Could be disk failure. That's the only thing I know that causes ls to freeze. See what happens if you boot from Knoppix and don't mount your hard disk.
On 10/16/05, Aloomis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have a Compaq Evo N600c laptop which I've been running debian on for > a year or two. Other than some quirky behavior on suspend, it's worked > fine. Recently it started occaisionally kernel panicking when I leave > it on a soft surface turned on overnight or so. I figured this was > probably heat. The last time it did this however, it wouldn't boot up > again. It would get to running ntpdate (which I expected to fail due to > lack of network connection) and just sit there forever. I tried booting > with init set to /bin/sh. I could run one command but would never get > the prompt back, even if the command was ls. I then figured out that if > I made my one command "bash" I could then run other stuff under bash. > However, occasionally I'd run something (even something mundane like ls) > and it wouldn't return me to a prompt. I tried running memtest for > several hours and it didn't find anything. I booted from a redhat > rescue disk and mounted my drives. Same deal. Periodic strange > behavior from processes that seem to just get stuck. (such as running > sshd, having it exchange some info with the other side and then just > stop responding to it). > I tried "while /bin/true; do ls && sleep 1;done". That just keeps > running, but I can't stop it. I finally booted redhat's rescue cd, > didn't mount my drives (so I know they can't be the issue), and ran > python2.4. I tried ctrl-c and got no response. Same for ctrl-d. The c > char on the keyboard works, and ctrl-c got me out of python. > I've tried backgrounding a sleep 500000& and using killall on it. That > works. > > Any idea what's going on here? It almost has to be hardware failure, > but I can't begin to figure out what. It's a work laptop, so it's not > really my problem to fix, but I want to know what's going on. (And > whether I can find a way to freshen up my backup before delivering the > laptop to someone who may wipe the drive.) > > -- > > Public key available at: > http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x192565D4 > Key fingerprint: EF38 363A 7FA1 5E40 712E 1511 7B1B 337A 1925 65D4 > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFDUvqFexszehklZdQRAhviAKDmnHRC9FCyvWqL7o+vYh9OJG0cwwCdG/43 > wAeTT/l1DipEgMlSYd+qbfs= > =Zb1d > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > >
