Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

snoblo · 2008-05-02 00:16:53

Hi, I'm a new arch user and I enjoy arch a lot, but I have a small problem. Recently, I've been experiencing occasional computer freezes at seemingly random times and I have been unable to figure out why. Many of them seem to occur during slightly higher cpu loads (not too high), but I am unable to reproduce it successfully on command. I've searched around a bit on the web, and searched the system logs (dmesg, syslog, etc) but I don't find anything. I know this is pretty ambiguous and I don't expect anyone to magically come up with the solution since I gave so little information, but that is because I don't have much information to give.

I'm tempted to say it's a hardware problem, since I've installed arch on both of my laptops, and they work perfectly fine. Also, I've had ubuntu on this computer for the past year before replacing it with arch, and have not experienced many crashes (though I did experience a couple very recently before I switched to arch, which could mean that maybe my hardware has recently been failing?) I don't know much about hardware, but I've tried installing arch on my secondary hard drive instead, but I still experienced the crashes. Could it be the cpu?

Here are the details of my computer
pentium IV 3.00 ghz
2 gig ram

(After thinking about it, i believe that these crashes could be slightly different than those very few crashes I've had with Ubuntu, in which the lights of my keyboard flash and the very first thing I see on my screen when I boot up is a message saying about my processor locking up.)

When my computer freezes in arch, everything is frozen on my screen, but no flashing lights on my keyboard. I've tried Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to try to get out of X, but it doesn't work. When I reboot, I boot up fine until the boot screen in arch, which tells me that my hard drives were not mounted properly, leaving me to spend a few minutes fscking my hard drives.

I'm not specifically looking for the magical solution to my problem, but more looking for advice on where to look, how to find out the cause of the problem (maybe it's my hardware?), or in general, what to do.
Thanks alot for your time and help!

skymt · 2008-05-02 00:43:31

It does sound like a hardware issue, but narrowing it down from there could be tricky. Bad RAM could cause this, so start by running Memtest86+. Other potential culprits include overheating (so watch your CPU temperature) or a malfunctioning PSU.

snoblo · 2008-05-02 00:46:03

okay, I'll try that, thanks!

bender02 · 2008-05-02 02:51:57

CPU overheating?

snoblo · 2008-05-02 03:08:15

I haven't tried out memtest yet ( I will later when I have time), but here's the output from my sensors:

[me@myhost ~]$ sensors
w83627thf-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore: +1.33 V (min = +0.70 V, max = +1.87 V)
+12V: +12.28 V (min = +15.50 V, max = +4.50 V)
+3.3V: +3.07 V (min = +1.33 V, max = +2.02 V)
+5V: +4.88 V (min = +4.37 V, max = +2.56 V)
-12V: -12.53 V (min = -13.02 V, max = -5.21 V)
V5SB: +4.35 V (min = +0.70 V, max = +3.06 V)
VBat: +3.07 V (min = +0.91 V, max = +1.15 V)
fan1: 0 RPM (min = 1171 RPM, div = 8)
CPU Fan: 3515 RPM (min = -1 RPM, div = 8)
fan3: 0 RPM (min = 2057 RPM, div = 8)
M/B Temp: -6.0°C (high = +48.0°C, hyst = -128.0°C) sensor = thermistor
CPU Temp: +44.0°C (high = +50.0°C, hyst = +50.0°C) sensor = diode
temp3: +37.5°C (high = +120.0°C, hyst = +115.0°C) sensor = thermistor
beep_enable:enabled

I think everything looks okay there. Maybe I'll periodically check it to see if it changes much.

raul_nds · 2008-05-02 08:44:15

Not to scare you but I had frequent lock ups on my system and I ended up sending my laptop for repair (god bless warranty, had to replace the hard drive). My crashes were different from yours (screen would go blank), but I don't think they were the reason for the disk failure. I think this happened because of the frequent hard reboots I had to do, my inodes and flags got all messed up, and the partitions wouldn't even show up in GParted.

My advice: Never hard reboot. When you can, do the SysRq+RSEIUB combo (you have to activate SysRq key) to gracefully reboot (well, sort of anyway).

Another thing, since my laptop came back and I reinstalled, my laptop hasn't freezed since.

snoblo · 2008-05-04 16:13:46

Thanks to everyone for the quick responses!
my computer just crashed again, while I was on photoshop with wine, but my cpu load was very low.
When I rebooted, I got a bios message saying something like:
"Dram timing too tight...(something like that)
Press any key to continue"
then i went back to fscking for a few minutes.

Does this mean this is a ram problem?

raul_nds wrote:

My advice: Never hard reboot. When you can, do the SysRq+RSEIUB combo (you have to activate SysRq key) to gracefully reboot (well, sort of anyway).

Hmm I didn't know what that meant at first, but I looked it up and I'll try that the next time it crashes. thanks!

EDIT:
also, I've been looking around on how to use memtest86+, but I haven't figured it out yet. I installed it with pacman, but if anyone could give me some tips on how to use it, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Last edited by snoblo (2008-05-04 16:16:39)

snoblo · 2008-05-27 01:55:55

*bump and update*
I finally bought new ram, and everything was going well for about 2 weeks, but just today it crashed again. For a few hours before my fan had been unreasonabaly loud, and my cpu temperature was in the 40-50 C range even with no programs running, which i found really unusual (however, i suspected it was due to the unusual humidity and hot temperature in our house today). And then after I rebooted after the crash, I got a boot message saying "Dram timing is too tightly so reload timing". Does anyone know what that means? Thanks!

Last edited by snoblo (2008-05-27 01:56:20)

lucke · 2008-05-27 06:50:09

Check your settings in BIOS regarding RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency

mrbug · 2008-06-06 03:20:46

I"m experiencing something similar.. My computer freezes hard sometimes when it's under load (especially when compiling or transcoding).

Sensors output:
VCore 1: +1.47 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +4.08 V)
VCore 2: +1.47 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +4.08 V)
+3.3V: +3.30 V (min = +2.82 V, max = +3.79 V)
+5V: +4.92 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.43 V) ALARM
+12V: +11.80 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +7.84 V) ALARM
-12V: -12.36 V (min = -11.95 V, max = -13.59 V) ALARM
-5V: -5.75 V (min = -7.66 V, max = -7.71 V) ALARM
V5SB: +5.40 V (min = +1.94 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM
VBat: +3.04 V (min = +0.06 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM
fan1: 3924 RPM (min = 2636 RPM, div = 8)
fan2: 2033 RPM (min = 2057 RPM, div = 8) ALARM
fan3: 5443 RPM (min = 1318 RPM, div = 8)
temp1: +46.0?C (high = +0.0?C, hyst = -128.0?C) ALARM sensor = thermistor
temp2: +73.0?C (high = +120.0?C, hyst = +115.0?C) sensor = diode
temp3: -47.5?C (high = +120.0?C, hyst = +115.0?C) sensor = diode
cpu0_vid: +0.000 V
beep_enable:enabled

Is my PS putting out too much power or something? Also, my processor temperature is 152-154F when idle... How can I fix these things? It seems like the freezes happen more often when I enabled HT (Pentium 4 processor). If I add more memory, I get mysterious kernel panics.

I don't mean to hijack this thread. I'm just having the same problem, and this may help provide answers when someone does a forum search.

BC · 2008-06-06 15:12:26

You could try installing the microcode_ctl package. My P4 is pretty much unusable without it.

mrbug · 2008-06-06 22:15:46

Thanks, I'll try microcode_ctl. With any luck, that will fix the problem...

Does the "add additional memory, get a kernel panic" problem sound like it could be caused by something specific? They memory is new, straight from Kingston (or Crucial, can't remember right now).

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-02 00:16:53

Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#2 2008-05-02 00:43:31

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#3 2008-05-02 00:46:03

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#4 2008-05-02 02:51:57

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#5 2008-05-02 03:08:15

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#6 2008-05-02 08:44:15

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#7 2008-05-04 16:13:46

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#8 2008-05-27 01:55:55

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#9 2008-05-27 06:50:09

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#10 2008-06-06 03:20:46

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#11 2008-06-06 15:12:26

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

#12 2008-06-06 22:15:46

Re: Ambiguous computer crashing... tips?

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