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#1 2004-12-08 18:45:34

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Instability madness

[edit] ive just realised i shouldve posted this in another forum.. if a mod see's this.. please move it.. sorry [/edit]

i was about to post this about 5 seconds ago when X decided to go non responsive again.. hopefully i can remember what i wrote..


has anyone else been having instability problems with X / X applications?

im running a 2.6.9 (self compiled) kernel with X.org (R6.8.1).
The problems im getting include:
- hard lock (nothing moves / works)
- lock, mouse can move, but nothing responds to its clicks and the keyboard is also non-responsive so i cant change to a terminal or force logout (ie, hard lock + moving mouse)
- non-responsive X, can move mouse but nothing responds to clicks, can however force logout.
- run away processes (cant be killed with killall or kill -9)
- samba shares sometimes taking 2-30 mins to work, attempting to `ls' the mount directory, etc causes a terminal to sit there until samba `wakes up'. this tends to kill xmms too.
- other things that ive forgotten from my previous post

All locks _dont_ result in kernel panic (ie, the keyboard lights dont flash), so im assuming its the X server.. but i dont see how it could be since no one else seems to have any problems!

Sometimes the locks are in response to clicks (such as selecting a song in xmms that locked it about 30 mins ago) and sometimes they just occur without any intervention at all (eg, leaving the computer over night, coming back and xscreensaver wont unblank because the system has hung).

I was originally running a 2.6.6 kernel but upgraded to 2.6.9 just incase that was the problem but to no avail.

I previously thought the problem might have been python. since i started using bit tornado ive been getting this hard locks, but i wasnt running bit tornado when i attempted to post this previously, so it might have just ruled itself out.

I have no idea whats wrong.. everything should be fine.. ive turned off the composite manager and its required extensions (#'ed out in xorg.conf).
I dont run any large programs, the only things i run are xfce, firefox, psi, bit tornado, xterm, xmms.


please dont think im blaming arch.. nononononono!!
i know its not arch... but _something_ is wrong.. i just cant figure out what!

thanks for any help

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#2 2004-12-08 18:50:36

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Seems like a hardware problem. Is your computer overclocked? Is your memory OK?

I'd do some stress tests to see if the hardware is working correctly:
try Overclockix, a live CD based on Knoppix, customized for stress testing.

Also, more information about your hardware would be helpful.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#3 2004-12-08 18:51:17

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: Instability madness

does your network suck?  looking at the samba share portion, i'd make sure your hostname is in your hosts file as localhost - it may be a network issue which would affect X if it doesn't know that "myhost" is really localhost...

also, what video card / driver do you use - if it's an X server problem it's most likely the video driver

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#4 2004-12-08 18:55:35

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

well ill be the first to admit its an old computer
P3 500 overclocked to 550
but ive never had any stability problems (with the exception of the Windows nvidia drivers since ~45.XX upward.. guess they dont test on geforce 256 anymore!)

The system has been fine until the last month or so.. its been overclocked for years... it is possible the system is just burnt out.. but i doubt it..

i cant really think of anything.. ill try a fsck tomorrow... today... ahhh after i get some sleep...

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#5 2004-12-08 19:04:20

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

i just got rebooted mid reply... grrr...

thanks for the VERY quick replies..

my hosts file is fine, im mounting the shares via host name, but it should be getting the host names via dhcp, so defining them here would be useless (i think.. i had a strange thing where my linux boxes werent registering with the dhcp server for a while, so only ips worked and not hostnames... then they decided one day they would.. weird..)

#
# /etc/hosts: static lookup table for host names
#

#<ip-address>   <hostname.domain.org>   <hostname>
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain   localhost
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain   P3-500
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain   p3-500

# End of file

graphics card is a GeForce 256 DDR 32 meg.. a workhorse but not the best obviously (256 < 6800 !! heh)
im running the latest drivers, 6629
i have been having some trouble with bluescreens in windows when playing games with nvidia drivers ~45.XX upward.. but thats only during games (ie, hardware accel)

the cpu isnt hot.. my gfx card isnt hot.. but my tv tuner is hot and its right above my IDE card.. my pci slots are full so i dont have a choice..

my network is 10/100 and very good, however my server which im mounting the shares from is on a 10mbit card (peh) and i believe it may be quite dodgy and am wanting to replace it soon...
but i just cant see why a network card on a remote computer would bring down samba on this one for 20 odd minutes...

oh while i remember... when the system hangs... if a song is playing.. it will continue to play.. however it _wont_ go onto the next song in the list.. im not sure if thats when it does a `hang but the mouse can move' or if it does it during a `hard lock' too, and im not sure if its 100% of the time that a song will continue to play... but yeah... i think thats and the fact that i still get hard disk activity are enough to prove its not the kernel..

thats all i can think of at the moment.. for the time being im just going to shut it down for the night.. its been `running' for quite some time (albeit with alot of restarting)

thanks again for the help

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#6 2004-12-08 19:15:59

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Could you remove the case of your computer for a while and see if this solves anything?

Also, try to SSH into your box after it "crashed". I managed to save a reboot doing this: it turned out my nvidia-module crashed. Unloading and reloading it fixed things.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#7 2004-12-08 19:18:24

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

heh.. i havent had a case on this computer for ~7 years.. shes as free as the wind... and ontop of that its a full tower.. so its quite roomy..
but like i said.. the pci cards are packed in tightly.. but the only real heat comes from the tv tuner.. and i dont think its affecting the other cards..

thanks for the ssh tip, i didnt think of trying that.. ill do that next time..

oh yeah.. hardware
320meg SDRAM pc133 (i believe)..
hd = reasonably new seagate 120gig 8meg cache

the memory should be fine.. but ive been meaning to run memtest on it for a while..

the hardware _should_ be fine.. it is possible its on its last legs.. but i doubt it.. it was fine not too long ago.. but since around a month ago its just gone nuts..

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#8 2004-12-08 19:20:39

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: Instability madness

Father wrote:

is a GeForce 256 DDR 32 meg.. a workhorse but not the best obviously (256 < 6800 !! heh)
im running the latest drivers, 6629
i have been having some trouble with bluescreens in windows when playing games with nvidia drivers ~45.XX upward.. but thats only during games (ie, hardware accel)

ok this sounds like a graphics issue to me... if windows drivers crash (latest ones) and you're running a nice -Syu'ed system, you probably have the same driver versions.... I'd check the nvidia boards/tech help and see if there are instances with your card and lockups under linux....

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#9 2004-12-08 19:22:00

afu
Member
From: Tuscalooser, Alabummer
Registered: 2004-02-19
Posts: 155

Re: Instability madness

I had an issue  where some capacitors on the motherboard started going bad. Of course I didn't figure the problem out until the box died. It drove me nuts and pissed me off for months. Hopefully it's a software issue on your side. 50Mhz isn't much, so I would try de-clocking amoung some of the other suggestions you get here.

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#10 2004-12-08 19:23:14

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Do you use a DNS-server on your LAN? Adding all of the machines' hostnames to the DNS-server might speed up Samba: maybe it tries reversed look ups or something like that.

What are the results like when you ping your Samba-server? Or when you ping your maching from the server.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#11 2004-12-08 19:30:46

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

my router has DNS yes.. DLINK-504.. dont get one.. theyre n00bed beyond belief..
pings are fine though

[father@P3-500 ~]$ ping -c 3 192.168.0.7
PING 192.168.0.7 (192.168.0.7) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.435 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.332 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.331 ms

--- 192.168.0.7 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.331/0.366/0.435/0.048 ms

as you can see its decided to move my server from 192.168.0.3 to 192.168.0.7... and myself from XX.0.2 to XX.0.9... which is confusing because windows always gave me those IPs...

how should i go about listing them in /etc/hosts.. if the DNS gives them hap-hazard ip addresses?
i dont really feel like hard coding ips at the moment...

eugh... everythings suddenly deciding to smack me in the face at once.. fun funfunfufunfufnu

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#12 2004-12-08 19:48:39

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Can't you assign an IP to a MAC-address in your router? It might be the router causing the Samba-troubles when the IP's change.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#13 2004-12-09 00:11:10

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Instability madness

Does this happen when you run an Arch Linux kernel?

Try one now, ive got a gut feelin this is a kernel prob.

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#14 2004-12-09 00:43:34

Michel
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-07-31
Posts: 286

Re: Instability madness

Heya,

I also tried the latest drivers of nvidia some time ago, but they caused X to lock up ... so I switched back to the 6111-drivers, which don't give me nay problems at all it seems .... (I have to be carefull what I say ...). Anyway, as far as I can tell, I didn't have any X-lockups using the 6111-drivers. I can use mu computers the whole day (don't leave it on during the night ...) and it doesn't lock up at all ... I'm a happy user and the system is stable, ....

I have a via-mainboard, a geforce2 440 MX. I'm using a self-compiled 2.6.9-ck3 kernel.

Hopes this help ...

This is a long to the IA32-6111-nvidia-drivers:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_disp … -6111.html

Michel

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#15 2004-12-09 11:37:03

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

thanks for the replies.

re: assigning ips to mac addresses... like i said.. this router is n00bed big time.. i cant do anything even remotely complex with it.. the firewall doesnt even let me add rules to it.. the damn thing crashes my adsl line half the time..
the firmware on the router is version  R2.21.002.06.b15au
the website has a fireware upgrade with version R2.21.B13au
confused? i sure as hell am.. its missing a whole version segment.. _and_ the B13 is < b15 which i have... why have an `upgrade' if its < the version thats being shipped with, atleast some of, the products..... ill never buy anything from d-link again

re: locking.. ive lowered my overall cpu speed from ~560 to 515 (500mhz cpu).
if this doesnt work ill try the nvidia drivers you suggested, it could be since my upgrade as i left my system un-syu'ed for some time without any problems, and only did a full system upgrade a month or so ago.

i think ill also run an fsck while im at it.. i dont trust seagates.. some people swear by them.. others would rather die than use one.. im still on the fence..

while im on the topic of fsck.. is there any way i can get a force fsck after X many reboots..
during init i sometimes get "XXX many days without fsck, check forced", but nothing happens?!
ive just had some bad experiences with ext3 in the past, and even though ive had _no_ trouble with reiser.. id still like to cross it off my list of things...


heh.. ahhh... also.. how do you go about an `fsck' with a mounted and in-use filesystem?? i mounted /boot and went to run fsck.ext2 and it said that it could cause severe problems if it was run on a mounted filesystem. However, fsck.reiser didnt give the same warning?
should i just run fsck.reiser on / and /home while theyre mounted?


thanks again guys.. arch linux + arch community = the single best OS experience ever..

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#16 2004-12-09 14:06:08

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Father wrote:

thanks for the replies.

re: assigning ips to mac addresses... like i said.. this router is n00bed big time.. i cant do anything even remotely complex with it.. the firewall doesnt even let me add rules to it.. the damn thing crashes my adsl line half the time..

Try telnetting to your router. My SpeedTouch has a webbased config but can also be configged through telnet. Most options are even only available through telnet!

Father wrote:

while im on the topic of fsck.. is there any way i can get a force fsck after X many reboots..
during init i sometimes get "XXX many days without fsck, check forced", but nothing happens?!
ive just had some bad experiences with ext3 in the past, and even though ive had _no_ trouble with reiser.. id still like to cross it off my list of things...

man tune2fs
Father wrote:

heh.. ahhh... also.. how do you go about an `fsck' with a mounted and in-use filesystem?? i mounted /boot and went to run fsck.ext2 and it said that it could cause severe problems if it was run on a mounted filesystem. However, fsck.reiser didnt give the same warning?
should i just run fsck.reiser on / and /home while theyre mounted?

I get an error if I try to run fsck.reiserfs (fsck.reiserfs /dev/hda2):

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you do):Yes
###########
reiserfsck --check started at Thu Dec  9 15:04:04 2004
###########
Partition /dev/hda2 is mounted with write permissions, cannot check it

I don't know a lot about fsck, but I guess it's probably best to check the partitions if they're not mounted.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#17 2004-12-09 15:37:16

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: Instability madness

Probably 'shutdown -rF' is what you're looking for. It should force fsck on reboot.

Cheers,

lucke

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#18 2004-12-09 16:50:46

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

awesome!

yeah.. i didnt get that far in the fsck.reiser to realise it also had the same message.. i backed out at the first prompt..

just fyi.. i dropped the cpu speed to 515 and its been running amazingly well.. no crashes and to be honest it feels faster!! oh well.. touch wood!
its weird though, because the air from the cpu fan wasnt that hot.. oh well.. wish i had a thermal sensor on my cpu!
guess its the australian summer.. melbourne is not a human friendly city..

thanks again guys.. ive learnt a fair bit from this thread already..

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#19 2004-12-09 19:57:46

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: Instability madness

Maybe running the CPU at 550MHz doesn't cause a lot of "critical" errors, but enough to have to redo the calculations. Something like error checking in the TCP/IP protocol. I don't know if that's possible for CPU's, but it might explain why it feels faster at a lower speed: it does the calculations right from the first time.

Also, overclocking in Linux is a lot harder than in Windows, since Windows doesn't really care about faulty hardware: I had been running Windows on my insanely overclocked PC for years without stability issues. When I tried to install Linux, I'd even get artifacts booting the kernel! Dropping the memory speed solved it.


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#20 2004-12-12 09:10:57

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

well ive been running it at 550 for over a year.. the only instabilities ive really had were with kde (always) and gnome (on the odd occasion)... but i think our crazy summer this year just got to it..

id probably agree with you about the windows / linux fault tolerance.. linux screams if something goes wrong.. windows just plods along into its own destruction..


the system hasnt rebooted in the DE since i dropped it down.. i actually put it back to 500.. 15 mhz isnt going to do anything..

however, i still get rebooted after a while of running quake 3.. i havent tried UT2k4..
im going to try leaving the options on their lowest to see if its not freeing up the memory.. quake 3 is a bit dodgy..

i could be wrong.. but i think quake 3 started crashing when i moved to x.org.. which is strange since its a fork of xfree!
im not running the composite manager or any of the new extensions...
ill try quake on lowest for a bit and see if it reboots me..

thanks again guys..

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#21 2004-12-12 09:39:20

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Instability madness

guess its the australian summer.. melbourne is not a human friendly city..

bah! melbourne is an awesome city, weatherwise too!

you said earlier on that you used a custom kernel, why dont you try an Arch kernel, your kernel could be the cause of this crashing.

thirdly, 500 to 515, is that extra 15mhz *really* worth it?

iphitus

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#22 2004-12-13 13:17:10

Father
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-06-01
Posts: 209

Re: Instability madness

yeah exactly.. whats 15mhz anyway...

the kernel isnt the problem.. i tried it with 2.6.6 (albeit, self-compiled) and i was getting the instability then..

i havent had any problems since throttling the cpu back.. so i think i can safely say it was the crazy heat weve been having..

apart from what i mentioned with quake 3.. i havent delved into it enough to determine if its X or just having the settings on high... either way.. my problems are solved.. it wasnt gnu/linux but this damn country! ... and the fact that i throttled the cpu up 10%.. heh..

thanks guys

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