. Does anyone have any ideas on the cause of
problems #2 and #3? I really don't expect the new power supply to solve
them and they are just as much disruption as #1.
Please help. This is very annoying.
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