On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:09:26 -0700 Jason Dagit <dag...@gmail.com> dijo:
> > There's more. Ever since that fateful night the desktop font (Sans, 9 > > pt) has been slightly messed up. The linespacing is too wide, and when > > I type into a dialog box the text jumps down so the lower half of the > > letters are cut off. Numerals also appear in various point sizes. > > Changing to a different font does not help. > > > > And still more. I now have occasional system lockups. Once the capslock > > light was flashing, but usually it just quietly locks up - no mouse, no > > keyboard. There are no messages in /var/log/messages. Also, Firefox > > decides to crash about once a day, always when clicking on a link in a > > web page. When I restart Firefox the same link works fine. Previously > > Firefox was always rock solid. > > The flashing capslock and no input sounds like bad drivers. I've seen > flaky video cards/drivers cause this sort of lockup. Typically you > can still use SSH to remote into the machine and poke around. The > crashing of FF sounds like, well no offense to Mozilla.org but, FF > crashes a lot for me on every platform. Flash tends to greatly > exacerbate the crashing and is used a lot in ads. Installing a FF > plugin like adblock plus (if you don't already have it) can help. > Have you checked to see if FF is getting killed by the out of memory > killer? The logs might say but I forget which one to check. It's > entirely possible that FF is using and then requesting too much memory > and getting killed by the kernel. Adding swap can help if this is the > case. Adding a swap file is easier than adding a swap partition, so > don't worry about repartitioning just to get some swap. It could be bad RAM, but not lack of it. The computer has 4 GB and there is 4 GB swap. I'm going to run a memory check overnight, but I doubt it will show anything. The problems started only 3-4 weeks ago, so it would have to be a failure of RAM that worked fine until now. As for Firefox, it has always been solid for me. However, while writing this just now I decided to Google on how to detect CPU temps. As I was typing my search string into the dialog box the whole computer locked up. Sometimes Firefox just disappears, and other times the whole computer locks up. And at the time I had only two other tabs open in Firefox, and the only other app that was running was my mail client Sylpheed. > > So I conclude that something is messed up in X and it is causing all > > these woes. I have decided that I should just reinstall X. But there is > > my problem. Google cannot tell me what "X" actually consists of. It's > > probably more than one package, but which ones? Also, what will happen > > if I uninstall X from the GUI? Like, Synaptic sort of needs a GUI, so > > I'm not sure the reinstall will work properly. I'm thinking I should do > > the whole uninstall-reinstall from the command line after booting to > > Recovery Mode. That means I need a paper list of packages. Or maybe > > it's Gnome, not X. I don't actually know where X ends and Gnome starts. > Because you mention the font weirdness I would suspect Gnome and not > X. I personally have observed Gnome causing font size weirdness and I > know others who have had similar issues. It could be more than one problem. Suppose the font weirdness has nothing to do with the lockups and crashing. Having said that, when several different things start happening all at the same time, it is natural to assume they are caused by the same thing, even though the things may appear unrelated. > I certainly wouldn't resort to reinstalling to troubleshoot this. If > it's software packages that are goofed up, you should either be able > to upgrade them or downgrade them, more likely, fix their broken > config files. I've never run Ubuntu, but anecdotes from friends > indicate that Ubuntu doesn't have the best QA in their updates. I > think you're probably going to have to try and isolate some of the > variables yourself. It is certainly true that sometimes Ubuntu's Update Manager announces things when Ubuntu should have held off a bit. If Update Manager says there is a new version of Gedit, you're probably safe to install it. But if it is a new kernel, read the forums for a few days before jumping on it. > For example, run a different desktop than Gnome. Try running your > kernel with fewer drivers. Check if your graphics chipset is known > for bad linux support. Try the nVidia driver for a while and see if > FF stops crashing. Check up on the FF memory usage during the day and > see if there is a pattern with how much memory it is using when it > crashes. Check the log after FF crashes to see if the OOM killer is > mentioned. Does your computer overheat? Is your powersupply > regulating properly (I had a problem where kernel threads would died > after several days of uptime due to a bad powersupply once)? The CPUs are not overheating, that is, if 45C is acceptable. But, as you note, there's a lot of hardware in this thing. I did try the nVidia driver, but things were just as bad. It's very difficult tpo troubleshoot because there are no messages. And I don't have another computer I can send error messages to. And the lockups happen only every other day or so. I did have the computer lock up once previously while typing something into Google's search box, but otherwise I can't see any patterns. Firefox is not the only app that has crashed either; it's just that I use it more than other apps so it gives the impression that the whole problem is caused by Firefox. I think I'm going to run a memtest overnight and, assuming it doesn't turn up anything, boot without the bluetooth module. If I still have problems, then I'll look into what it takes to reinstall Gnome. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
