- main - earth.li

Something is killing my box each evening, need help
by James Green 10 Jan '02

10 Jan '02

Hi all, I'm writing this for some help in tracking down whatever is causing my machine to lock up once every day, usually in the evening between 6pm and midnight. The hardware: AMD K6-2 300, 256MB RAM, 40Gig ATA100 hard disk with all partitions ext3. The hardware has not altered in several months, and the computer has not been moved in an equally long period. The software is Debian Sid. I had this problem, dist-upgraded and it still occurs. I am inside X when the crash happens, I have not tried closing X down for the day to see if it repeats. I am running kernel 2.4.17, and whilst I did have crashes in previous kernels (I jumped from .13) they were not daily. The crash occurs at random. I am not doing anything heavy at the time nor anything common. Today's crash happened whilst scrolling a webpage in Galeon. Yesterday it occured whilst flicking tabs in XChat. The screen freezes. Gkrellm stops updating all indicators including the time. The mouse pointer works, but does not update window focus, and the mouse buttons have no effect. The keyboard freezes. Hitting the numlock key does not change the state of the light. Ctrl+alt+F1-4 has no effect, nor does ctrl+alt+backspace/delete. I can however use alt+sysreq+s to sync the disk, and then use the machine's reset button to perform a reboot. Works a treat when used with ext3 :). The modem apparently continues downloading data and getting irc traffic. I do not have other equipment with which I can log in to this machine to attempt any form of 'rescue'. Looking at /var/log/kernel.log I see nothing out of the ordinary. It shows nothing, then the disk sync, then the reboot. So I'm looking for ideas as to what to look at/for, tests to run, etc. Any ideas? :-) Thanks. James Green

3 2

March Meeting
by Syd Hancock 10 Jan '02

10 Jan '02

Serious forward planning happening here... If we are having the March meeting at Newton Flotman, which I look forward to, I would prefer it not to be the 24th because that is school holidays. Can we pencil in sunday March 17th instead? Syd

1 0

RE: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by Ashley 10 Jan '02

10 Jan '02

At 14:53 09/01/02 +0000, Earl Brannigan wrote: >Hi >Cheveley is grrrrreat!!! for me (after my frosties). >(I'm assuming its the Cheveley near me thus - next village being Ashley.... >the Cheveley Nr Newmarket. ...). Cool, a village named after me :) Ashley

1 0

Re: [Alug] isdn card and connection (a bit long)
by MJ Ray 10 Jan '02

10 Jan '02

Syd: > Earlier this evening I got off my arse and searched a little harder > and found what I needed on one of the mandrake support sites. All > working now. Glad to hear it! > Essentially, there is a file /etc/rc.d/rc.local which is the last > init file to be loaded - therefore various useful bits and bobs can > be stuck on the end and they will over-ride what has gone before. > > Not elegant but it works. Not the debian way I assume :) Not the Mandrake way either, I suspect. I assume that you're getting one of the hisax errors still? Adding a correct options line to modules.conf will solve that. > I did ned to edit some of the other files as well and I was > particularly pleased to see that according to the hardware database > on the mandrake web site, my card should not work. So one up! Hehe... time for you to go and correct their database, then. Well done! -- MJR

2 1

Re: [Alug] Something is killing my box each evening, need help
by Ricardo Campos 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

> > The software is Debian Sid. I had this problem, dist-upgraded and it > > still occurs. I am inside X when the crash happens, I have not tried > > closing X down for the day to see if it repeats. I am running kernel > > 2.4.17, and whilst I did have crashes in previous kernels (I jumped from > > .13) they were not daily. I had a similar problem twice: 1) after installing nVidia drivers (maybe it's an X/videocard driver prob) 2) It'd just randomly do it, even in (cough cough) that *other* OS (splutter) so I attributed it to hardware. It seemed to fix itself. I'd go with Mark, maybe focussing on X and/or video drivers, and then going for the kernel. Not much help either, I'm afraid! _______________________________________________ "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net Check my online diary out: http://www.rscampos.net/blog.html -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Re: [Alug] Something is killing my box each evening, need help
by MJ Ray 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

James: > The software is Debian Sid. I had this problem, dist-upgraded and it > still occurs. I am inside X when the crash happens, I have not tried > closing X down for the day to see if it repeats. I am running kernel > 2.4.17, and whilst I did have crashes in previous kernels (I jumped from > .13) they were not daily. Summary of what I said on IRC: If you're tracking sid closely, you should be talking to Debian lists to cure this. If they coincided with the kernel change, try another kernel. Doubt that helped, but there you have it: replace bits until it stops crashing. Slow, tedious, but will work eventually. -- MJR

1 0

RH 7.2 problem
by Ian Bell 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

I have RH 7.2 installed which provideds a couple of icons on the KDE desktop for mounting/unmounting CD and floppy drives. I have recently been trying to compile myself a kernel as yet without success. But a side effect seems to be that I can no longer mount/umount CD and floppy drives - even by hand as root. mount just hangs. Looking at it with Gtop shows it is asleep waiting for an interrupt. As I have a PIII, I wondered if when I did make modules and make modules_install I may have overwritten some functioning code with now non functioning code. Any suggestions? TIA Ian

1 0

Re: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by MJ Ray 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

> This may not appeal to anyone but an alternative location near to > Norwich for an alug meet sometime is my house. It's free, warm and > there is always plenty of tea and biscuits :) That's very generous of you. Can you fit an ALUG meeting in it and are you sure you want ALUGgers there? > Other advantage - internet connectivity (64k isdn) and a 100tx hub > with a spare uplink port. Disadvantage - a few miles out of Norwich > for those not driving. Plenty of parking space though for those who > are. It is on the A140 south of Norwich, just off the A11 (Newton > Flotman). Bah, you can cycle to Newton Flotman fairly easily, IIRC. ;-) -- MJR

2 1

Re: [Alug] isdn card and connection (a bit long)
by MJ Ray 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

Syd: > insmod hisax failing during boot. I looked at dmesg but did not see > these messages - should I be looking in /var somewhere? /var/log/syslog or messages, at a guess. > modprobe hisax type=35 protocol=2 id=hisax > Presumably I should be able to use this information to edit a > config file somewhere to have it happen during boot? No idea where It needs to end up in /etc/modules.conf, but some distributions build this from elsewhere (eg /etc/modutils/* in Debian). I think the line should be options hisax type=35 protocol=2 id=hisax > Also, MCC requires root password so I am not sure if I am dialing > out with root privs or with my user privs. I know its a mandrake > thing but any informed guesses? Dialouts are normally effectively root, as they have to add a network device and routes to the system. Can't help with ippp0, as I've never had an isdn system. There's an ipppd package in Debian, though. -- MJR

2 1

Re: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by MJ Ray 09 Jan '02

09 Jan '02

> Mark - you mentioned some time ago having a Feb meet in King's > Lynn. Any further thoughts? I've yet to find a venue that is both: a) free or cheap b) available at weekends If anyone can help with this in the King's Lynn area, please email me and I'll try to help you arrange it, if you want. Is anyone (Alexis? Andrew?) on this list still at UEA and willing to do the room booking dance again? If so, shall we go to UEA for February, Newton Flotman for March (assuming that's OK), SomewhereElse(tm) for April and Syleham for May.. (any more venues want to step in?). Then we're probably planned far enough ahead to get in the magazines, for a change! -- MJR

1 0