[SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

supercow · 2010-02-16 08:25:36

Hello,

I have a problem : more or approximatively every 10 minutes my system more or less freeze (everything is so slow, music hangs, etc...I can change from one window to another but that's it). I am a bit lost in my investigations...
my system :
-Pentium Core2 Duo E8500
- 2Gb RAM
- Graphic card : nvidia 9400 GT with drivers :

nvidia 190.53-4
nvidia-utils 190.53-1

- Mother Board : Gygabyte EP45 DS3
- HDD : Western Digital Green (Model=WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0)

I can say :
- it is not due to Arch nor Kdemod4.4 because I had this problem with Kubuntu 9.10
- it happens when I changed my HDD (and upgraded from Kubuntu 9.04 to 9.10)
- when problem occurs :
- looking via "top" command : my CPU is 10% loaded, 1gb of memory is used
- I have no particular log mesages in /var/log
- my front led on my tower is constantly on
- problem occurs more often if I use digikam (no particular message if launched via Konsole)
- I have disabled nepomuk/strigi via system settings
- my CPU temp is fine (less than 40°C)

any clue to investigate more ?
regards
Olivier

Last edited by supercow (2010-02-25 13:34:18)

kosmiciatakuja · 2010-02-16 10:50:02

Try iotop - it shows you whatever is using your disk. It may be that some app starts every 10 minutes and does some heavy I/O, that would slow down your system considerably, especially if the app is on high priority (there's a separate niceness value for I/O I think). Also, if I remember correctly atop gives you disk usage of processes. But I think iotop should do here, it's more oriented.

supercow · 2010-02-16 13:18:06

thanks for the tip. I give it a try.
I found à jdb2 (journaling process on ext4) running @ 99,99% every time my system freeze...I am going to investigate how to depriorize it.

sound like I am not the only one with this problem :
example 1
example 2

regards
Olivier

Last edited by supercow (2010-02-16 17:35:31)

supercow · 2010-02-17 07:02:11

correct me if I am wrong, but isn't a kind of parameter (changing journaling process io priority) Arch kernel compiler can change or is it some hard coded parameter in the kernel ?

regards
Olivier

kosmiciatakuja · 2010-02-17 09:57:20

I haven't seen such parameter in a kernel config, but then again I never was looking for it... I'm afraid I can't help much further here.

KimTjik · 2010-02-17 11:39:06

supercow wrote:

- HDD : Western Digital Green (Model=WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0)

I wouldn't bee surprised if this is the problem, since you describe it as a quite regular behaviour. To my knowledge the "Green series" of WD disks park regularly to save power, hence it will take time for it to spin up and get ready when it's reactivated. I don't know whether this a Linux phenomenon or occurs cross platforms.

Still it's only a guess when looking at specification of devices and that the same happens in different systems.

Last edited by KimTjik (2010-02-17 11:40:06)

supercow · 2010-02-18 09:40:51

KimTjik wrote:

supercow wrote:
- HDD : Western Digital Green (Model=WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0)
I wouldn't bee surprised if this is the problem, since you describe it as a quite regular behaviour. To my knowledge the "Green series" of WD disks park regularly to save power, hence it will take time for it to spin up and get ready when it's reactivated. I don't know whether this a Linux phenomenon or occurs cross platforms.
Still it's only a guess when looking at specification of devices and that the same happens in different systems.

I guess this is what I wanted to read....that was my hypothesis. maybe Linux is not handling correctly this kind of behavior.

regards
Olivier

stefanwilkens · 2010-02-18 12:30:38

Either that or your drive is malfunctioning, i have seen similar behavior on my own system when my hard drive was circling the drain. Random lockups, drive i/o would drop to 500 kb/sec (!) causing the system to hang.... and continue quite a while later.

Never hurts to check the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data?
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki

davidgurvich · 2010-02-18 13:53:56

These are all common symptoms of overheating. Get a temperature monitor running and see what that says is happening. You might also set the nvidia card to a lower speed.

supercow · 2010-02-18 14:18:49

davidgurvich wrote:

These are all common symptoms of overheating. Get a temperature monitor running and see what that says is happening. You might also set the nvidia card to a lower speed.

hello,
I don't think my system is overheating...

[lesbecs@arch ~]$ sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:      +34.0°C  (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0001
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 1:      +34.0°C  (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

it8718-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
in0:         +0.90 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in1:         +1.98 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in2:         +3.34 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in3:         +2.99 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in4:         +0.24 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in5:         +0.03 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in6:         +0.10 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in7:         +3.15 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.08 V)
Vbat:        +3.23 V
fan1:       1854 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
fan2:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
fan3:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
fan4:       1086 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
temp1:       +34.0°C  (low  = +127.0°C, high = +127.0°C)  sensor = thermistor
temp2:       +28.0°C  (low  = +127.0°C, high = +127.0°C)  sensor = thermal diode
temp3:        -2.0°C  (low  = +127.0°C, high = +127.0°C)  sensor = thermistor
cpu0_vid:   +0.000 V

about the nvidia speed how do you change that ?

regards
Olivier

kosmiciatakuja · 2010-02-19 09:34:47

If you use the proprietary nvidia driver, try running 'nvidia-settings' to clock the card.

Also, install smartmontools package and run "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda" (substitute sda for your drive of course) - if your drive is failing, smartctl will tell you about this. There are also tests to run with smartctl, run them (they are a bit strange in that you run them, and they work in background while you use the system normally, and then later you have to run smartctl again to check if they finished and how).
One more thing - smartctl will usually be able to tell you the drive temperature, you might check it for overheating too, just in case.

raf_kig · 2010-02-19 11:03:43

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/0 … s?from=rss

mcsilva · 2010-02-20 01:09:21

Hmmm!
I have a similar story.
My laptop also freezes frequently. Maybe once a day or other days twice or more.
This is only happening since I installed archlinux with a new 250 Gb IDE harddisk, Western Digital. Until then,my Fedora 10 was working nicely without any freeze.
In the beginning I was thinking this could be from some arch software installed. Later I thought it could be some piece of hardware (this laptop is 6 years old...).
Now, after reading this, I'm suspecting from my harddisk (everything is freezed, keyboard and mouse not responding, and the disk light starts a nonstop flashing).
I don't know if this HD is a "green one", but I'm thinking about to try to transfer everything to another disk to see what happens.
Any advice?

Note:
This is my lshw info about harddisk:
*-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: WDC WD2500BEVE-0
vendor: Western Digital
physical id: 0
bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 01.0
serial: WD-WXC0A5937445
size: 232GiB (250GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=0004bbea

supercow · 2010-02-25 09:54:12

hi,

I've juste switch my WD Green for a Samsung Spinpoint F3. So far so good : I don't have anymore this freeze problem....so there might well be an issue with WD Green series.
actually I found this : a firmware upgrade to try to solve problem on few series (not mine...)

regards
Olivier

Last edited by supercow (2010-02-25 14:46:02)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-16 08:25:36

[SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#2 2010-02-16 10:50:02

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#3 2010-02-16 13:18:06

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#4 2010-02-17 07:02:11

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#5 2010-02-17 09:57:20

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#6 2010-02-17 11:39:06

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#7 2010-02-18 09:40:51

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#8 2010-02-18 12:30:38

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#9 2010-02-18 13:53:56

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#10 2010-02-18 14:18:49

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#11 2010-02-19 09:34:47

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#12 2010-02-19 11:03:43

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#13 2010-02-20 01:09:21

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

#14 2010-02-25 09:54:12

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze every 10 minutes or so

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