System freezes on high CPU usage

Xi0N · 2009-07-11 14:56:12

I have been experiencing this issue since some days ago in my Arch 64 machine.

First, i thought it was a virtualbox issue: When the 3.0 version came out, i started my vm one by one to update the guest additions and, by the way, the windows emulated system itself
Everytime the cpu usage was high, after some seconds, the system would just freeze completely, and make me perform a hard reset (not even the REISUB thing worked)
I thought it was a vbox issue, but today, i was compiling something, and i had the exactly same problem......

So, the question is: What should i start checking? Im a bit lost regarding how to start looking for the problem.

Thanks!

djszapi · 2009-07-11 15:04:54

Please measure th temperature of your sensors in the pc with software like, sensors-applet, lm_sensors.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lm_sensors

btw. are you using laptop or desktop machine ?

What's the output of top/free command ? How many memory do you have?

When your system freezes, if you wait some minutes, nothing happens ?

Can you ssh from other machine on the local network to this pc to restart the wm? What motherboard do you use ?

Is there something in syslog ?

Is the fan in the pc good according to the hardware view?

Xi0N · 2009-07-11 15:27:05

Thanks for the pointing of lmsensors, its a pretty useful tool.
The temperatures look ok.
Its a desktop machine

The free command gives me this reading:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2057596    1354656     702940          0     302460     476088
-/+ buffers/cache:     576108    1481488
Swap:      2000052          0    2000052

When it freezes, even after some minutes, its still locked up.

I have 2 Gb memory

The sensors says me the cpu fan average speed is 1500 RPM

I will go on testing while compiling.........

R00KIE · 2009-07-12 00:55:04

Check your power supply, they tend to go bad after a couple of years of use, I've seen a desktop machine crash every time I tried to extract a .tar.gz and after changing the power supply everything was fine again.

Xi0N · 2009-08-17 17:36:20

Solved: The cpu cooling fan was broken, and the system was freezing when the temperature reached 80ºC......
I had to change the entire motherboard due to a problem with the CPU socket... now everything is fine..

Thanks!!!

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-11 14:56:12

System freezes on high CPU usage

#2 2009-07-11 15:04:54

Re: System freezes on high CPU usage

#3 2009-07-11 15:27:05

Re: System freezes on high CPU usage

#4 2009-07-12 00:55:04

Re: System freezes on high CPU usage

#5 2009-08-17 17:36:20

Re: System freezes on high CPU usage

Board footer