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random system lockups


richard-gt
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I'm having a problem where my computer will randomly lock up completely. The scroll lock and caps lock lights on the keyboard will start flashing, and the computer won't respond to any mouse or keyboard input, forcing me to hit the reset button. Sometimes this will happen when I'm away from my computer, and sometimes it will happen when I'm using the computer, although I haven't been able to notice any associations with specific applications. The crashes can be several days apart, but they have sometimes been within minutes of each other.

 

System specs:

Gigabyte GA-K8U motherboard (ULi M1689 Chipset)

AMD Athlon 64 3400+

PNY VCG62128AWB GeForce 6200 128MB 64-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card

Mandriva 2009.1 64-bit

 

I remember having this problem with 2009.0, but it seemed to go away (maybe I was just lucky for a while). I don't want to go back to 2009.0, because I had problems with burning CD's. When I installed 2009.1 on top of 2009.0, the problem occurred frequently. I tried using the nv drivers instead of the nvidia ones, but that didn't help. I tried runing memtest86, and running e2fsck -c from a boot disk, but I didn't find any issues from those tests. I did a clean install of 2009.1, and I thought that that was working, but I had another random crash after about a week. I can't see anything in /var/log/messages or /var/log/dmesg that would give any reason for the crash.

 

I also tried adding the mem=nopentium option in the grub configuration, but that would prevent my computer from booting entirely.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions to help track down the cause of the problem?

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From your description I would guess you have a hardware problem.

 

Maybe your motherboard is dieing, I just had that happen to me a few weeks ago.

First I only had occasional random lock-ups, then they got more frequent and recently the motherboard died completely (I know it was the mobo as I tried a different compatible cpu and different RAM but it still wouldn't post anymore).

 

Else it could be a power supply issue, if the power supply is defective it doesn't supply steady voltage and/or amperage and that can cause random lock-ups too.

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Then, please consider turning off the kernel tickless timer (which is on by default in most stock Mandriva kernels).

It's not sure that THIS is the reason of your hard lockups, but nevertheless it's a common symptom with certain hardware configurations and VMWare and/or VirtualBox running at the host system.

To disable the tickless timer, simply add an argument

nohz=off

at the kernel boot string in /boot/grub/menu.lst

You can find several instances of that in the forum.

Edited by scarecrow
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I'll give that a try tonight. Thanks, Scarecrow.

 

Then, please consider turning off the kernel tickless timer (which is on by default in most stock Mandriva kernels).

It's not sure that THIS is the reason of your hard lockups, but nevertheless it's a common symptom with certain hardware configurations and VMWare and/or VirtualBox running at the host system.

To disable the tickless timer, simply add an argument

nohz=off

at the kernel boot string in /boot/grub/menu.lst

You can find several instances of that in the forum.

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I have been getting occasional hard freezes with 2009.1 PWP. Mouse and keyboard totally unresponsive. Magic keys don't work. Have to do a hard reset to get the computer back. Never had these problems with 2008.1 or with Windows XP, Vista, or 7 RC1. No virtual machines here. No 3D desktop effects, no 3D apps or games. Only internet browsing and using ordinary Mandriva tools.

 

One person suggested that it might be the radeon driver for my ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 causing the problem. I really don't know what is causing this.

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I don't have a /var/log/everything.log. This is what I see in /var/log/messages around the time of the last crash:

 

Jun 7 16:44:11 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: trying distributions list from http://api.mandriva.com/distributions/basi...st?product=Free

Jun 7 16:44:11 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: Computing new updates...

Jun 7 16:44:12 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update --update

Jun 7 16:44:16 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: updating inactive backport media Main Backports, Contrib Backports, Non-free Backports, PLF Free backports, PLF Non-free backports

Jun 7 16:44:16 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update Main Backports

Jun 7 16:44:18 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update Contrib Backports

Jun 7 16:44:21 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update Non-free Backports

Jun 7 16:44:22 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update PLF Free backports

Jun 7 16:44:26 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: running: urpmi.update PLF Non-free backports

Jun 7 16:44:30 localhost mdkapplet[28128]: Packages are up to date

Jun 7 16:45:01 localhost CROND[29414]: (root) CMD ( /usr/share/msec/promisc_check.sh)

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost syslogd 1.5.0: restart.

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost acpid: starting up

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost acpid: 2 rules loaded

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost acpid: waiting for events: event logging is off

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost klogd: klogd 1.5.0, log source = /proc/kmsg started.

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost klogd: Linux version 2.6.29.3-desktop-1mnb (qateam@titan.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.3.2 (GCC) ) #1 SMP Thu May 14 15:19:40 EDT 2009

Jun 7 16:49:14 localhost klogd: Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=a7b0d834-fae8-4d55-a963-d249bc8d3888 resume=UUID=8632c510-8b0d-4290-8bd4-664b8e73f715 splash=silent vga=788i nohz=off

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