Hi,
The severity of the crashes leads me to believe this must be either in the kernel or X (prove me wrong). Both of these are mature programs. I know that the kernel itself comes with many debug features and I assume so does X. Since this trial and error is not getting us anywhere, could we all not recompile the kernel and X to enable some/all of these debug logs and wait around for the crash and then submit all the logs to the "proper authorities"? I'm willing to run the "slightly slower" debug kernel if it would solve this problem once and for all! I'm really REALLY sick of firefox crashing my whole system!
-Raf
Mysterious Freeze
Message
I has had the same problem. I solved it (I think so;) by turning off some options i kernel config. This options were:
Processor type and features -> Preemptible Kernel
General Setup -> ACPI Support
I now have the 2.4.28 kernel. I was using 2.6.10 too, but I don't know if this help's on that version too.
PS. Sorry about my english. It is not my primary language.
Processor type and features -> Preemptible Kernel
General Setup -> ACPI Support
I now have the 2.4.28 kernel. I was using 2.6.10 too, but I don't know if this help's on that version too.
PS. Sorry about my english. It is not my primary language.
Last edited by zbychuk on Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- paulbarker
- n00b
- Posts: 70
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- Contact:
- paulbarker
- n00b
- Posts: 70
- Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:57 pm
- Location: Manchester, UK
- Contact:
Hi!
I realize the same problems like you since I installed a new mobo. Freezes while using the system with mouse ok/not ok and 99% cpu usage caused by X.
My old configuration:
Asus A7V K133, AMD Duron 800MHz
My new configuration:
Asus K8N E Deluxe, AMD Sempron 3100+
using a Hercules GeForce2 MX Dual in both configurations.
The curious thing I realized (it has not been mentioned before): everytime I disconnect my monitor and connect it again after a few seconds, my system freezes like described above! Try it! I would like to know, if you have the same behaviour.
By the way, using the nv driver solves the problem. I tried the nvidia driver with 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 and several kernel options enabled/disabled like ACPI and so on.
Does anybody know how the system recognizes a monitor change. Is it a PnP feature?
I realize the same problems like you since I installed a new mobo. Freezes while using the system with mouse ok/not ok and 99% cpu usage caused by X.
My old configuration:
Asus A7V K133, AMD Duron 800MHz
My new configuration:
Asus K8N E Deluxe, AMD Sempron 3100+
using a Hercules GeForce2 MX Dual in both configurations.
The curious thing I realized (it has not been mentioned before): everytime I disconnect my monitor and connect it again after a few seconds, my system freezes like described above! Try it! I would like to know, if you have the same behaviour.
By the way, using the nv driver solves the problem. I tried the nvidia driver with 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 and several kernel options enabled/disabled like ACPI and so on.
Does anybody know how the system recognizes a monitor change. Is it a PnP feature?
To cut a long story short: Same problem here... 
I guess it's ACPI, because my freezes appeared when I started tinkering with gkrellm/torsmo - wanting them to display my CPU temperature. It cannot be GLX - even UT2004 runs fine. I'll compile an new Kernel and try again...
btw: Does anyone know how to reproduce this behaviour?
I guess it's ACPI, because my freezes appeared when I started tinkering with gkrellm/torsmo - wanting them to display my CPU temperature. It cannot be GLX - even UT2004 runs fine. I'll compile an new Kernel and try again...
btw: Does anyone know how to reproduce this behaviour?
But the probability is high.- paulbarker
- n00b
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- Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:57 pm
- Location: Manchester, UK
- Contact:
- dustfinger
- Guru
- Posts: 449
- Joined: Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:27 pm
Dell inspiron 5150
512MB RAM
ati radeon M9
Same problem here when running linux-2.6.10-gentoo-r6 with 3d acceleration. Absolutely no problems at all when running linux-2.6.10-gentoo-r4 with no 3d acceleration.
System most often freezes when running multiple instances of xpdf executed from firefox. I have noticed many times that the system has frozen on release when I have dragged an xpdf window from one desktop to another. However, it has also frozen while scrolling upward in the gentoo forum and while emerging. I have never had it freeze while I have not been running an instance of firefox, but then I am always running firefox.
I noticed the following output while running xpdf:
dustfinger.
512MB RAM
ati radeon M9
Same problem here when running linux-2.6.10-gentoo-r6 with 3d acceleration. Absolutely no problems at all when running linux-2.6.10-gentoo-r4 with no 3d acceleration.
System most often freezes when running multiple instances of xpdf executed from firefox. I have noticed many times that the system has frozen on release when I have dragged an xpdf window from one desktop to another. However, it has also frozen while scrolling upward in the gentoo forum and while emerging. I have never had it freeze while I have not been running an instance of firefox, but then I am always running firefox.
I noticed the following output while running xpdf:
I don't think that error has anything to do with the freeze though. I think that has to do with fonts being larger then the space that xpdf has allocated for it. Is that true?Bad bounding box in Type 3 glyph
dustfinger.
Unanswered Post Initiative:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=119906
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=119906
FIREFOX
Hi,
I think people in this group are describing several different problems so when reading what works and what doesn't work for some, may not work for others as it is a different problem.
I run doom3 and ut2004 without any crashes (nvidia binaries). I Run many different applications: openoffice, spice, spectre, Cadence, Matlab, etc. Some times, VERY rarely a program might hang. That's ok, I just kill it and start it again. Nothing else gets disturbed. HOWEVER firefox has the ability to freeze my system dead (except for the mouse which still moves uselessly around the screen). I use firefox ALL the time and it hangs my system once every three days or so. This is the ONLY application that can do this to my system. Is anyone here in the exact same boat as me?
Raf
I think people in this group are describing several different problems so when reading what works and what doesn't work for some, may not work for others as it is a different problem.
I run doom3 and ut2004 without any crashes (nvidia binaries). I Run many different applications: openoffice, spice, spectre, Cadence, Matlab, etc. Some times, VERY rarely a program might hang. That's ok, I just kill it and start it again. Nothing else gets disturbed. HOWEVER firefox has the ability to freeze my system dead (except for the mouse which still moves uselessly around the screen). I use firefox ALL the time and it hangs my system once every three days or so. This is the ONLY application that can do this to my system. Is anyone here in the exact same boat as me?
Raf
This may sound a bit outthere, but it seems that my laptop stopped crashing after i disabled ALSA sound in the kernel, and emerged alsa-driver, in accordance with the gentoo alsa how-to. Also, for fb console I use vesafb NOT vesafb-tng.
Using ck-sources 2.6.10-ck6, smp kernel , ~x86, pic, nptl, nptlonly
can someone try not using the kernel alsa drivers and report results?
Using ck-sources 2.6.10-ck6, smp kernel , ~x86, pic, nptl, nptlonly
can someone try not using the kernel alsa drivers and report results?
Re: FIREFOX
Agreed, this seems to be a general "Help! My box freezes"-Threadraf wrote: I think people in this group are describing several different problems so when reading what works and what doesn't work for some, may not work for others as it is a different problem.
100% Ack, exactly the same here.raf wrote: I run doom3 and ut2004 without any crashes (nvidia binaries). I Run many different applications [...] HOWEVER firefox has the ability to freeze my system dead (except for the mouse which still moves uselessly around the screen). I use firefox ALL the time and it hangs my system once every three days or so. This is the ONLY application that can do this to my system. Is anyone here in the exact same boat as me?
As this Thread is overcrowded with serveal differnt problems, I created a "spin-off": Firefox freezes
I have also experienced the strange freeze while randomly working in X.
At first, I believed the freeze was caused by my laptop heating up to ~65C. So I bought a under-cooler bringing the temp down to 52C. But I continued to see freezes. I screwed around with drivers for quite some time, again no help.
I found this topic and followed a few suggestions I found. The first one, i switched to the "nv" driver in xorg.conf. But still, I experience random freezes where the mouse & keyboard lock up. The only thing I can do is to hard reboot the machine. Surprisingly, I can still change the brightness of the screen and some other features built-into the laptop. I have isolated the problem to a few causes.
#1) When I am running a cpu-intensive program, the laptop begins making a good amount of noise (due to fans starting), and the laptop carries out the process. But as soon as the cpu intensive process ends and I close the application, the laptop freezes. An example is playing a flash animation on a website using firefox, and then closing firefox. This repeatedly causes the laptop to hang.
#2) Firefox, for some bizarre reason, firefox spikes the cpu and causes the laptop to hang. I have no idea what causes this spike, they usually appear during causal browsing.
My best hope right now is for 2.6.11 to fix this problem, but I have tried the vanilla sources from kernel.org and have gotten the same problem.
Also, I have played with kernel settings, enable/disable ACPI and APM, none seem to make any difference. My main concern is that even with "nv" in my xorg.conf, I still get freezes, which leads me to believe this is not an nVidia problem, but possibly a kernel/xorg problem. I have viewed all the logs I could find, but none state anything about the freeze, the machine simply stops responding to user input.
My laptop:
Dell 5160 Inspiron
p4 3.0ghz HT (ht is enabled in kernel config)
It seems the longest I have ever gotten the laptop to run before a freeze was with "nv" and using wired ethernet (wireless disabled). This allowed me to run for a full 3.5 hrs before a freeze. Please assist in any way possible! Thanks!
At first, I believed the freeze was caused by my laptop heating up to ~65C. So I bought a under-cooler bringing the temp down to 52C. But I continued to see freezes. I screwed around with drivers for quite some time, again no help.
I found this topic and followed a few suggestions I found. The first one, i switched to the "nv" driver in xorg.conf. But still, I experience random freezes where the mouse & keyboard lock up. The only thing I can do is to hard reboot the machine. Surprisingly, I can still change the brightness of the screen and some other features built-into the laptop. I have isolated the problem to a few causes.
#1) When I am running a cpu-intensive program, the laptop begins making a good amount of noise (due to fans starting), and the laptop carries out the process. But as soon as the cpu intensive process ends and I close the application, the laptop freezes. An example is playing a flash animation on a website using firefox, and then closing firefox. This repeatedly causes the laptop to hang.
#2) Firefox, for some bizarre reason, firefox spikes the cpu and causes the laptop to hang. I have no idea what causes this spike, they usually appear during causal browsing.
My best hope right now is for 2.6.11 to fix this problem, but I have tried the vanilla sources from kernel.org and have gotten the same problem.
Also, I have played with kernel settings, enable/disable ACPI and APM, none seem to make any difference. My main concern is that even with "nv" in my xorg.conf, I still get freezes, which leads me to believe this is not an nVidia problem, but possibly a kernel/xorg problem. I have viewed all the logs I could find, but none state anything about the freeze, the machine simply stops responding to user input.
My laptop:
Dell 5160 Inspiron
p4 3.0ghz HT (ht is enabled in kernel config)
It seems the longest I have ever gotten the laptop to run before a freeze was with "nv" and using wired ethernet (wireless disabled). This allowed me to run for a full 3.5 hrs before a freeze. Please assist in any way possible! Thanks!
Hello World.
Allow me to join the fun 
I think my problem is related to the problems discussed in this thread, except for the fakt I don't have crashes but an extremely slow X. Maybe this slowness is related to the crashes your having.
When I start X with the nvidia drivers it comes up extremely slow, the mouse cursor goes crazy and switching to console takes ages. This is simmilar to what you would expect on a system that's running an intensive task (eg mouse stuttering while compiling a kernel or something on a slow machine). Odd detail: nothing shows up in top
(am I missing something ???)
I've tried almost everything, every possible nvidia setting, downgrading xorg, downgrading nvidia drivers, using different kernelversions, with/without framebuffer and the power related things mentioned in this thread. And I keep getting the same problem....
With the generic "nv" drivers everything runs smoothley
There's nothing to be found in the kernel messages or xorg log that could explain this
My setup:
*amd64 with geforce fx5700
*gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.10-r7
*xorg-x11-6.8.0-r3
*udev
Since I'm on a 64bit system, could emul-linux-x86-nvidia have something to do with this ?
I think my problem is related to the problems discussed in this thread, except for the fakt I don't have crashes but an extremely slow X. Maybe this slowness is related to the crashes your having.
When I start X with the nvidia drivers it comes up extremely slow, the mouse cursor goes crazy and switching to console takes ages. This is simmilar to what you would expect on a system that's running an intensive task (eg mouse stuttering while compiling a kernel or something on a slow machine). Odd detail: nothing shows up in top
(am I missing something ???)I've tried almost everything, every possible nvidia setting, downgrading xorg, downgrading nvidia drivers, using different kernelversions, with/without framebuffer and the power related things mentioned in this thread. And I keep getting the same problem....
With the generic "nv" drivers everything runs smoothley
There's nothing to be found in the kernel messages or xorg log that could explain this
My setup:
*amd64 with geforce fx5700
*gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.10-r7
*xorg-x11-6.8.0-r3
*udev
Since I'm on a 64bit system, could emul-linux-x86-nvidia have something to do with this ?
Re: FIREFOX
Yes, exactly the same problem.raf wrote:Hi,
I think people in this group are describing several different problems so when reading what works and what doesn't work for some, may not work for others as it is a different problem.
I run doom3 and ut2004 without any crashes (nvidia binaries). I Run many different applications: openoffice, spice, spectre, Cadence, Matlab, etc. Some times, VERY rarely a program might hang. That's ok, I just kill it and start it again. Nothing else gets disturbed. HOWEVER firefox has the ability to freeze my system dead (except for the mouse which still moves uselessly around the screen). I use firefox ALL the time and it hangs my system once every three days or so. This is the ONLY application that can do this to my system. Is anyone here in the exact same boat as me?
Raf
Lol, freezed while creating this post.
- hamster2k1
- n00b
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Fri Feb 07, 2003 6:26 pm
- Location: Montreal,QC
mmm, just for fun, here's my input to that problem.
In the past I had problems with random locks up in X in general.
Since then I recompiled the gentoo-dev kernel without APM since my mobo only has
ACPI, even though I think when ACPI is compiled APM doesn't get compiled. Anyway
I was unsure about that, so I removed APM from the kernel. And since then its seems better.
But can't remember if I maybe did something else also that could have helped my situation.
Also, i've disabled xscreensaver, because each time it was loading up, after 2-3 minutes,
I had a crash.
So now, when I'm only in the desktop mode it runs perfectly fine for 3 days...
in the past I was able to stay at max 20-30 minutes in X.
But now it seems that the problem is with OpenGL maybe ? or video card drivers ? Xorg ?
internal agppart ?
Because xscreensaver is now disabled, but if I try to load up World of Warcraft using
cedega, it runs for about 5 minutes and then crash!
Anyway, as probably everyone suspects here, all our problems are probably a mix of problems.
Hard to find a solution when there are multiple problems at the same time.
So... one day we might be able to find a solution! One day...
In the past I had problems with random locks up in X in general.
Since then I recompiled the gentoo-dev kernel without APM since my mobo only has
ACPI, even though I think when ACPI is compiled APM doesn't get compiled. Anyway
I was unsure about that, so I removed APM from the kernel. And since then its seems better.
But can't remember if I maybe did something else also that could have helped my situation.
Also, i've disabled xscreensaver, because each time it was loading up, after 2-3 minutes,
I had a crash.
So now, when I'm only in the desktop mode it runs perfectly fine for 3 days...
in the past I was able to stay at max 20-30 minutes in X.
But now it seems that the problem is with OpenGL maybe ? or video card drivers ? Xorg ?
internal agppart ?
Because xscreensaver is now disabled, but if I try to load up World of Warcraft using
cedega, it runs for about 5 minutes and then crash!
Anyway, as probably everyone suspects here, all our problems are probably a mix of problems.
Hard to find a solution when there are multiple problems at the same time.
So... one day we might be able to find a solution!
One day... 
Hi All,
This thread seems to have grown a bit since I last posted, which is bad news.
Freezing of my box has again returned in anger on a daily basis. Unlike most of you I was blaming Opera instead of Firefox. Yet again I still prefer Opera as a browser of choice, so I'm using it more often. As a matter of fact I've been around the houses a couple of times blaming different programs in turn! 
My system freezes a few minutes after I boot up, even if I do not run ANY commands or applications. As I said, I have suspected different apps at different times (Opera being No 1, but again it's almost always running on my machine). Usually, the machine would freeze someway down the "emerge sync" process - often when it is updating the cache. That said, I usually emerge sync soon after I boot up. The crashes will happen whether I am running X or not (BTW, I have an old ATI AIW card, not N-vidia). Once I reboot from the crash, there are no more problems (for days! if I leave the box running when I am emerging anything biggy).
Today, I noticed that the machine froze when I was away and without any process or application running. This can only mean one thing: it must be a cron job! I can't really tell whether it is /usr/bin/updatedb, or logrotate archiving syslog-ng's files. It seems that this only happens the first time the cron job runs. Updatedb after the reboot does not bring the machine down.
Has anyone noticed something similar with their box freezing?
This thread seems to have grown a bit since I last posted, which is bad news.
Freezing of my box has again returned in anger on a daily basis. Unlike most of you I was blaming Opera instead of Firefox. Yet again I still prefer Opera as a browser of choice, so I'm using it more often.
As a matter of fact I've been around the houses a couple of times blaming different programs in turn! My system freezes a few minutes after I boot up, even if I do not run ANY commands or applications. As I said, I have suspected different apps at different times (Opera being No 1, but again it's almost always running on my machine). Usually, the machine would freeze someway down the "emerge sync" process - often when it is updating the cache. That said, I usually emerge sync soon after I boot up. The crashes will happen whether I am running X or not (BTW, I have an old ATI AIW card, not N-vidia). Once I reboot from the crash, there are no more problems (for days! if I leave the box running when I am emerging anything biggy).
Today, I noticed that the machine froze when I was away and without any process or application running. This can only mean one thing: it must be a cron job! I can't really tell whether it is /usr/bin/updatedb, or logrotate archiving syslog-ng's files. It seems that this only happens the first time the cron job runs. Updatedb after the reboot does not bring the machine down.
Has anyone noticed something similar with their box freezing?
Regards,
Mick
Mick