Arch Linux

jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

Two scenarios have been randomly hard locking my laptop lately. Sometimes when I launch a VM in Virtualbox, my screen will garble and my system will just completely stop. No key is recognized, and I can't even get to TTY's. In addition, every now and then when suspending to RAM, it will completely hard lock when I go to resume.

The problem is, when this happens I have to hold the power button and force it to turn off and then power it on again. I don't know what logs I should be looking at so I can pinpoint these issues, and I think when I boot up a fresh set of logs are being generated, so I'm not sure how to single out the time period where it crashed. I guess I'm just asking for the general idea of what to do in a situation like this. I'm more accustomed to dropping to a tty when I have a problem and looking at logs that way.

My goal is to troubleshoot if these are kernel issues, KDE issues, or driver issues. If these are KDE issues I'll just switch to XFCE but I want to make sure first.

meph

Member

Registered: 2011-06-06

Posts: 160

Re: Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

If you want to check X log, then /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old should contain log from last session, i.e. the one that crashed, as long as you check it immediately after the crash. However, I do not expect you to find anything there. Most likely suspect is faulty hardware, specifically your RAM module. Both scenarios that crash you use extensive amounts of memory - suspending to RAM is rather obvious, and also using a virtual machine can use loads of memory, especially if the system you're booting up is something bloated like Windows Vista/7. My theory is that your system is running fine until it tries to access some specific memory area, then it just crashes. First thing I'd try out is running a memtest.

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Running arch is like raising a puppy - if you spend a bit of time with it each day and do just a bit of training you'll end up with the most loyal partner you could want; if you lock it in a room and don't check on if for several days, it'll tear apart your stuff and poop everywhere.

jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Re: Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

Brilliant recommendation, but I ran a full Memtest86 and it found 0 errors.

This problem is very strange because I can't find a way to reproduce it manually. Most of the time I resume from standby it's fine, but every once in a while it will freeze. I may see the KDE mouse cursor, but it will freeze before I can enter my password to unlock it. Most of the time it resumes fine. with my Windows 7 VM, I use it about every other day, and only 1 or 2 times a week will it freeze.

meph

Member

Registered: 2011-06-06

Posts: 160

Re: Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

That's rather good news I guess, at least you know your hardware isn't broken. Last hardware related thing that comes to my mind is overheating, but guess since it happens when you actually wake up your system, that shouldn't be the case.

Next step would be looking through the logs I guess, have to first identify the problem before dealing with it. If you think the log capacity isn't sufficient, then you can take a look at your /etc/logrotate.conf and adjust it, or see Logrotate Wiki to see how it works. Anyway, my suggestion is that you wait for a crash to occur, record the exact time it happened and then go through everything in your /var/log that might be relevant. It might be a long and boring work, but it's the only way I can think of to figure out what's actually going on during the crash. Or maybe if someone else can suggest a way to find that out?

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Running arch is like raising a puppy - if you spend a bit of time with it each day and do just a bit of training you'll end up with the most loyal partner you could want; if you lock it in a room and don't check on if for several days, it'll tear apart your stuff and poop everywhere.

hiciu

Member

Registered: 2010-08-11

Posts: 84

Re: Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

You could try to unload 'vboxdrv' module (and 'vboxnetflt' and 'vboxnetadp' too) before going to suspend / hibernate. It fixed my problems with suspend / hibernate (of course, this way you won't be able to suspend with running VM).

Also, read about sysrq keys - you may be able to cleanly sync and unmount filesystems and reboot system if it hangs (alt-sysrq-{s,u,b}).

jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Re: Need Help Troubleshooting System Lockups

Thank you. I'll try that next time this happens. I'll keep you all updated. I have a feeling it's either the video driver, kernel, or KDE. If the problem is KDE, then I will just use XFCE.