Arch Linux

doomlash

Member

Registered: 2010-03-03

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Periodic System Stutter

Heya, folks.

I reinstalled Arch from scratch yesterday on a Dell XPS M1710. Previously, Arch worked flawlessly. Now, my whole system freezes about once a second for less than a second. My mouse stops moving and then jumps when the freeze passes. Display updates pause for all applications. Audio halts. Keystrokes are dropped. Even my disk stops making noise. It's funny running a pacman search and hearing "whirrr, <stop>, whirr, <stop>", but not particlarly enjoyable in any other sense.

The pause period and duration are fairly precise. It doesn't seem to drift - it's always a period of just under a second with a duration of about a quarter of a second. No apps pop up in top during or after.

I've had trouble finding anything similar to my experience here and with google. I suspect it to be either nvidia's drivers or my scheduler, though both worked fine on the same hardware the day before the reinstall. Also, I could be way off.

At this point, I'm not sure even what information to provide, because the number of variables is so large. For now, I'd like to start with a stab in the dark: has anyone had anything like this happen to their machines?

General info:
Core 2 Duo
Nvidia 7800 Go
Intel Wireless 4965AGN
External usb sound with internal snd_inte_hda disabled.
Xfce
32 bit

I noticed that the graphics drivers were updated fairly recently. Maybe that's what bit me? I'm not sure how to roll those back with a fresh install.
I've tried both pulse and alsa. Neither have an affect. All oss modules are blacklisted.
NOPAT kernel option didn't fix it.
I've tried a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head, but I've been googling around about this for about a day now. "Pause, stutter, freeze, periodic, halt, lockup, hang" - variations of all of these as search terms just aren't helping, as it's too broad.

Apologies if I've missed characters in this post - the stuttering is gobbling them up. Is there any specific info I should provide here?

Thank you for your time.

Last edited by doomlash (2010-03-05 05:54:01)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED] Periodic System Stutter

What kernel?

uname -a

doomlash

Member

Registered: 2010-03-03

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Periodic System Stutter

Vanilla Arch.

[root@doomlash ~]# uname -a
Linux doomlash.local 2.6.32-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Feb 23 19:24:08 UTC 2010 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Everything else is vanilla, too. Nothing from AUR and no ABS.

doomlash

Member

Registered: 2010-03-03

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Periodic System Stutter

Gah! It would seem it's a hardware problem. This now happens on live cds from different distros and XP pro.