Μy ARCH crashes.....

nikchris · 2008-11-05 13:34:35

Ok i have sucessfully set up my arch.
But it freezes, all over sudden, without any warnings or when doing something in particular.

Screen just freezes and it needs a restart.

Is there a log i could read or smthg i could do? I have no clue what is responsible for this....

finferflu · 2008-11-05 13:49:52

What's your graphics card? My other machine started freezing after the kernel upgrade, and I suspect it was Nvidia's drivers.

nikchris · 2008-11-05 14:06:27

An onboard 8200

mrunion · 2008-11-05 15:25:23

What wifi card (if any)? This bug prevents me from updating to the latest Kernel and IWL driver:

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10984

Wikimig · 2008-11-05 20:02:57

nikchris wrote:

Is there a log i could read or smthg i could do? I have no clue what is responsible for this....

Well you could start looking at what dmesg tells you:

# dmesg
# dmesg | grep EE

If it looks like a X issue, the log is /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Or try to have a look at other logs in /var/log/
Also having a look at what pacman did during last upgrade could help:

# cat /var/log/pacman.log

lilsirecho · 2008-11-05 20:41:18

See also the following:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=58018

Wikimig · 2008-11-06 12:25:21

Hum... wait: it has just happened to me!

What I did :

1) Everything was fine
2) Did a full system upgrade
3) Installed 2 plasmoids:

yaourt -S emailnotify-plasmoid-svn
yaourt -S plasma-am3rok-plasmoid

4) After a reboot, KDM not properly launching; black screen for like 30 seconds then everything OK; nothing in the logs (nothing at all!)
5) Tried to play around with kdmrc, reinstalled X: nothing works
6) Removed emailnotify-plasmoid-svn and plasma-am3rok-plasmoid

yaourt -R emailnotify-plasmoid-svn
yaourt -R plasma-am3rok-plasmoid

7) Everything back to normal after a reboot

nikchris · 2008-11-07 23:36:41

Wikimig wrote:

nikchris wrote:
Is there a log i could read or smthg i could do? I have no clue what is responsible for this....
Well you could start looking at what dmesg tells you:
# dmesg
# dmesg | grep EE
If it looks like a X issue, the log is /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Or try to have a look at other logs in /var/log/
Also having a look at what pacman did during last upgrade could help:
# cat /var/log/pacman.log

lol i tried dmesg but it too big

what am i looking for there?

Wikimig · 2008-11-08 12:29:54

Hello!

Ok first here are some commands to check your logs:

"more" will display any output one page at a time (use backspace to show next page or q to quit):

# dmesg | more
# more /var/log/blablabla.log

"grep" will filter any output with any filter key you want:

# dmesg | grep error
# grep error /var/log/blablabla.log

"tail" will display only the last lines (-n number_of_lines):

# dmesg | tail
# dmesg | tail -n 30
# tail /var/log/blablabla.log
# tail -n 40 /var/log/blablabla.log

nikchris wrote:

what am i looking for there?

Right after the crash, the last lines of each (dmesg, Xorg.0.log, kernel.log, ...) should be interesting (use "tail") and also the ones containing "error" or "EE" (use "grep" for that last one). Make sure you do that right after the crash, not after a reboot. That for you could switch to a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1) to use "more", "grep and "tail" (Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to X).

You seem to be installing your Arch for the first time so I guess you are not in the situation where you had your Arch running properly and then installed/upraged some package that broke it. Because in that case I would have recommended you to deinstall/downgrade these last packages (that can be found at the end of /var/log/pacman.log).

If this is a first install: check that you didn't miss something on the wiki/tutorial you followed. It may also be an issue with X: try to boot with no graphical environment (see the wiki on how to do that as it depends on whether you are using KDE, Gnome, ...) and see if your systems still crashes. If it doesn't crash any more then I guess we could say it comes from either your video drivers, X or your Desktop Environment (Gnome, XFCE, KDE, ...).

By the way:
- Do these crashes happen right after boot? After some minutes using computer?
- Could you tell us more about your hardware? Like what is the result of:

# hwd -e

- Which Desktop environment are you using? KDE? Gnome? Others?

Wikimig

nikchris · 2008-11-08 18:51:47

Thank you very much for your help.
I will try and read the logs, i hope i can do it before it crashes.

Let me answer to ur last questions:

1) It doesnt crash right after boot, but some minutes later. It can be one or 10 at most.

2) I have KDE 4.1.3 and XCFE4. It crashes on both.

3) My mobo is Asus M3N78-EMH HDMI http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3& … odelmenu=2

i use onboard graphics + network.

Last edited by nikchris (2008-11-08 18:52:05)

Wikimig · 2008-11-09 11:04:49

nikchris wrote:

1) It doesnt crash right after boot, but some minutes later. It can be one or 10 at most.
2) I have KDE 4.1.3 and XCFE4. It crashes on both.

Ok so we could say it doesn't come from the DE as it crashes on KDE and XFCE! So it could be from:

- video drivers
- Xorg
- something else

What you could do: wait for a crash and then hit Ctrl+Alt+Del. It should kill X and restart it.

I) If you do see something happening like X restarting and KDE/XFCE restarting:
It should mean Xorg had crashed.
a) Video drivers: didn't you miss something in the wiki about nvidia drivers? To see if the issue comes from the video drivers you could try to get back to the "vesa" drivers and see if it still crashes. To do so just change this line from your /etc/X11/xorg.conf from

Driver          "nvidia"

to

Driver      "vesa"

Then hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to kill X so that it restarts with the vesa drivers. If it doesn't crash any more: the problem is about the nvidia drivers.

b) Xorg: didn't you missed something from the one about Xorg?
Try to boot without graphical environment to check if it is due to X! See if it still crashes after 10 minutes!

II) If nothing happens
It should point to a whole system crash. Then have a look at the logs once you rebooted (taking into account that you will see the new boot log lines in the log files - and forget dmesg after a reboot as it would only be related to the last boot)

nikchris · 2008-11-09 20:39:48

When it crashes i cant do nothing. no ctrl alt del no ctrl alt backspace. Just power button reboot.

I did smthg bad, i erased alla modules and left only powernow and forcedeth.

How can i find which ones to put in?

ashyanbhog · 2008-11-10 05:38:20

*I did smthg bad, i erased alla modules and left only powernow and forcedeth.*

! why would you do that? If you think the kernel is loading unnecessary modules, just blacklist them modprobe.conf

Reinstalling the kernel with a pacman -S should reinstall the modules as well. If you need modules for nvidia or virtualbox, you'll have to reinstall those packages as well.

Wikimig · 2008-11-10 09:28:28

nikchris wrote:

When it crashes i cant do nothing. no ctrl alt del no ctrl alt backspace. Just power button reboot.
I did smthg bad, i erased alla modules and left only powernow and forcedeth.

Whooops

ashyanbhog wrote:

Reinstalling the kernel with a pacman -S should reinstall the modules as well.

Sounds good! Try to re-install the kernel and Nvidia (at least).

Good luck!

Arch Linux

#1 2008-11-05 13:34:35

Μy ARCH crashes.....

#2 2008-11-05 13:49:52

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#3 2008-11-05 14:06:27

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#4 2008-11-05 15:25:23

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#5 2008-11-05 20:02:57

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#6 2008-11-05 20:41:18

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#7 2008-11-06 12:25:21

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#8 2008-11-07 23:36:41

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#9 2008-11-08 12:29:54

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#10 2008-11-08 18:51:47

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#11 2008-11-09 11:04:49

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#12 2008-11-09 20:39:48

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#13 2008-11-10 05:38:20

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

#14 2008-11-10 09:28:28

Re: Μy ARCH crashes.....

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