Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
The first word that comes to mind is rage. I left my machine alone for a while and when I came back I tried to move the mouse. The pointer would not move. I look at the clock, the clock did not increase count. I look down at the case, the hard disk activity light is permanently on. Oh no, the freezes are back. As usual, nothing in the logs to give me a clue of where the problem is. It did last the entire weekend (since I last posted a SOLVED email to Slug (that should teach me for posting too early)) but it's back. Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. Thanks guys. Sorry about the hassle. Regards, Gonzalo On 9/08/2003 7:24 PM +1000, Kevin Saenz wrote: Hi All, Thanks very much to everyone who had their input on my problem. The problem was indeed the power supply. It's been running for 1 day and 6 hours so far without a crash so I'm pretty certain (touch wood) that it's fixed. I learnt a few things from this problem: 1. It's not good to be a tight arse when it comes to hardware. Instead of buying a 400W PSU, I went for the 320W because it was cheaper and I thought it should be plenty. So what happened was I had to return the 320W but of course after a week you can't take it back (refund policy) so I now have a 400W and a 320W... and you know where I can stick the 320W? Good thing I had a box with a missing PSU so it's not such a waste. 2. The amazing effect a PSU without enough power can have on a system. It's scary to think that if nobody mentioned it could be the PSU I would have never figured it out. I wonder how somebody came to the conclusion that it's the PSU. 3. Athlons (in combination with this GA-7N400-L1 mobo) love power. I think that's about it. :) Again, thanks to all that replied. Lookout uptime, I'm back! Regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
RE: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
-= On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 11:55:59AM +1000, Terry Collins wrote: -= Think sick building syndrome. Basically, new -= office/office works and -= factories produce lots of fumes that can deposit on -= nice new shiny -= pins and provide an insulating layer of gunk that causes -= intermittent -= problem. -= -= This reminds me of a story (urban legend?) that I heard -= from around here at UNSW. -= -= Someone else probably has the full story (pchubb?), but the -= gist of it is that there were a lot of single bit errors on -= one of the old machines that seemed to appear for no -= reason. All manner of part swapping was done without success. -= -= UNSW is in close proximity to Sydney airport, and after a -= lot of head scratching it turned out that this was being -= caused by the air traffic control radar sweeping past the -= machine and inducing errors ... so kind of a sick building syndrome. -= -= The moral of the story is to always check for high -= intensity radar in the surrounding area when diagnosing problems ;) Most definitely NOT an Urban Ledgend - I was studying there when the Faraday Cage was installed around the server room on top of the Tower. Made mobile phone reception a real bitch when I worked there in the early 90's... Jon -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Thu, Aug 07, 2003, Gonzalo Servat wrote: I'm experiencing complete (and random) system freezes every day or two. I've not found a pattern yet, it happens at random. System specs as follows: Athlon 1800+ CPU 256MB DDR Matrox G400 Dualhead 2 x HDD 2 x SCSI CDROM 1 x FDD Two random things that have caused freezes for me: - RAM speed being slower than the front bus speed - using the Red Hat provided eepro100 driver for my network card rather than the Intel e100 driver. Switching to the e100 driver stopped the crashes. The latter should be easy to pick though -- freezes will occur during network activity (a CVS checkin of 1000 files was a 100% reliable trigger). -Mary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:35:15AM +1000, Gonzalo Servat wrote: At the moment it's sitting on -29C (so it says anyway) I don't believe that. I'd expect it to be more like +35C to +45C. Mine (2GHz P4) is normally +40C, rising two or three degrees when under load. Cheers, John -- whois [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG key id: 0xD59C360F http://kirriwa.net/john/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 10:44 AM +1000, John McQuillen wrote: It's a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L1 Your motherboard uses the NForce2 chipset, support for which, I believe, is best gained from the NVIDIA binary drivers available here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html I hope this helps, Thanks John. The drivers provided by nVidia are for the onboard ethernet (which I'm already using) and for the onboard audio. Best regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
Um but back to the orignal problem :) I was just reading some thing and i wonder if it might be a similar problem. Would it be ok if you put a sync in roots cron to run every hour. if itr fixes it i have a link for you! -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 8/08/2003 9:59 AM +1000, John Clarke wrote: Power supply. I had a system which would randomly fall over with no apparent cause. I replaced the RAM, video and network cards, motherboard and CPU but nothing changed. Then one day, it wouldn't power up so I replaced the power supply and it's run perfectly ever since. This is the first thing I changed. I went out and bought a 320W PSU. It ran without a freeze for a few days but then it started the daily freezes again. Best regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- SOLVED (so far so good)
Hi All, Thanks very much to everyone who had their input on my problem. The problem was indeed the power supply. It's been running for 1 day and 6 hours so far without a crash so I'm pretty certain (touch wood) that it's fixed. I learnt a few things from this problem: 1. It's not good to be a tight arse when it comes to hardware. Instead of buying a 400W PSU, I went for the 320W because it was cheaper and I thought it should be plenty. So what happened was I had to return the 320W but of course after a week you can't take it back (refund policy) so I now have a 400W and a 320W... and you know where I can stick the 320W? Good thing I had a box with a missing PSU so it's not such a waste. 2. The amazing effect a PSU without enough power can have on a system. It's scary to think that if nobody mentioned it could be the PSU I would have never figured it out. I wonder how somebody came to the conclusion that it's the PSU. 3. Athlons (in combination with this GA-7N400-L1 mobo) love power. I think that's about it. :) Again, thanks to all that replied. Lookout uptime, I'm back! Regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
Lower temp limit is +20C and max is +60C so you could be right. At the moment it's sitting on -29C (so it says anyway).. but it's not freezing, yet.. I had another freeze this morning.. ggr! What cooling system do you have? It's even colder than ambient temperature. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
It's worth noting that not all power supplies supply the wattage they are rated for. There has been a fair amount of debate about this in hardware/overclocking circles lately. The consensus is that basically only the Antec TruePower series is really good at supplying the right wattage, cleanly (really important for Athlons). So just because your PSU is rated for 400w doesn't mean it's supplying it. Pay particular attention to the current ratings. A regular Athlon, as I understand it, draws it's power off of the +5V rail, and can draw anything up to about 37A (!). Specifications for your chip are available on AMD's site. It just goes to show that you're better off buying a really good, name brand PSU. Aopen's are ok, I think, but the best are Antec and Enermax, as I understand it. Both of which possibly aren't available from your average corner store, but are online (I use eyo.com.au and computermarket.com.au). These aren't cheap (A top-of-the-line Antec is about $210) HTH, Matt At 16:13 11/08/2003, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Jamie Wilkinson This one time, at band camp, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. It could be that a 400W psu still doesn't cut it. You may actually need a 600W psu. Wow. I'm running a dual-Athlon on 400W; 2 disks, DVD, three or four PCI cards. It was very unhappy on 350W, but hasn't missed a beat due to power issues with 400W (though it's not incredibly robust when there's a flicker). I'd be looking at the motherboard too, annoying as it is. :-| - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia http://lca2004.linux.org.au/ Fierce Commerce. Fierce Freedom. Free Software. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 7:21 PM +1000, Ben Donohue wrote: Hi Gonzalo, Try removing everything that is *not* absolutely needed in the computer. Ie all the cards that are not needed. Could be one of those causing the problem. Remove *one* of the memory chips if possible and leave the other in. then change it over. some systems will allow this. remove CDROM temporarily if not needed etc. Also unplug/replug in everything a few times as mentioned in another post. check that there are no bent pins on devices too. swap keyboard and mouse, monitor if things start to get desperate. I've had them cause computer hiccups in the past. take an image of the machine that you can restore later with imaging software and install the operating system again. if it falls over again it's most likely hardware... perhaps... you know... try different stuff... I'm going to try the SCSI card next, although unlikely to be causing any problems. Unfortunately it's one 256MB DDR stick so I can't remove half as you suggested. What I'm going to try after removing the SCSI card is running Knoppix on it for a few days just to be absolutely certain that it's not the OS. Thanks to all who replied and keep the suggestions coming :) Had my linux server not starting up (after a history of disk errors and other weird happenings) It got to the point where it would not even do a POST. Unplugged everything (and that included the power cables for the HDs and FDD etc), unplugged video (POST will generate an error on this), and even memory and the server would still not powerup. A friend finally suggested the PSU. Cleaned the dust out of it, and the system now works. Now in your case, you appear to have already replaced the PSU, so kinda shoots that theory down. However, a thought here, check the mounting of the motherboard to ensure that things are not shorting out. Both on the topside, and the underside. You just did an upgrade on it didn't you? Over time the board can heat up, flex a little and short something out causing the system to lock. Check for dust and other stuff that might have accumulated under the motherboard as well. The other thing to be careful with lm-sensors is that it actually only polls the sensors at a minimum of 30secs or something. So if you poll every 10 seconds, it does not actually go and get a new set of readings, but uses the ones that it had already collected. Not sure where I read that though. So, it may or may not actually show the temperature that you think it is Mark P. -- ..sig - TBA CBR AU -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Gonzalo Servat wrote: On 7/08/2003 9:40 PM +1000, Patrick Lesslie wrote: I have a very similar system, (Athlon 1800+, Matrox G550 dualhead) and apparently the same problem. I have heard that Athlons like this suffer from overheating, so I assumed it was that. It freezes sometimes when there is a lot of system activity, so I put in more fans. While it hasn't helped much, I haven't ruled out overheating. But I've never tried ACPI modules. It sounds good to me I've tried removing the G400 too just incase it was the video card overheating (I replaced it with a PCI S3) but it froze too (rather quickly I might add). I also ran lm-sensors overnight and left it as sticky on my desktop and on the upper layer, so that if it freezes I'll see what temperature it last recorded. It was 0C degrees when it crashed last night. ^^ zero centigrade? no wonder it froze! (sorry... I couldn't resist) On a more serious note, isn't there a lower temp limit as well as a high one? Where I live, low temperatures are never a problem, and I've never heard of machines dying from low temps., but presumably it's possible. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 10:29 AM +1000, Terry Collins wrote:
Gonzalo Servat wrote:
FWIW, the system is running Gentoo kernel 2.4.19,
dons asbestos suit {:-) that is obviously your problem. One of your
libaries needs a recompile /asbestos suit
:-)
Did you say new CPU mobo?
But you didn't list your mobo.
It's a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L1
HW freeze up problem solving 101.
(a)The easy 1 on 1 method.
Replace each and every hardware item one at a time for a period, say 24
hours (a week sounds better in your case since it only happens once a
day), until you replace the item that is broke = your system no longer
has that fault.
Yeah, but as I said it only started happening after the upgrade to a new
mobo/CPU/RAM. What I should do is stick the old motherboard back in for a
week and see if happens again. If it doesn't, at least I'll know it's
something in the new combo.
Have you done the basic cable/chip wiggle test? (remove+replace),3, *
every cable and chip[1].
Sorry Terry, I don't follow this (remove+replace),3,* process?
Checked error/message logs?. A faulty CD drive/HD on the way out can do
this (timeout messages)
Sure did. Absolutely nothing that would indicate a fault in the logs.
Regards,
Gonzalo
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrr
On Monday 11 August 2003 16:13, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Jamie Wilkinson This one time, at band camp, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. It could be that a 400W psu still doesn't cut it. You may actually need a 600W psu. Wow. I'm running a dual-Athlon on 400W; 2 disks, DVD, three or four PCI cards. It was very unhappy on 350W, but hasn't missed a beat due to power issues with 400W (though it's not incredibly robust when there's a flicker). I'd be looking at the motherboard too, annoying as it is. :-| - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia http://lca2004.linux.org.au/ Fierce Commerce. Fierce Freedom. Free Software. I Am Running a dual 1.2GHz Athlon system wirh 3 ultra 160 10,000rmp scsi drives + a burner and dvd +1 80GB ide ata100 drive on a 450W power supply. The boaed is a Tyan. With less hard drives this supply should work fine. however, with only 2 *10K drives and the burner+dvd i was working fine with 300W. It does look as though either cabling or motherboard has a problem. I have an athlon 2.2+ system with 5 devices (drives) on a 300W psu. makes one think about cables and/or motherboard again Gerald -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
quote who=Jamie Wilkinson This one time, at band camp, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. It could be that a 400W psu still doesn't cut it. You may actually need a 600W psu. Wow. I'm running a dual-Athlon on 400W; 2 disks, DVD, three or four PCI cards. It was very unhappy on 350W, but hasn't missed a beat due to power issues with 400W (though it's not incredibly robust when there's a flicker). I'd be looking at the motherboard too, annoying as it is. :-| - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia http://lca2004.linux.org.au/ Fierce Commerce. Fierce Freedom. Free Software. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 9:40 PM +1000, Patrick Lesslie wrote: I have a very similar system, (Athlon 1800+, Matrox G550 dualhead) and apparently the same problem. I have heard that Athlons like this suffer from overheating, so I assumed it was that. It freezes sometimes when there is a lot of system activity, so I put in more fans. While it hasn't helped much, I haven't ruled out overheating. But I've never tried ACPI modules. It sounds good to me I've tried removing the G400 too just incase it was the video card overheating (I replaced it with a PCI S3) but it froze too (rather quickly I might add). I also ran lm-sensors overnight and left it as sticky on my desktop and on the upper layer, so that if it freezes I'll see what temperature it last recorded. It was 0C degrees when it crashed last night. I've had acpid running with the relevant ACPI modules installed for processor, system, etc since last night but it still froze overnight. As I said in a previous email, I'm downloading Knoppix now to try and rule out whether it could be the OS doing it. As you can see, I'm going to all lengths to stop this annoyance :) Best regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
Gonzalo Servat wrote:
Have you done the basic cable/chip wiggle test? (remove+replace),3, *
every cable and chip[1].
Sorry Terry, I don't follow this (remove+replace),3,* process?
You take cable, remove from pins, replace cable on pins, and repeat this
process three times. Do this with all your socketed chips on the
motherboard as well (if you need to)
15 years ago I was told I was a nut case for thinking this would fix a
faulty computer, but I kept on fixing them this way. Think sick
building syndrome. Basically, new office/office works and factories
produce lots of fumes that can deposit on nice new shiny pins and
provide an insulating layer of gunk that causes intermittent problem.
Your mobo is new. It has basically come from a factory full of all sorts
of fumes.
You will also see this trouble in old computers as well, or any computer
in an office that has been newly fitted out, or even painted.
Checked error/message logs?. A faulty CD drive/HD on the way out can do
this (timeout messages)
Sure did. Absolutely nothing that would indicate a fault in the logs.
Well that is good news then.
Well, maybe not so good news. HW faults usually have a definite fix.
Software, like drivers can be messy and you basically have to swap
out/deactivate bits and try different drivers until you work it out.
Try a google on your motherboard and pray that someone else has already
solved it {:-)
--
Terry Collins {:-)}}} email: terryc at woa.com.au www:
http://www.woa.com.au
Wombat Outdoor Adventures Bicycles, Computers, GIS, Printing,
Publishing
People without trees are like fish without clean water
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 15:59, Jamie Wilkinson wrote: This one time, at band camp, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. It could be that a 400W psu still doesn't cut it. You may actually need a 600W psu. I have an athlon system that has trouble booting up when it's been powered off for a while, though I can't remember the wattage I'm pretty sure it's about 400W. Sorry I haven't been watching this thread but a lot of the random freezes I've seen are either caused by ACPI or faulty ram. It might be advisiable to turn off acpi on boot and see if the problems stop. For a memory testing see http://www.memtest86.com/ I would suggest that you let it run for quite a while to see if finds any problems. -- Regards, Graham Smith - -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
This one time, at band camp, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Any other suggestions? It has one other defect where you sometimes have to press the reset button a number of times before you actually get video output which leads me to believe maybe it is the motherboard. It could be that a 400W psu still doesn't cut it. You may actually need a 600W psu. I have an athlon system that has trouble booting up when it's been powered off for a while, though I can't remember the wattage I'm pretty sure it's about 400W. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://spacepants.org/jaq.gpg -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
RE: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- SOLVED (so far so good)
-=400W and a 320W... and you know where I can stick the 320W? Not a wise thing to ask on this list, my friend !!!...:-) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 10:38, Gonzalo Servat wrote: On 7/08/2003 10:29 AM +1000, Terry Collins wrote: Gonzalo Servat wrote: Did you say new CPU mobo? But you didn't list your mobo. It's a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L1 Your motherboard uses the NForce2 chipset, support for which, I believe, is best gained from the NVIDIA binary drivers available here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html I hope this helps, Cheers, John... -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
can you change you AGP speed, try clocking back to 2x or 4X in the BIOS and see if that helps... Dave. On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Kevin Saenz wrote: Gonzalo, I used to have that problem. My computer would freeze in Windows when ever playing a 3d game. I found it would freeze spasmodically using Linux. The problem was with my mother board and a buggy ACPI component. Now I have ACPI modules installed and I have not experienced a freeze. Hope that helps. BTW, I have not tried other cards I have a Nvidia GeForce 4. Hi All, I'm experiencing complete (and random) system freezes every day or two. I've not found a pattern yet, it happens at random. System specs as follows: Athlon 1800+ CPU 256MB DDR Matrox G400 Dualhead 2 x HDD 2 x SCSI CDROM 1 x FDD First I thought it was maybe overheating so I installed lm-sensors. It didn't seem to be overheating, so I left it running for a while and the levels continued to look OK. It was then suggested to me that maybe my PSU was either not powerful enough or dodgy. It was only a 200W so I went out and bought a 320W PSU. It looked promising as it didn't crash for *gasp* 4 days! but it froze on me twice last night. Since then, I've been running memtest. 8 hours 46 passes later with no errors, I'm thinking it's not the RAM (the CPU, mobo and RAM are all brand new). My system was fine before I upgraded to a new mobo/CPU. FWIW, the system is running Gentoo kernel 2.4.19, and also when I say system freeze I mean the system just locks up. Can't press CTRL-ALT-F1, can't ping it, etc. As you can imagine it's really annoying so I was hoping someone could shed some light on this. Thanks in advance. Best regards, Gonzalo -- David Airlie, Software Engineer http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied / [EMAIL PROTECTED] pam_smb / Linux DECstation / Linux VAX / ILUG person -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
RE: [SLUG] Random System Freezes -- NOT SOLVED (grrrr)
It may be another wild goose chase - as I am sorry to say that I haven't followed your thread - if you disable say your primary IDE controller and swap disks over to the secondary and then observe the systems behaviour. I am thinking of IDE controller problems. Just a thought. Regards, Raj ::not increase count. I look down at the case, the hard disk ::activity light ::is permanently on. Oh no, the freezes are back. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 8/08/2003 10:26 AM +1000, David wrote: On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Gonzalo Servat wrote: On 7/08/2003 9:40 PM +1000, Patrick Lesslie wrote: I have a very similar system, (Athlon 1800+, Matrox G550 dualhead) and apparently the same problem. I have heard that Athlons like this suffer from overheating, so I assumed it was that. It freezes sometimes when there is a lot of system activity, so I put in more fans. While it hasn't helped much, I haven't ruled out overheating. But I've never tried ACPI modules. It sounds good to me I've tried removing the G400 too just incase it was the video card overheating (I replaced it with a PCI S3) but it froze too (rather quickly I might add). I also ran lm-sensors overnight and left it as sticky on my desktop and on the upper layer, so that if it freezes I'll see what temperature it last recorded. It was 0C degrees when it crashed last night. ^^ zero centigrade? no wonder it froze! (sorry... I couldn't resist) On a more serious note, isn't there a lower temp limit as well as a high one? Where I live, low temperatures are never a problem, and I've never heard of machines dying from low temps., but presumably it's possible. Lower temp limit is +20C and max is +60C so you could be right. At the moment it's sitting on -29C (so it says anyway).. but it's not freezing, yet.. I had another freeze this morning.. ggr! Regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7 Aug 2003, Kevin Saenz wrote: Gonzalo, I used to have that problem. My computer would freeze in Windows when ever playing a 3d game. I found it would freeze spasmodically using Linux. The problem was with my mother board and a buggy ACPI component. Now I have ACPI modules installed and I have not experienced a freeze. Gonzalo wrote: I'm experiencing complete (and random) system freezes every day or two. I've not found a pattern yet, it happens at random. System specs as follows: Athlon 1800+ CPU 256MB DDR Matrox G400 Dualhead 2 x HDD 2 x SCSI CDROM 1 x FDD I have a very similar system, (Athlon 1800+, Matrox G550 dualhead) and apparently the same problem. I have heard that Athlons like this suffer from overheating, so I assumed it was that. It freezes sometimes when there is a lot of system activity, so I put in more fans. While it hasn't helped much, I haven't ruled out overheating. But I've never tried ACPI modules. It sounds good to me Patrick Lesslie -- Trevor Howard: Mr Christian! Kindly satisfy your lust elsewhere! Marlon Brando: Yessir! Lust .. to be satisfied elsewhere sah -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 11:55:59AM +1000, Terry Collins wrote: Think sick building syndrome. Basically, new office/office works and factories produce lots of fumes that can deposit on nice new shiny pins and provide an insulating layer of gunk that causes intermittent problem. This reminds me of a story (urban legend?) that I heard from around here at UNSW. Someone else probably has the full story (pchubb?), but the gist of it is that there were a lot of single bit errors on one of the old machines that seemed to appear for no reason. All manner of part swapping was done without success. UNSW is in close proximity to Sydney airport, and after a lot of head scratching it turned out that this was being caused by the air traffic control radar sweeping past the machine and inducing errors ... so kind of a sick building syndrome. The moral of the story is to always check for high intensity radar in the surrounding area when diagnosing problems ;) -i -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 7:21 PM +1000, Ben Donohue wrote: Hi Gonzalo, Try removing everything that is *not* absolutely needed in the computer. Ie all the cards that are not needed. Could be one of those causing the problem. Remove *one* of the memory chips if possible and leave the other in. then change it over. some systems will allow this. remove CDROM temporarily if not needed etc. Also unplug/replug in everything a few times as mentioned in another post. check that there are no bent pins on devices too. swap keyboard and mouse, monitor if things start to get desperate. I've had them cause computer hiccups in the past. take an image of the machine that you can restore later with imaging software and install the operating system again. if it falls over again it's most likely hardware... perhaps... you know... try different stuff... I'm going to try the SCSI card next, although unlikely to be causing any problems. Unfortunately it's one 256MB DDR stick so I can't remove half as you suggested. What I'm going to try after removing the SCSI card is running Knoppix on it for a few days just to be absolutely certain that it's not the OS. Thanks to all who replied and keep the suggestions coming :) Regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 08:59:37AM +1000, Gonzalo Servat wrote: Thanks to all who replied and keep the suggestions coming :) Power supply. I had a system which would randomly fall over with no apparent cause. I replaced the RAM, video and network cards, motherboard and CPU but nothing changed. Then one day, it wouldn't power up so I replaced the power supply and it's run perfectly ever since. Cheers, John -- whois [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG key id: 0xD59C360F http://kirriwa.net/john/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
I've tried removing the G400 too just incase it was the video card overheating (I replaced it with a PCI S3) but it froze too (rather quickly I might add). I also ran lm-sensors overnight and left it as sticky on my desktop and on the upper layer, so that if it freezes I'll see what temperature it last recorded. It was 0C degrees when it crashed last night. That is really weird. lm-sensors and acpi modules need to be loaded. It doesn't look like you ran sensors-detect? Or you might have an apm motherboard (I don't think they make them any more might be wrong) sensors-detect will check what type of acpi compliant motherboard you are running, also get you to activate some modules at boot by inserting some lines in to /etc/modules or /etc/modules.conf I've had acpid running with the relevant ACPI modules installed for processor, system, etc since last night but it still froze overnight. As I said in a previous email, I'm downloading Knoppix now to try and rule out whether it could be the OS doing it. As you can see, I'm going to all lengths to stop this annoyance :) Best regards, Gonzalo -- Regards, Kevin Saenz Spinaweb I.T consultants Ph: 02 4620 5130 Fax: 02 4625 9243 Mobile: 0418455661 Web: http://www.spinaweb.com.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
Gonzalo, I used to have that problem. My computer would freeze in Windows when ever playing a 3d game. I found it would freeze spasmodically using Linux. The problem was with my mother board and a buggy ACPI component. Now I have ACPI modules installed and I have not experienced a freeze. Hope that helps. BTW, I have not tried other cards I have a Nvidia GeForce 4. Hi All, I'm experiencing complete (and random) system freezes every day or two. I've not found a pattern yet, it happens at random. System specs as follows: Athlon 1800+ CPU 256MB DDR Matrox G400 Dualhead 2 x HDD 2 x SCSI CDROM 1 x FDD First I thought it was maybe overheating so I installed lm-sensors. It didn't seem to be overheating, so I left it running for a while and the levels continued to look OK. It was then suggested to me that maybe my PSU was either not powerful enough or dodgy. It was only a 200W so I went out and bought a 320W PSU. It looked promising as it didn't crash for *gasp* 4 days! but it froze on me twice last night. Since then, I've been running memtest. 8 hours 46 passes later with no errors, I'm thinking it's not the RAM (the CPU, mobo and RAM are all brand new). My system was fine before I upgraded to a new mobo/CPU. FWIW, the system is running Gentoo kernel 2.4.19, and also when I say system freeze I mean the system just locks up. Can't press CTRL-ALT-F1, can't ping it, etc. As you can imagine it's really annoying so I was hoping someone could shed some light on this. Thanks in advance. Best regards, Gonzalo -- Regards, Kevin Saenz Spinaweb I.T consultants Ph: 02 4620 5130 Fax: 02 4625 9243 Mobile: 0418455661 Web: http://www.spinaweb.com.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
Hi Gonzalo, Try removing everything that is *not* absolutely needed in the computer. Ie all the cards that are not needed. Could be one of those causing the problem. Remove *one* of the memory chips if possible and leave the other in. then change it over. some systems will allow this. remove CDROM temporarily if not needed etc. Also unplug/replug in everything a few times as mentioned in another post. check that there are no bent pins on devices too. swap keyboard and mouse, monitor if things start to get desperate. I've had them cause computer hiccups in the past. take an image of the machine that you can restore later with imaging software and install the operating system again. if it falls over again it's most likely hardware... perhaps... you know... try different stuff... Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
On 7/08/2003 11:14 AM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Have you run a complete memory test over the system. Quite often these sort of things are a dud memory chip. Yeah, I ran memtest for 8 hours overnight with no problems. Regards, Gonzalo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Random System Freezes
Gonzalo Servat wrote:
FWIW, the system is running Gentoo kernel 2.4.19,
dons asbestos suit {:-) that is obviously your problem. One of your
libaries needs a recompile /asbestos suit
Did you say new CPU mobo?
But you didn't list your mobo.
I have a MSI mobo that does this under linux, but noth that other OS.
HW freeze up problem solving 101.
(a)The easy 1 on 1 method.
Replace each and every hardware item one at a time for a period, say 24
hours (a week sounds better in your case since it only happens once a
day), until you replace the item that is broke = your system no longer
has that fault.
Have you done the basic cable/chip wiggle test? (remove+replace),3, *
every cable and chip[1].
Checked error/message logs?. A faulty CD drive/HD on the way out can do
this (timeout messages)
[1] Must be getting old, but can someone provide a RPN refresher?
--
Terry Collins {:-)}}} email: terryc at woa.com.au www:
http://www.woa.com.au
Wombat Outdoor Adventures Bicycles, Computers, GIS, Printing,
Publishing
People without trees are like fish without clean water
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
