Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
maybe add a few more megs to be on the safe side, I have noticed some boxes with 2, 256 meg strips may count as 510megs ram or 516 megs ram. not sure I noticed that (with 256 megs RAM) that I really have only 248 usable -- 8M is showing up as 'reserved' by the kernel. That's with mandrake 8.1, and I haven't noticed that before -- usually it should 'reserve' about 384 K - because of the unusable region in pc low memory. My best guess its shared video, but I've got a Matrox Millenium with 16 megs RAM here and I didn't notice the missing 8M until somewhat recently. true enough about heat, probly the most common cause of truly random lockups especially if you include broke CPU fans in the heat catagory, however taking the sides off, while an acceptable temporary test method, in Doesn't removing the top (or side?) negate one of the purposes of fans - that is to pull out the heat from inside? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
I noticed that (with 256 megs RAM) that I really have only 248 usable -- 8M is showing up as 'reserved' by the kernel. That's with mandrake 8.1, and I haven't noticed that before -- usually it should 'reserve' about 384 K - because of the unusable region in pc low memory. My best guess its shared video, but I've got a Matrox Millenium with 16 megs RAM here and I didn't notice the missing 8M until somewhat recently. I've noticed the same on my Linux box here as well, I have (2) 128 sticks installed, and likewise see 8M being reserved by the kernel. In my case, it's with 8.2, download iso installation. The video card is a Creative 3D Graphics Blaster (RIVA TNT) with 16M onboard. The CPU is an Intel P3/800, socketed into an Azza 693ATX mobo, and two PC100/128M DIMMs. My Windog box, running an Intel P3/1000 and two PC133/256M DIMMs shows 511M available for some reason, and unlike ML, gives me no clue as to where the missing meg might be. true enough about heat, probly the most common cause of truly random lockups especially if you include broke CPU fans in the heat catagory, however taking the sides off, while an acceptable temporary test method, in Doesn't removing the top (or side?) negate one of the purposes of fans - that is to pull out the heat from inside? That would depend in part on the case design, and the location of the system. Usually, the air inside the case runs several degrees above the ambient air outside it. A good case will take air flow into consideration to some extent, while others exhibit less desirable properties in the interests of cramming as much hardware into as small a space as possible. In the case of the former, removing the sides or top may or may not do much for cooling, and in the case of the overpacked case, can help a bit in getting the heat out... which is the primary concern in the first place. Electronic devices tend to draw more current as they overheat, which in turn begets more heat, which has been known to turn one's shiny new CPU into an expensive keychain ornament. Cooling, next to power supplies, is one of the more overlooked sources of problems with systems, in my years of working with hardware. As a rule of thumb, on systems I work on, I routinely take the time to route the cables out of the way of airflow, and when possible, try to place the bigger heat producers away from each other as much as possible. Don't rely on just the power supply's fan to be able to move enough air to pull the heat out, if at all possible, install at least one additional case fan - most cases will have a mounting point at the front for a standard case fan. A little common sense coupled with an understanding of what produces the most heat, will go a long way in insuring the shiny new toy doesn't suddenly become a rather costly toaster oven. Several good references on cooling can be found in most overclocking guides. With apolgies for the bandwidth, Belgarius Without the player, there is no game... Registered Linux User #271587 http://counter.li.org --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.373 / Virus Database: 208 - Release Date: 7/1/02 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
AKA: Wit's End Still trying to find the source of this memory leak in my system. I reinstalled XFree86 4.2 from the binaries off of their website, but this has not made any apparent difference. The only real information I have is that it only leaks while X is running, so presumably that narrows down the culprits, but not enough for me to work out what it is. Someone please help! :) This is getting extremely frustrating. Pippin -- And I said 'Oh boy... right... again.' - Laurie Anderson, Let X=X http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~chikken/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
Still trying to find the source of this memory leak in my system. I reinstalled XFree86 4.2 from the binaries off of their website, but this has not made any apparent difference. A good way to check for leaks is to run top in a separate window for some length of time. You should be able to detect the leak - one or more processes will continuae to increase in size steadily over time. Note if you have jabberd installed - that's been confirmed as a major leak. I personally found it when I was contemplating doing instant messaging with my brother - it's not worth the trouble. I can't see any other use for it. In less than a week uptime it had consumed nearly 300 megs of RAM. The only real information I have is that it only leaks while X is running, so presumably that narrows down the culprits, but not enough for me to work out what it is. Is it X itself? I still have 4.1. Do you notice the server (X) growing uncontrollably? There were some threads sometime back about this but AFAIK it depended on what video card you were using. Speaking of bizarre things -- about 2 days ago I was just staring at my X screen thinking what to do next. All of a sudden the whole X subsystem crashed, bringing me down to a console. I have yet to figure why this happened. Sometimes bringing down the X subsystem is a temporary fix for heavy memory use, but my system was fairly lightly loaded at the time. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
Something glares at me. can you set your BIOS for APIC instead of PIC? Not sure, but will try. I have noticed some instability, filesystem dependent, on the binary-only NVIdia drivers from the distro, somewhat but not completely removed by the more recent Mandrake-specific drivers from the site. The XFree drivers do not sem to be subject to this problem. Now this strikes me as possibly being an issue. I've run free at various points today to have a look, and there certainly appears to be a memory leak from what I can tell... I'll include results here, if someone can analyse I'd appreciate it: free before starting X (12pm): [Note that this was after shutting X down, not after a complete system restart, so it looks like most of the memory's already leaked away...] total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 203200 52644 0 11368 76844 -/+ buffers/cache: 114988 140856 Swap: 262544728 261816 free after starting X (12pm): total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 224312 31532 0 11512 82264 -/+ buffers/cache: 130536 125308 Swap: 262544728 261816 free (6:49pm): total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 233508 22336 0 11576 86804 -/+ buffers/cache: 135128 120716 Swap: 262544728 261816 free after closing X down (6:50pm): total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 211584 44260 0 11576 84936 -/+ buffers/cache: 115072 140772 Swap: 262544728 261816 free after restart and no X (~6:52pm): total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 35752 220092 0 1768 19896 -/+ buffers/cache: 14088 241756 Swap: 262544 0 262544 free with X running (7:06pm): total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem:255844 78500 177344 0 2488 41332 -/+ buffers/cache: 34680 221164 Swap: 262544 0 262544 Sorry for the amount of text here... it certainly looks to me like memory leaks away while X is running, and isn't restored when X quits, until you restart and reset everything. This could well be the NVIDIA drivers? So I'm going to download the source and recompile. I ran this card with Mandrake 8.0 and no problems, but compiled the nvidia drivers from source that time. Maybe that's it. Thanks very much for the help so far! Pippin -- And I said 'Oh boy... right... again.' - Laurie Anderson, Let X=X http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~chikken/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
- Original Message - From: Pippin Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 5:39 AM Subject: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr Hi Pippin Barr, I'm Having a very similar problem here also.. but haven't yet been able to figure out what exactly is causing the problem. I've tried several suggestions ( differen video board/ settings) Mouse settings etc. all to no avail.. My Machine Crashes almost always while trying to download web pages or mail. does not seem to matter what Brower or email client I'm using.. It Crashes with mozzila , opera, konquerer equally as well. Please if you should find out the cure post it to the group so others that may be having the same problems can benifit. Also it may help to list your machines equipment parameters so others can see if it's the same chipset video or something else smimilar. My Machine is has a SIS 730s Chip set AmD Athlon 950Mhz Proc. 512 MB Ram with 32 MB share with video Card. someone help us.. have a nice day Dave --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.373 / Virus Database: 208 - Release Date: 7/1/02 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
are you running out of swap? disk space? (when I run out of space in /home, often the first place I notice is hitting a menu item in a browser) do you have an append statement in /etc/lilo.conf that says mem=465? (or some number that subtracts the shared video memory amount from total system ram ie.; 512 - 32 = 470 and I add a couple a megs to be sure it really had 512 to start) On Wednesday 03 July 2002 05:06 am, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Pippin Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 5:39 AM Subject: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr Hi Pippin Barr, I'm Having a very similar problem here also.. but haven't yet been able to figure out what exactly is causing the problem. I've tried several suggestions ( differen video board/ settings) Mouse settings etc. all to no avail.. My Machine Crashes almost always while trying to download web pages or mail. does not seem to matter what Brower or email client I'm using.. It Crashes with mozzila , opera, konquerer equally as well. Please if you should find out the cure post it to the group so others that may be having the same problems can benifit. Also it may help to list your machines equipment parameters so others can see if it's the same chipset video or something else smimilar. My Machine is has a SIS 730s Chip set AmD Athlon 950Mhz Proc. 512 MB Ram with 32 MB share with video Card. someone help us.. have a nice day Dave --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.373 / Virus Database: 208 - Release Date: 7/1/02 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
- Original Message - From: et [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 6:40 AM Subject: Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle are you running out of swap? disk space? (when I run out of space in /home, often the first place I notice is hitting a menu item in a browser) do you have an append statement in /etc/lilo.conf that says mem=465? (or some number that subtracts the shared video memory amount from total system ram ie.; 512 - 32 = 470 and I add a couple a megs to be sure it really had 512 to start) On Wednesday 03 July 2002 05:06 am, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Pippin Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 5:39 AM Subject: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr Hi Pippin Barr, I'm Having a very similar problem here also.. but haven't yet been able to figure out what exactly is causing the problem. I've tried several suggestions ( differen video board/ settings) Mouse settings etc. all to no avail.. My Machine Crashes almost always while trying to download web pages or mail. does not seem to matter what Brower or email client I'm using.. It Crashes with mozzila , opera, konquerer equally as well. Please if you should find out the cure post it to the group so others that may be having the same problems can benifit. Also it may help to list your machines equipment parameters so others can see if it's the same chipset video or something else smimilar. My Machine is has a SIS 730s Chip set AmD Athlon 950Mhz Proc. 512 MB Ram with 32 MB share with video Card. someone help us.. have a nice day Dave Yes I have the append statement mem=480M and I have 980M swap space I think but I will check that out today .. thanks dave --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.373 / Virus Database: 208 - Release Date: 7/1/02 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
On Wednesday 03 July 2002 11:08 am, you wrote: - Original Message - From: et [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 6:40 AM Subject: Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle are you running out of swap? disk space? (when I run out of space in /home, often the first place I notice is hitting a menu item in a browser) do you have an append statement in /etc/lilo.conf that says mem=465? (or some number that subtracts the shared video memory amount from total system ram ie.; 512 - 32 = 470 and I add a couple a megs to be sure it really had 512 to start) On Wednesday 03 July 2002 05:06 am, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Pippin Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 5:39 AM Subject: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr Hi Pippin Barr, I'm Having a very similar problem here also.. but haven't yet been able to figure out what exactly is causing the problem. I've tried several suggestions ( differen video board/ settings) Mouse settings etc. all to no avail.. My Machine Crashes almost always while trying to download web pages or mail. does not seem to matter what Brower or email client I'm using.. It Crashes with mozzila , opera, konquerer equally as well. Please if you should find out the cure post it to the group so others that may be having the same problems can benifit. Also it may help to list your machines equipment parameters so others can see if it's the same chipset video or something else smimilar. My Machine is has a SIS 730s Chip set AmD Athlon 950Mhz Proc. 512 MB Ram with 32 MB share with video Card. someone help us.. have a nice day Dave Yes I have the append statement mem=480M and I have 980M swap space I think but I will check that out today .. thanks dave --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.373 / Virus Database: 208 - Release Date: 7/1/02 512-32 = 480 maybe add a few more megs to be on the safe side, I have noticed some boxes with 2, 256 meg strips may count as 510megs ram or 516 megs ram. not sure why, but with that much ram, why chance it. (512-[32+6]=_474_, and then make sure you run /sbin/lilo after editing lilo.conf. you sure ain't likly to be running out of swap. true enough about heat, probly the most common cause of truly random lockups especially if you include broke CPU fans in the heat catagory, however taking the sides off, while an acceptable temporary test method, in the long term the dust buildup and static charge acssoceated with the dust makes it not to good in the long run (IMHO). best to get enough air running thru the case with added fans and heatsinks. removing the side covers often does not really improve the airflow around the CPU, kinda like taking the shroud off the radiator in the car because you have too many bugs in the radiator to get air thru. Believe i or not, there may have even been some thought to the design of the case that directs flow from the front of the case towards the back. blowing the dust off the cards and boards and fans once in a while is not a bad idea either. and do use some heatsink grease when you install a cpu fan. not a lot (a dab is plenty, the stuff has legs and will get everywhere [like your good shirt in the closet
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
true enough about heat, probly the most common cause of truly random lockups especially if you include broke CPU fans in the heat catagory, however taking the sides off, while an acceptable temporary test method, in the long term the dust buildup and static charge acssoceated with the dust makes it not to good in the long run (IMHO). best to get enough air running thru the case with added fans and heatsinks. removing the side covers often does not really improve the airflow around the CPU, kinda like taking the shroud off the radiator in the car because you have too many bugs in the radiator to get air thru. Believe i or not, there may have even been some thought to the design of the case that directs flow from the front of the case towards the back. blowing the dust off the cards and boards and fans once in a while is not a bad idea either. and do use some heatsink grease when you install a cpu fan. not a lot (a dab is plenty, the stuff has legs and will get everywhere [like your good shirt in the closet] anyway) Agreed! Extra coolers and sinks are the way to go! Just thought about the panels as a test. But YES, go with the coolers if your power supply can handle them. Lanman Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
On Wednesday 03 July 2002 05:39 am, you wrote: Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr how much memory do you have? is it shared video mem? how much disk space do you have? (type df, and post it) also type cat /proc/interrupts and let us see that. did you install (clean, format all linux partitions?) or Upgrade? try running top as the first thing when you see the slowdown. my guess is no free hard drive space (in say /etc or /var), or a lost swap file. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
how much memory do you have? 256 meg RAM is it shared video mem? Video card is an NVIDIA GeforceMX with 32 meg. how much disk space do you have? (type df, and post it) It's a 20 gig hard drive. df yields: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hde2 3283000104844 3011384 4% / none127920 0127920 0% /dev/shm /dev/hde6 1007960267132689624 28% /home /dev/hde1 8210880 4533952 3676928 56% /mnt/windows /dev/hde5 7055648 2102708 4594524 32% /usr also type cat /proc/interrupts and let us see that. CPU0 0: 649067 XT-PIC timer 1: 10128 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 4: 143580 XT-PIC serial 5: 25506 XT-PIC usb-uhci 8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 10: 215504 XT-PIC nvidia 11: 27166 XT-PIC ide2 12: 11946 XT-PIC cmpci 15: 83 XT-PIC ide1 NMI: 0 LOC: 0 ERR: 0 MIS: 0 did you install (clean, format all linux partitions?) or Upgrade? It was an install, but I didn't format the /home directory (to keep my data, of course). Fairly certain formatted everything else. try running top as the first thing when you see the slowdown. my guess is no free hard drive space (in say /etc or /var), or a lost swap file. Will do that and report back on it. Thank you for that, my main problem has been just trying to think of how I can figure out what's up. PJ -- And I said 'Oh boy... right... again.' - Laurie Anderson, Let X=X http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~chikken/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
On Wednesday 03 July 2002 06:07 am, you wrote: how much memory do you have? 256 meg RAM is it shared video mem? Video card is an NVIDIA GeforceMX with 32 meg. how much disk space do you have? (type df, and post it) It's a 20 gig hard drive. df yields: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hde2 3283000104844 3011384 4% / none127920 0127920 0% /dev/shm /dev/hde6 1007960267132689624 28% /home /dev/hde1 8210880 4533952 3676928 56% /mnt/windows /dev/hde5 7055648 2102708 4594524 32% /usr also type cat /proc/interrupts and let us see that. CPU0 0: 649067 XT-PIC timer 1: 10128 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 4: 143580 XT-PIC serial 5: 25506 XT-PIC usb-uhci 8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 10: 215504 XT-PIC nvidia 11: 27166 XT-PIC ide2 12: 11946 XT-PIC cmpci 15: 83 XT-PIC ide1 NMI: 0 LOC: 0 ERR: 0 MIS: 0 did you install (clean, format all linux partitions?) or Upgrade? It was an install, but I didn't format the /home directory (to keep my data, of course). Fairly certain formatted everything else. try running top as the first thing when you see the slowdown. my guess is no free hard drive space (in say /etc or /var), or a lost swap file. Will do that and report back on it. Thank you for that, my main problem has been just trying to think of how I can figure out what's up. PJ no problem, but since I did not see anything glaring out at me right there what does free say? and then are we sure it is in the OS and not the hardware? have you tried cpuburn or memtest86? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
We had a similar problem. We had weird symptoms such as a logger looked like it was running away, find made the machine hang (had to use the power button on that one) but only sometimes. Turned out to be flaky RAM. As soon as we replaced it and doubled it, all was right with the world. We used http://www.memtest86.com/ for testing the RAM. Jeanie -Original Message- From: et [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 2:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle On Wednesday 03 July 2002 05:39 am, you wrote: Hi all, I don't know if I consider myself a newbie, having run linux of some sort for about three years, but I don't consider myself an expert, so here I am. My problem is unfortunately hard to describe, and what I'm really looking for is ideas for establishing what the problem might be. Basically, I installed Mandrake 8.2 a few days ago, and it's crashed once or twice a day since then. I was tolerating it, until this morning's crash when my root partition was damaged. Now I want to get to the bottom of it. When it's crashed I can see that my CPU meter is suggest a very high CPU load (around 4 lines high on a standard xload meter). Various things lock up, generally my web browser. I'm suspicious of mozilla/galeon at present, but don't really know for sure. Eventually the whole thing dies, and I can ctrl-alt-F1 etc to get to a shell, but if I run anything (like pine) the whole thing stops, and eventually I can't do anything (like login from another prompt). At that point I have to reset my computer... As I said, this morning the disk was damaged by this, and I had to manually run fsck to fix it up. Annoying. Anyone experience similar weird problems? I'm going to try not running any mozilla based browsers for a while, to see if that helps at all. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks for any help you can offer me! Pippin Barr how much memory do you have? is it shared video mem? how much disk space do you have? (type df, and post it) also type cat /proc/interrupts and let us see that. did you install (clean, format all linux partitions?) or Upgrade? try running top as the first thing when you see the slowdown. my guess is no free hard drive space (in say /etc or /var), or a lost swap file. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
We had a similar problem. We had weird symptoms such as a logger looked like it was running away, find made the machine hang (had to use the power button on that one) but only sometimes. Turned out to be flaky RAM. As soon as we replaced it and doubled it, all was right with the world. We used http://www.memtest86.com/ for testing the RAM. Mmmm. Normally I'd think the same thing, except that I've already been through the bad RAM episode last year with this computer. I had the RAM replaced and, as you said, all was well. I guess I should test it again anyway to be sure. The scary thing was that last time I used a RAMtester it didn't find anything, but the RAM _was_ corrupt. Yikes. Thanks :) Pippin -- And I said 'Oh boy... right... again.' - Laurie Anderson, Let X=X http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~chikken/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Strange crashes when idle
et wrote: On Wednesday 03 July 2002 06:07 am, you wrote: how much memory do you have? 256 meg RAM is it shared video mem? Video card is an NVIDIA GeforceMX with 32 meg. how much disk space do you have? (type df, and post it) It's a 20 gig hard drive. df yields: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hde2 3283000104844 3011384 4% / none127920 0127920 0% /dev/shm /dev/hde6 1007960267132689624 28% /home /dev/hde1 8210880 4533952 3676928 56% /mnt/windows /dev/hde5 7055648 2102708 4594524 32% /usr also type cat /proc/interrupts and let us see that. CPU0 0: 649067 XT-PIC timer 1: 10128 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 4: 143580 XT-PIC serial 5: 25506 XT-PIC usb-uhci 8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 10: 215504 XT-PIC nvidia 11: 27166 XT-PIC ide2 12: 11946 XT-PIC cmpci 15: 83 XT-PIC ide1 NMI: 0 LOC: 0 ERR: 0 MIS: 0 did you install (clean, format all linux partitions?) or Upgrade? It was an install, but I didn't format the /home directory (to keep my data, of course). Fairly certain formatted everything else. try running top as the first thing when you see the slowdown. my guess is no free hard drive space (in say /etc or /var), or a lost swap file. Will do that and report back on it. Thank you for that, my main problem has been just trying to think of how I can figure out what's up. PJ no problem, but since I did not see anything glaring out at me right there what does free say? and then are we sure it is in the OS and not the hardware? have you tried cpuburn or memtest86? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Something glares at me. can you set your BIOS for APIC instead of PIC? Do you get the same results for a linux noapic boot? What filesystem are you uising? And what NVidia drivers? I have noticed some instability, filesystem dependent, on the binary-only NVIdia drivers from the distro, somewhat but not completely removed by the more recent Mandrake-specific drivers from the site. The XFree drivers do not sem to be subject to this problem. I also don't see a network card on the interrupt scheme. If you have one I bet it is on IRQ 10 with the NVIdia card which can all by itself explain your problem. Solution is move the card to another slot and disable the freakin ACPI in the BIOS (which your windows won't like). Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
