Random crashes

rusty99 · 2010-01-02 11:48:07

I've had tis issue pretty much since I reinstalled Arch back in March last year. Every now and then, semingly sporadic crashes happen. The only thing I can pin them down on is they always occur when I'm browsing the net.
If it was just a browser crash I'd probably just live with it but these always cause a system reboot and are pretty annoying.

Currently I use Chromium from AUR and Firefox-pgo (3.5.6) on an x86_64 system, for a long time Chromium seemed ok but crashes have happened with it recently. Crashes occur between 1 and 4 times a day, and seem more consistent with Firefox. I don't use any addons in either browser, ad blocking is handled via Privoxy.
I've tried different WM's, different browsers, not using javascript, etc etc and yet the crashes still occur. I've run 7 pass memtests on each stick / all sticks of ram with no issues.

The only thing I have yet to try is firefox within a chroot (would this be of any benefit?) / re-installing i686 instead.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

JohannesSM64 · 2010-01-02 13:35:43

Does it occour with other OSes on the same machine?

hokasch · 2010-01-02 13:47:41

Maybe deactivate flash-plugin?

rusty99 · 2010-01-02 13:56:23

@ JohannesSM64

The other OS on this machine is WinXP which rarely gets used but I've not had that crash anytime I do use it.

@ hokasch

I'll give it a go. Scratch that, uninstalled flashplugin, started Firefox and headed to http://www.osnews.com/story/22678/Qt4_P … ku_Matures and pc rebooted as I scrolled down the page.

Last edited by rusty99 (2010-01-02 14:06:07)

chpln · 2010-01-03 05:38:21

Would there happen to be anything unusual in /var/log/messages.log around the time of the crash?

rusty99 · 2010-01-03 06:35:02

No there's no indication of any errors in any of the logs.
I reinstalled using i686 arch last night, grabbed Shiretoko out of extra and within 10 mins my pc crashed and rebooted. Very strange.
It's definitely not a hardware / heat issue as I'm using 4x 120 mm fans, the gpu has an added on cooler. Cpu temps are ~28C.
That it only occurs when browsing is odd, I can quite happily backup dvds taking ~4hrs or leave the pc up for days at a time providing I don't browse the net

Going to have to try installing a different distro and compare, right now it's not very enjoyable playing roulette with links and bookmarks...

JohnVV · 2010-01-03 06:51:58

there have been reported problems of crashes with the current Gnome desktop . I take it that is what you are using ?
You might want to see if you still have these crashes while using KDE instead .

rusty99 · 2010-01-03 08:08:02

I was running wmii-hg + python layout but switched to dwm around a week ago.

Minishark · 2010-01-03 15:52:03

Have you tried running MemTest86?

I was having random crash problems recently, and somebody suggested it might be a bad stick of RAM. I thought, "No way that could be it" and proceeded to spend tons of time messing with kernel/xorg/video drivers/hal with no success. Then on a whim I ran a MemTest86, and it turns out it was a RAM problem. I removed the bad RAM, and haven't had a single crash since (it's been about a month).

rusty99 · 2010-01-03 17:49:03

Minishark wrote:

Have you tried running MemTest86?

Yep, no errors returned there.

Before going through the hassle of trying some other not-Arch distro I thought I'd try the lts kernel and work my way up from there.
Granted I haven't been at the pc much today but so far on i686 and downgraded kernel I've yet to have a crash.
I guess it's a case of finding where the trouble starts and then going back to x86_64 and seeing how things are on this hardware.

rusty99 · 2010-01-04 18:07:03

Tried installing FreeBSD 8 as an alternative, After getting everything working I booted in to X using dwm as my WM. Loading Firefox and going to news.bbc.co.uk caused a reboot within 5 seconds.
There's obviously more to this than just a rogue kernel, 2 _completely_ different distros, different versions of firefox (3.5.3 and 3.5.6) and the same problem exists. Out of curiousity I plugged in an old keyboard as my newest one (~18mths old) wasn't being detected at boot with Freebsd. Strangely enough visiting bbc.co.uk was fine...

Is it possible that some keyboard internal / usb setting is causing an error severe enough that a reboot occurs?

The newer keyboard - http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keybo … cl=roeu,en

Gen2ly · 2010-01-04 19:03:07

I got a new hard drive that conflicted with my video card that caused reboots, and had a previous keyboard that wouldn't allow suspend to ram and other glitches. Though I have never heard of a keyboard causing crashes it probably is possible.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-02 11:48:07

Random crashes

#2 2010-01-02 13:35:43

Re: Random crashes

#3 2010-01-02 13:47:41

Re: Random crashes

#4 2010-01-02 13:56:23

Re: Random crashes

#5 2010-01-03 05:38:21

Re: Random crashes

#6 2010-01-03 06:35:02

Re: Random crashes

#7 2010-01-03 06:51:58

Re: Random crashes

#8 2010-01-03 08:08:02

Re: Random crashes

#9 2010-01-03 15:52:03

Re: Random crashes

#10 2010-01-03 17:49:03

Re: Random crashes

#11 2010-01-04 18:07:03

Re: Random crashes

#12 2010-01-04 19:03:07

Re: Random crashes

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