Arch Linux

mirakus

Member

Registered: 2012-06-03

Posts: 5

World of Warcraft freezes - can still SSH into system

Hi. 

When I first installed Arch on this system around December, I could game out for hours on WoW nonstop without fear of a crash.  What happens now is that I'll randomly get a freeze during gaming - the screen and sound will stand completely still leaving me to believe everything is locked up.  The whole computer doesn't lock up though; I'm still able to ssh in from another computer and do a reboot/shutdown, so it looks like the crash is just X/graphics driver.  SSH'ing in is the only way I can recover the system when this happens - alt/tabbing doesn't work.  This has only been occuring for me the past month or so.  One thing I've noticed is that I get the "Hardware changed.  Reload Default Settings?" dialog box about every other run, even though nothing has changed.  It seems like if it doesn't appear, I'll have a smooth game, but if it does appear, I'll lock up.  The only course of action I can take in this circumstance is to delete the WTF/Cache/Interface folders and start with a fresh config, in order to avoid the freezing (unacceptable every other game run).  It seems like my crashes are related to that dialog box appearing, but I'm not sure why.  Also, I use WOTLK on a private server, if that helps. 

Overheating: I've verified multiple times that this thing isn't overheating.  During playing WoW, my main cpu gets to about 45c and my gpu gets to about 65c tops, on maximum settings.  I have no issues when playing other games.  I've also run memtest86+ for hours on end with this machine and all is well, so whatever this is, it's definitely not the "typical causes." 

AMD fx4100 cpu
Nvidia 550TI 1GB video
16 GB ram
Kernel: 3.4.9
Xorg server version: 1.12
Wine version: 1.5.11
Nvidia version: 304.37-1

I feel this is a software problem related to newer versions of software, which is why I'm posting it here - I don't have these problems on my (MUCH) crappier computers, where I get 12 fps but they're still fully reliable.  I'd be grateful for anyone with experience on this topic to help.  As I said, I'm sure it's not hardware because it ran beautifully about six months ago - it's just been the past month or so that this freezing has started.  Please let me know if you need anymore info.

Šaran

Member

From: Bosnia

Registered: 2011-09-03

Posts: 407

Re: World of Warcraft freezes - can still SSH into system

I can't help you with freezing, but you can regain control over the computer with SysRq key.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

Enable it by changing

kernel.sysrq = 0 

in /etc/sysctl.conf to 1.

mirakus

Member

Registered: 2012-06-03

Posts: 5

Re: World of Warcraft freezes - can still SSH into system

Thanks for the tip!  In all these years, I was never aware of the SysRq functionality.  I can now recover the system without having to reboot, which is awesome. 

I still haven't solved my issue, but I performed an upgrade today (which I noticed included xorg-server and nvidia), so hopefully if it was just a small bug, it's been squashed.  After reading this post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=144856, I believe my problem may be caused by the same underlying issue.  I mentioned this did not happen with other games, but I also haven't played anything else until just recently when I started getting into WoW again (couple of months of non-game time). 

I'm also going to try and run a memory check on my video card memory, as soon as I learn how to do that, perhaps with memtest cl or something.  I have a little more to play with, but still largely stuck with this problem - hope I can solve it soon.  If I find a solution I'll definitely post back - somehow I have the feeling I'm not the only one on this!