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smillot

Member

Registered: 2012-06-10

Posts: 8

Website

My Laptop becames unuasable randomly

Hello,

I have 2 laptops : Dell latitude 6420 & Samsung NC 10

Both have the same problem, sometime everything at the screen is frozen (even the cursor isn't moving) and I can't do anything.

It's like a kernel panic but what troubles me is that nothing is blinking on the keyboard as I've been used to.

Common points : xfce + compiz + wireless (dell is intel, nc10 is atheros)

I can't access to the frozen computer though SSH.

I have no idea on how I could investigate on this issue, if someone could give me some hints it would be GREAT!

Thank you in advance!

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Sébastien Millot

ajbader

Member

Registered: 2010-03-22

Posts: 23

Re: My Laptop becames unuasable randomly

I might sound like a total dumbass, but have you tried using your computer without compiz?

Give it a shot. If it doesn't freeze then you've diagnosed the problem. If not, well back to the drawing board. With the amount of information you have given us, we won't be able to come to any conclusion. If you really want to figure it out, tell us more about your system or check the logs.

ilikepie

Member

Registered: 2009-10-28

Posts: 38

Re: My Laptop becames unuasable randomly

Kinda sounds like a problem I used to have. Do you have an Intel GPU?

It doesn't happen to me anymore, seems like an update fixed the problem. But then I saw an article talking about killer energy consumption improvements when using some special settings for the i915 driver; I tried them out and my machine crashed like crazy. So maybe these used to be the default settings and they've removed them, which might be why my machine doesn't seem to crash now. Alas, this means my battery life sucks big time (I get three times as much on Windows!!!) but I'll take that over random crashes

So maybe you could try adding the settings they're talking about to your kernel boot line, only you should set them to 0 instead of 1. That is, if you have an i915-class gpu.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Last edited by ilikepie (2012-06-15 20:21:10)

defears

Member

Registered: 2010-07-26

Posts: 218

Re: My Laptop becames unuasable randomly

Try

sudo grep -ri error /var/log/ | less

for starters.

I just got my first freeze ever using Xfce with Xmonad. My errors are I/O error sr0 (My dvd drive) and sdb (Which I don't even have connected, let alone mounted). Strange. IDK if it's the same problem as yours.

smillot

Member

Registered: 2012-06-10

Posts: 8

Website

Re: My Laptop becames unuasable randomly

Sorry for the long delay,

It just happened and here is what I can see in the log after a fresh reboot :

/var/log/errors.log:Jun 21 10:17:22 localhost kernel: [11752.045177] watchdog: error registering /dev/watchdog (err=-16)

This is the very last error that occurs and it matchs the crash time, the ones before are about 2 hours ago.

I'm sure compiz is not the culprit as when it freezes I can't ping or ssh the computer.

I think it's not related and the crash is somewhere else and the logs are not helping at all...

When I'm restarting I'm getting the very same message and it boots correctly :

/var/log/errors.log:Jun 21 10:39:45 localhost kernel: [   43.891486] watchdog: error registering /dev/watchdog (err=-16)

@ilikepie
I can't move the cursor and the network is not available anymore

I'm still clueless!

Thank you for your support

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Sébastien Millot