Arch Linux

Maki

Member

From: Skopje, Macedonia

Registered: 2007-10-16

Posts: 353

Website

System hang's up at random times

Couple of times now, my system hangs up just like that and i can't ctrl+alt+backspace or ctrl+alt+n, i can't use my mouse either, the only output i get is amarok looping 4-5 sec of a track. My system was also really slow and i thought that it was from using unsafe xf86-video-ati. But i removed them and now rendering is blazing fast but i still get hang-up. Using up to date arch system with kdemod on an pentium4 box.
Any idea where to search for troubles?

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If it ain't broke, broke it then fix it.

pyrrhicvictory

Member

From: Rradhat e UCK-se

Registered: 2007-12-21

Posts: 39

Re: System hang's up at random times

So what exactly do you do that causes that to happen? What are you running?

kclive18

Member

From: Columbus, Ohio, USA

Registered: 2008-05-08

Posts: 219

Re: System hang's up at random times

Have you overclocked your processor and/or memory in your system?  I would keep everything at stock frequencies and settings.  Also, you can run memtest to see the condition of your RAM.

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Maki

Member

From: Skopje, Macedonia

Registered: 2007-10-16

Posts: 353

Website

Re: System hang's up at random times

I didn't overclocked or changed bios setting, memtest is ok. Running kdemod and ati open source drivers.
One thing strange is that i got sluggish performance at one time, then i switched to different terminal, then back, and the top side of the screen was violet, took for some time for that to get normal.
Really wierd

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If it ain't broke, broke it then fix it.

estyles

Member

Registered: 2008-09-02

Posts: 6

Re: System hang's up at random times

I've been having this issue as well.  The times I can recall it happening were when I was in the compiz config manager, and in the settings dialog of evolution.  The most recent time that it happened, I noticed the system slowing down a lot and immediately hit ctrl-alt-backspace, and was able to log out, and logged back in again without issue.  I checked the errors.log and messages.log and nothing was logged at all.

I also have the problem with sluggish rendering, and I'm trying what the OP did - removing xf86-video-ati, and installed catalyst instead to see if it's any better.  My biggest problem with poor performance has been running flash - it's the 32-bit flash installed with nspluginwrapper on 64-bit arch - would be nice to get 64-bit flash that works.  I do have this error when booting:

Sep  3 10:45:12 bacchus Aperture pointing to e820 RAM. Ignoring.
Sep  3 10:45:12 bacchus Your BIOS doesn't leave a aperture memory hole
Sep  3 10:45:12 bacchus Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup
Sep  3 10:45:12 bacchus This costs you 64 MB of RAM

I have not been able to find any IOMMU or Aperture Size setting in my BIOS, so I don't know what to do about that, or if it's what's causing my problems or not.  (Shuttle AN35N-Ultra MB with Phoenix Award BIOS - if that helps)

I decided to run Arch because I figured that it might be difficult to setup, but I could get it running more stable and faster than Mint, but I'm starting to get discouraged with that - luckily I'm multibooting, so it wouldn't be a big hassle to just not use Arch, but I really like the idea of it, so hopefully I can get some of these problems fixed and then move on to my other problems...