Arch Linux

sadiecable

Member

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 5

System freezes randomly! Help!!

Okay well this is my first time using and installing Arch. I followed the beginner's guide and everything went fine. I installed Openbox and gdm for my window and login managers. When it freezes:
     1. I can still move the mouse
     2. If opera is open I can make new tabs or click on links but they will not load.
     3. I can sometimes run thunar (file manager)
     4. If a text editor is open, I can edit and type.
     5. If a terminal is open I can't type or enter anything, it only shows a non-blinking rectangle.
     6. I can switch workspaces.

Once the system froze the first time I tried installing xfce. Everything went fine and I could start xfce. But then it froze again with all the same problems. I hope you guys know what the problem is. This is making me so frustrated. Here is the output of tail /var/log/everything.log

[caleb@antarch ~]$ tail /var/log/everything.log
May 23 07:40:47 localhost dhcpcd[1496]: forked to background, child pid 1517
May 23 07:40:47 localhost crond[1532]: /usr/sbin/crond 4.5 dillon's cron daemon, started with loglevel info
May 23 07:40:51 localhost polkitd[1625]: started daemon version 0.101 using authority implementation `local' version `0.101'
May 23 07:40:54 localhost accounts-daemon[1660]: started daemon version 0.6.10
May 23 07:40:55 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[1656]: WARNING: Unable to connect to power manager: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.PowerManager: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildSignaled: Process /usr/bin/gnome-power-manager received signal 6
May 23 07:40:57 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[1656]: Gtk-WARNING: gtkwidget.c:6778: widget not within a GtkWindow
May 23 07:40:57 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[1656]: WARNING: Unable to read from file /etc/arch-release
May 23 07:41:53 localhost kernel: [   86.389381] NET: Registered protocol family 10
May 23 07:42:03 localhost kernel: [   96.576678] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
May 23 07:51:32 localhost kernel: [  665.861072] fuse init (API version 7.16)
[caleb@antarch ~]$ 

Thanks guys! ^_^

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,792

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

If you enter Ctrl-Alt-F1 (or F2-F6) can you get to a console window with a login prompt?
If so, can you login ?
If so, can you run htop?

---

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Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
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sadiecable

Member

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 5

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

I could not go to a different run level when it froze.

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-03-19

Posts: 1,191

Website

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

Maybe some disk I/O problem? (Looks like things that don't require disk access still work...)

sadiecable

Member

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 5

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

How would I be able to check if it is? Should I run some commands and post the output here for you guys? Sorry I just hope this can get fixed soon.

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-03-19

Posts: 1,191

Website

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

Well if you have USB drives you could try to unplug them. You can also try to save in your text editor when that happens and see if that works or not...

You posted the tail of everything.log, but was it during a freeze?

I'm afraid I have no idea how to "properly" debug that.

sadiecable

Member

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 5

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

All usb drives are unplugged, saving works in the text editor, no it wasn't during a freeze because I can't access the terminal during one. I thought it might be of some use. Thanks for helping me btw

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-03-19

Posts: 1,191

Website

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

Well of course it makes sense . You might want to have a look at everything.log.1 or something like that then, after a freeze+reboot.

If saving works in the text editor, maybe it's not disk-related then... No idea what it could be.

Edit: you could still check the SMART data and/or do a bad blocks check, just in case. (With Gnome Disk Utility or gsmartcontrol or fsck or badblocks.)

Edit 2: and check your RAM with memtest86+.

Last edited by stqn (2011-05-25 00:46:15)

scenox

Member

Registered: 2010-07-19

Posts: 63

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

Do you have another OS on the pc? Does it happen there too? It sounds like a hardware problem, maybe RAM

sadiecable

Member

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 5

Re: System freezes randomly! Help!!

Okay well I checked the everything.log.1 and it was just outputting things on the network like eth0. Then shortly after it froze but I could still go to workspaces, but then it totally froze up and I couldn't do anything. I did the memtest with the bootable dvd and everything went well. I have Kubuntu and windows 7 professional also on and they've never frozen. How do I run the smart data check?