Thus spake Karsten M. Self: > on Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 09:22:57AM -0400, Steve Gran ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > wrote: > > Hello all, > > I'm still trying to chase down some freezes on my box. For sake of > > clarity, I'll try to give the relevant details all at once. About a > > week and a half ago, I started having total lockups on my box while > > running X. It's never happened outside of X, and at first it only > > seemed to happen while I was also running XMMS (admittedly, I run it > > quite often while I'm working). I tried removing XMMS, and it still > > hung. The freezes are total, i.e., no keyboard access, mouse is > > frozen, etc. > > How about networked access or serial port? If you don't have a network > but do have a Palm or Handspring, get a terminal emulation package, run > a getty on your serial port, and log in. Then try to replicate the > crash and check for response. > > Good news is that a GNU/Linux crash almost always indicates a problem, > usually hardware, some bad kernel drivers, or a bad X config. > > > Can't do anything except hit the reset switch. I'm keeping an eye on > > the memory usage to see if that's the problem, although I have a fair > > amount so it shouldn't be. Anyway, here are some details: > > > > uname -a > > Linux gashuffer 2.4.7 #1 Tue Jul 24 14:29:31 EDT 2001 i686 unknown (running > > woody) > > > > Box is a PIII chip, Via Apollo chipset on the board, hard drives, CD > > Drive, SCSI CD Burner, USB interface for superdisk. Rage 128 video > > card, SBLive sound card. Up until this I couldn't have been happier > > with the setup[...] I have looked through the various /proc files, and > > don't see any obvious interrupt conflicts or other such obvious clues, > > and the various /var/log files also don't seem to have anything > > obvious in them. <cut> > > Any ideas, as I'm running out? Memory usage does seem to be a bit > > high (~148MB as of right now, but again, I have RAM to burn in there > > from when a friend parted out an ex-graphics workstation. Thanks in > > advance,
Hello again - I haven't been reposting about my freezes because I've been chasing solutions on my own ;). The short version is it was the kernel - kernel v. 2.4.7 has a problem with Via Apollo Pro chipsets (which I conveniently have) and there is a memory leak, overflow, something that I don't quite understand. At any rate, today I downloaded and installed the latest kernel (2.4.9) and compiled and rebooted. Now it's running like a dream, memory usage is where it should be, and it's good to have a dependable box again. Thanks everybody for their help. Steve Oh - a note to others with similar problems - 2.4.9 no longer supports drm for XFree 4.0.x (only 4.1), so you have to download the drm for 4.0.x at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/drm-4.0.x.tar.bz2 and replace the directory drivers/char/drm/ in the normal directory tree. Good luck all, Steve
