Frequent laptop hang

med1972 · 2012-07-08 23:46:18

Hi All,

Bit of a vague problem here with my laptop hanging. I have a Dell E6320. Installed Arch on it a few months ago, and it was running just fine for a while. Recently it has developed the habit of hanging on me, at seemingly random intervals. Everything just stops. Desktop is frozen, keyboard unresponsive. My only recourse has been a hard restart. I've looked in the logs but haven't seen anything that would indicate a problem. Below is a extract from everything.log. Around 18:49 I booted the machine up. Sometime between 19:01 and 19:16 the OS hung again.

Jul  8 18:50:46 localhost blueman-mechanism: Exiting 
Jul  8 18:50:48 localhost dbus[516]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.NetworkManager' (using servicehelper)
Jul  8 18:50:48 localhost dbus[516]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1
Jul  8 19:01:01 localhost /USR/SBIN/CROND[2368]: (root) CMD (run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Jul  8 19:16:03 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Jul  8 19:16:03 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Jul  8 19:16:03 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Linux version 3.4.4-2-ARCH (tobias@T-POWA-LX) (gcc version 4.7.1 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jun 24 18:59:47 CEST 2012
Jul  8 19:16:03 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Command line: root=/dev/mapper/rootvg-rootlv ro logo.nologo quiet
Jul  8 19:16:03 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

I have no idea how to proceed at this point. I believe this new behaviour started with the update to the 3.4 kernel, but I am not sure about that.

Any pointers on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mark

lagagnon · 2012-07-09 15:58:29

Have you considered that it might be a hardware fault? You can test that by running a Live Linux system from a CD or USB stick and if you get the same hangs you can almost be certain it is hardware related. At that point get the System Rescue CD and check your memory and hard drive.

Also try : "dmesg | grep -i error" . Any hints there?

venam · 2012-07-09 17:35:28

hello med1972,
Do you see something weird in the logs, check /var/log . Try to check for those at boot time and at poweroff.
I hope this will help.

med1972 · 2012-07-09 18:01:27

Thanks for the replies. Nothing in dmesg or any of the logs. Or at least nothing I would consider suspicious. It just went down on me again a few minutes ago.

Here are the logs spanning the hang and restart:

Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost blueman-mechanism: Starting blueman-mechanism 
Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost dbus[560]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.blueman.Mechanism'
Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost blueman-mechanism: loading Config 
Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost blueman-mechanism: loading Network 
Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost blueman-mechanism: loading RfKill 
Jul  9 13:01:49 localhost blueman-mechanism: loading Ppp 
Jul  9 13:01:50 localhost kernel: [   76.029047] EXT4-fs (dm-3): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
Jul  9 13:02:19 localhost blueman-mechanism: Exiting 
Jul  9 13:02:25 localhost dbus[560]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.NetworkManager' (using servicehelper)
Jul  9 13:02:25 localhost dbus[560]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1
Jul  9 13:22:25 localhost -- MARK --
Jul  9 13:42:25 localhost -- MARK --
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Linux version 3.4.4-2-ARCH (tobias@T-POWA-LX) (gcc version 4.7.1 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jun 24 18:59:47 CEST 2012
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] Command line: root=/dev/mapper/rootvg-rootlv ro logo.nologo quiet
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 0000000000091400 (usable)
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000091400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000020000000 (usable)
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost kernel: [    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000020000000 - 0000000020200000 (reserved)
Jul  9 13:44:48 localhost syslog-ng[518]: syslog-ng starting up; version='3.3.5'

I'll try running the live CD for a while. I have some fresh Mint 13 downloads. I'll give one of them a shot. I suspect they will work just fine, given the differences between my config (Arch + XFCE + current Arch kernel) and the live CD config.

Thanks again,
Mark

med1972 · 2012-07-11 20:43:19

I've been running the Mint 13 Cinnamon live cd for the past couple days without incident. Doesn't necessarily prove anything as the hangs were quite random. Sometimes I would go for days w/o a hang, other times I'd be cycling the power two or three times in a single day. But as it stands, no hangs over the past 48 hours. But again, this is very different from my config. Mint 13 live CD + Cinnamon + a 3.2.x kernel. My Arch config is a 3.4.x kernel + XFCE + LVM. I think it is reasonable to guess the problem is related to the 3.4.x kernel, or some other related update. I was fine until at least 3.3.x. The hangs started happening sometime after going 3.4.x, or possible after going to 3.3.x. Of course, it could be the result of some other update that happened to come in around the same time.

I'll find a 3.4.x based live cd and give that a try.

- Mark

med1972 · 2013-03-05 00:59:45

For the sake of posterity:

I continued to have the same issue with Mint 13. Exact same problem, random hangs at least a few times a week typically, but highly variable. Updates to Mint have made no difference. No core files, nothing telling in the log files. At this I've thought it had something to do with networking, maybe DHCP, or even something to do with the updater applet in the system tray (almost every time it hung, after restarting the updater would say I had updates to apply) but nothing was consistent.

The one thing that did come to mind just recently: I installed a wlan wwan card into this laptop sometime after I originally got the machine at work. Maybe the card is causing my problems. I'll take the card out at some point but a) that's a bit of work (lots of screws to remove) and b) I'm working on flipping back to Arch.

- Mark

Last edited by med1972 (2013-03-07 02:52:32)

WonderWoofy · 2013-03-05 01:03:20

Have you checked your hard drives SMART status? Maybe the drive is slowly failing and you are trying to read data off bad blocks?

I like how you came back eventually to update the status of your problem... way to go sir!

med1972 · 2013-03-05 20:58:48

Thanks for that. I installed the SMART utilities and ran some tests. Apparently all clean.

Bringing 2013.03.01 up in a VM right now. Is it just me or has a lot changed since last July? Anyway, looking forward to a re-install on the weekend.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-07-08 23:46:18

Frequent laptop hang

#2 2012-07-09 15:58:29

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#3 2012-07-09 17:35:28

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#4 2012-07-09 18:01:27

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#5 2012-07-11 20:43:19

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#6 2013-03-05 00:59:45

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#7 2013-03-05 01:03:20

Re: Frequent laptop hang

#8 2013-03-05 20:58:48

Re: Frequent laptop hang

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