crack-attack routinely crashes my system

kyptin · Last edited by kyptin on Mon Feb 17, 2003 3:33 am; edited 1 time in total

So, I've been playing crack-attack for quite a while. It's such a great game that I continue to play it despite the fact that it keeps crashing my system. And I do mean crash: the mouse might happen to move once per minute, no keyboard shortcuts work (including ctrl-alt-backspace and ctrl-alt-f1), and I can't even ssh in to kill any process because the system is locked up to the point where it can't acknowledge even a simple ping request. Sometimes if I wait a while (5 minutes or more) it will recover, but not always. Also, I notice that my clock is off by however long crack-attack was frozen: even my clock can't be updated!

I've tried various things to fix this problem. I recompiled crack-attack using no optimizations (-mcpu=i686, without -02 or -pipe). No luck. I used KDE instead of fluxbox. For a day or two it worked, then it crashed. I even started crack-attack with virtually nothing else running under fluxbox, and with a nice value of 18, yet it still crashed!

I'm at my wit's end here. Does anybody have any suggestions? Is anybody else having similar problems with crack-attack? This problem doesn't seem to be happening with any other programs or games (including quake3). I'm out of ideas. :cry:

Of course, the simple solution would be to just quit playing crack-attack, but anybody who has ever played that game knows that that is not an acceptable solution. (By the way, has anybody beat my high score of 1110?

)

DuF · Advocate Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 2687 Location: Paris

My best score at crack-attack was 1395 and it's not a joke, it's really my best score

For your problem, I just can say that the last time where crack-attack crash, it will crash also my system by a kernel panic (it's was the first time of my live that I get a kernel panic

) but I think that with the sight of the kernel.log it's the nvidia driver who was at the origin of the kernel panic !

Also I think that crack-attack is a really good game, but not really good coded.... and I have no solutions for you...

FYI : I'm using fluxbox and waimea and I play crack-attack generally without any problems, except when nvidia driver kill my linux !!!

Kaali · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 May 2002 Posts: 80

Crack-Attack crashed randomly with 3123 NVidia drivers for me. With 4191 works fine, but 2D is slow on the system

, it's an akward situation. Now i'm using nv -driver, which means i'm on a hiatus for Crack-Attack.. please NVidia release the new drivers!

kyptin · Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2003 12:41 am Post subject: trying 4191

OK, I've emerged nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx version 4191-r1, and restarted X. I will post back if it hasn't crashed in a few days. Thanks (he said in faith)!

kyptin · Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 2:36 am Post subject: That seems good.

Well, it seems like that's worked so far. Hopefully it will continue to work. Thanks for the help! By the way, are the 4191 drivers masked for a reason?

Kaali · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 May 2002 Posts: 80

DuF · Advocate Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 2687 Location: Paris

puggy · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 1:57 am Post subject:

That's interesting. I was getting Kernel Panic while playingCrack-Attack on my old (Athlon 900TBird) machine. Happened quite a few times then I took a look at my CPU temps. waaaayyy above normal. Spent 3 hours carefully scraping off thermal goo from the processor and replaced the heatsink and fan with a Delta fan which sounds like a helicopter but I can turn it down to minimum speed to not be too loud. Strange that I've used the system for so long without a problem then suddenly when playing crack attack it decides to die.
:-D

Puggy

kyptin · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 4:16 am Post subject:

Man, what is up with that? Seems like crack-attack taxes too much of your system resources. It apparently makes my geforce 2 overheat with older drivers, 'cause that's the only thing I can think of to explain the above problem. And it overheats your CPU? That's insane. Those 3d graphics really need to be optimized...

Kaali · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 May 2002 Posts: 80

I think this happens because Crack-Attack code is port of an illegal game from year 2132. The game is newest technology of visual drugs and it is banned because it addicted the whole planet through their personal communicators in just 6 months. People thought this was really harmless but then they noticed that their communicators started crashing and central servers started losing information. FBTCI (Federal Bureau of Technical Crime Investigations) reverse engineered the code and found some self morphing code that can overheat any computer in existent by aggravating atoms by using specific pulse sequences through transistors. Creator of Crack-Attack was arrested and interrogated. He was released after 2 days when he could prove that self-morphing code was made for advanced A.I. which chooses the colors of the blocks. It seems the self-morphing code has accuired an ability to send information through a dimension warp that is researched at NASA. And has sent the information through Electricsheep (screensaver software) to coders mind who didn't actually know what he was coding. Crack-Attack hasn't been banned in present day for unknown reason. Maybe it has brainwashed the ones who decide on these things. So it is up to us, to erradicate this program from this dimension and stop it from being made in the future. Pass the word to your children and we shall together make it stop!

kyptin · Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2003 3:21 am Post subject:

Wow, too funny! And ya know, I'd think it was completely fictitious, except for what you said about it addicting the whole planet in 6 months... Because everyone who has played the game knows that that isn't far from the truth...

Kaali, you're my hero...what a yarn!

You read science fiction, don't you?

Kaali · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 May 2002 Posts: 80