On 2022-10-17 at 07:05, Pierre Frenkiel wrote:
Since I installed Debian11, it happens from time to time (generally
when I leave the system unattended), that everything freezes:
keyboard and mouse.
Do the lights stay on (frozen), or do they go out? Meaning the NumLock /
CapsLock / ScrollLock lights on the keyboard, and the laser underneath
your mouse (assuming you don't have an old-style ball mouse, or a
trackball, or similar).
I found on several blogs some silly recommendations, involving typing
something. I say "silly" because in that case in I can't do
anything:
neither with the keyboard nor the mouse
At a guess, this "something" might involve the so-called magic SysRq
key?
when I say "frozen" it means "frozen" (may-be "dead" would be a
better word, as the computer doesn't answer to ping)
and the only thing I can do is reboot, being after that obliged to
re-install.
Wait, reinstall? This was sounding a bit like a state I've managed to
get the system into at various times in the past, where everything's
wedged hard (the lights remain but won't toggle, for example), and a
hard power-cycle was necessary to get out of it - but I was always able
to boot back up and run the system normally afterwards; no reinstall was
required.
What is it you observe which leads you to conclude that a reinstall is
needed at this point?
I tried running the screensaver,but the problem remained.
Has anybody a solution?
Not with that little information. The only things I can suggest would be
to find ways of getting more information.
Depending on how the system is configured, there might be copies of the
logs from before the freeze left even after new logs are begun when you
boot up again. Some of them (from X-related logs to the ones holding
dmesg or similar) may be relevant, if you can find them.
If the boot process does wind up blowing away those logs, you may still
be able to get access to them by booting to a live-media environment and
looking at the hard drive from there.
Failing that, you may be able to get some information out by setting up
a process to dump the contents of those logs to another location every
so often in a loop, waiting for the problem to reproduce, and then
checking that location after the next boot.
However, if the problem happens abruptly enough and is a hard-enough
freeze that there's no time for anything to get logged (never mind for
anything to be copied from the logs to another location) before all
processing effectively halts, none of those are likely to help you.
--
The Wanderer
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw