Arch Linux

Loke

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 139

System freeze

Hi

For a while I've been experiencing some system freeze - I think it's frustrating, but also weird. I believe it has done it back from 2.6.15, but I haven't really been that annoyed since in some periods it does it rarely.
But now I experienced it for 15 minutes ago, and I did yesterday too. I noticed that daily cronjobs were ran when it happened, and I can't remember if it did the same the other times.
The crash:
- I can move the mouse
- Torsmo is alive (I can see that CPU usage is around normal - 0-2%, and memory usage is normal too)
- MPD is still playing
- I can't click at anything
- Nothing happens if I do ctrl+alt+f1, ctrl+alt+backspace, and so on - it's like the keyboard doesn't respond
- Can't ssh into my box from another

That's about what I can remember. I recently reinstalled the system, but it still happens randomly.
I'm really clueless whether if it's hardware or software failure. I can't find anything in kernel logs that could have anything to do with it.

If it can be a help, the cronjobs I have is

[loke@shiva ~]$ ls /etc/cron.daily 
logrotate*  ntpdate*  shadow*  updatedb*  whatis*

But I'm not sure if any of that is causing the crash.

I also tried to let Memtest86+ test two rounds, and it didn't find errors.
Another thing is I'm 100% sure that my CPU does not get too hot.

Well that's about it. The last thing is some system specs if that is any help.
CPU: Intel P4 Northwood 2.66GHz
Memory: 512MB DDR PC2700
Disks: Maxtor 40GB, Seagate 80GB

Crash is happening both in stock kernels and beyond too.

I hope you have ideas, and don't hestitate to ask my for further info if needed.

Thanks 

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: System freeze

Just a little question, was that a budget Maxtor model and is it your system disk?

Loke

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 139

Re: System freeze

The Maxtor disk is my /home partition
Seagate is /boot and /

My maxtor is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 (6E040L0)
Seagate is a Seagate Barracuda (http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/dis … 81,00.html)

lanrat

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2003-10-28

Posts: 1,274

Re: System freeze

Did you try magic sysrq key to sync disks and reboot during freeze ?

You can enable it in /etc/sysctl.conf

kernel.sysrq = 1

Then during freeze you can press alt+SysReq+r to put keyboard in raw mode. Then alt+SysReq+s to sync disks and alt+SysReq+b to reboot. It doesn't solve your problem but it helps to save the system clean. There is a chance that someting will be left in the logs too.

You should also review your modules with lsmod. Perhaps some are misconfigured or not stable with your machine. Disable all the modules that you don't really need using MOD_BLACKLIST in /etc/rc.conf.

Loke

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 139

Re: System freeze

Thanks. Do I need to reboot before the changes in /etc/sysctl.conf works?

lanrat

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2003-10-28

Posts: 1,274

Re: System freeze

You can run as root

sysctl -p

to reread configuration.

Arch

Member

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 37

Re: System freeze

Have you checked the outputs of dmesg?

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