Arch Linux

Norseman06

Member

Registered: 2014-02-06

Posts: 12

How To Find Out Why Desktop Is Locking Up

I installed Arch x64 with Cinnamon desktop to my old Gaming PC.

Do normal things (Checking Email, Surfing The Web) it does just fine, however when I do anything resource intensive like playing a game or try to render a video with KdenLive it locks up. Sometimes I am able to Ctrl + Alt + F? to get to a terminal, but it is slow to login and often locks up just after that.

Is there a log or something I can look at to see what is happening when it locks up?

Thanks,

P.S. This also happened when I was running Ubuntu(Unity, Gnome, and XFCE) although much more often.

cedeel

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 176

Website

Re: How To Find Out Why Desktop Is Locking Up

What happens during the lockups? Does your disk show activity?

Do you have enough memory for the tasks? It could possibly be the kernel swapping memory to disk, or even worse if you don't have a swap partition/file; the OOM killer.

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My (rather inactive) blog

Norseman06

Member

Registered: 2014-02-06

Posts: 12

Re: How To Find Out Why Desktop Is Locking Up

I will be working or playing and it will just freeze up at first I can't click anything then I won't be able to move the mouse.
When I try rendering from KdenLive it does much the same even if I try using the render script and don't actually lauch KdenLive.

I have 4 gigs of ram and a 1 gig swap partition.
Is there a way to see if there is activity on the disk

Last edited by Norseman06 (2014-03-18 16:52:03)

nomorewindows

Member

Registered: 2010-04-03

Posts: 3,548

Re: How To Find Out Why Desktop Is Locking Up

Need to watch top and iotop.
Check dmesg and journalctl.

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I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.