* Ken Schneider (Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 07:10:09AM -0400)

On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 06:17, Rikard Johnels wrote:

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KDE locks up randomly after a few minutes.

...

No keyboard, no network no nothing but the button-on-the-front can unluck it.

...

What am i to do???

1) look at the system log (usually /var/log/messages)

This is most likely a hardware problem. Try reseating all of the boards in the box and see if that clears up the problem. Also boot to the bios setup and let it sit there to see if it hangs there as well, this will mean a hardware problem for sure.

2) the suse CDs (and usually the install) comes with a thing called memtest. run the memtest (this can take 24hours if you have much memory and a slow machine) 3) watch the pre-linux bios boot, and see if any warnings occur 4) heat ... If your CPU fan is not spinning the system will overheat and shut itself down (if you're lucky) or fry itself (which means a new CPU, new motherboard &c .. however, since you didn;t mention smoke and a bad smell, it hasn;t fried yet) Currently listening to: ph2004-8-14d2t02 Gerhard, == The Acoustic Motorbiker == -- __O Mounting a horse can often be fun =`\<, An elephant too; though he weighs half a ton (=)/(=) Even a mouse (though his hole is quite small) But the hedgepod can never be buggered at all.

Sid Boyce wrote:

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If memtest runs for a long time error free, then booting up to init 3 and throwing some compiles at it to see if it will freeze. The last 3 problems I had on 3 boxes, were memory, CPU that wouldn't run at advertised speed and CPU fan. Memory failures are common because the guys handling PC spares know nothing about ESD and assume that if they don't touch the chip legs, it's safe and will smugly tell you they have never caused damaged - till I tell them I've taught and audited ESD for over 25 years and they'd be fired if they handled the DIMMs that way in the factory where they are made. I have about 10 dead sticks lying around here. Regards Sid.

Yeah, nothing pisses me off more than cavalier attitudes about ESD. And people think if it works it aint broke, which is false. It could have suffered injury that will dramatically shorten the lifetime, but it seems to be fine now. Or certain device parameters might not meet spec only at thermal extremes. Or a low-noise OP amp works fine except has 10x the spec noise. The list is long of what can go wrong other than outright death. ESD is serious business, though few outside of the semiconductor industry really appreciate it. Good day! -- _____________________ Christopher R. Carlen crobc@earthlink.net SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

On Tuesday 10 Aug 2004 02:42, James Knott wrote:

Chris Carlen wrote:

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Sid Boyce wrote:

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If memtest runs for a long time error free, then booting up to init 3 and throwing some compiles at it to see if it will freeze. The last 3 problems I had on 3 boxes, were memory, CPU that wouldn't run at advertised speed and CPU fan. Memory failures are common because the guys handling PC spares know nothing about ESD and assume that if they don't touch the chip legs, it's safe and will smugly tell you they have never caused damaged - till I tell them I've taught and audited ESD for over 25 years and they'd be fired if they handled the DIMMs that way in the factory where they are made. I have about 10 dead sticks lying around here. Regards Sid.

Yeah, nothing pisses me off more than cavalier attitudes about ESD. And people think if it works it aint broke, which is false. It could have suffered injury that will dramatically shorten the lifetime, but it seems to be fine now. Or certain device parameters might not meet spec only at thermal extremes. Or a low-noise OP amp works fine except has 10x the spec noise. The list is long of what can go wrong other than outright death.

ESD is serious business, though few outside of the semiconductor industry really appreciate it.

I've often worked with ICs, over many years and take precautions, such as wrist strap etc. I also place the chip on a low ESD mat, in a puddle of alcohol. The alcohol not only reduces the chance of static, but also cleans the pins, prior to soldering.

Hope you use an NON Torchable type alcohol could be fun if not one spark and bingo out goes the 911... Pete -- Linux user No: 256242 Machine No: 139931 G6NJR Pete also MSA registered "Quinton 11" A Linux Only area Happy bug hunting M$ clan PGN

On Monday 30 August 2004 13.48, James Knott wrote:

peter Nikolic wrote:

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Hope you use an NON Torchable type alcohol could be fun if not one spark and bingo out goes the 911...

Actually, alcohol, though flammable is quite safe, in that it takes a fair bit to get it burning, when in liquid form. In fact, it's so safe that it's used for stoves on small boats, where you don't want any propane or gasoline fumes floating around.

A similar situation occurs with kerosene. Way back when, one of the proponents of jet engines had a little demo. He'd stand in a puddle of jet fuel and drop a lit match into it. He'd then challenge someone who claimed jet fuel was dangerous, to try the same thing with gasoline.

It all depends on how volatile the fuel is. Gasoline is volatile, alcohol is not.

Excuse me guys.. But aren't we getting a BIT off track here?? My original question was NOT on the flamability of fluids, but on a unstable SuSE 9.1 Linux/KDE setup. (Not that i haven't enjoyed some of the OT answers..) I still haven't gotten the system stable even after following the few advises on settings received in this thread.. Still at it though -- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >

On Sunday 29 August 2004 05:54 pm, Sid Boyce wrote:

Reinforcing everything you say. Unfortunately the way the PC industry has developed, ESD has never figured because of the low cost of parts and the expectation and acceptance of failures.

Great Rant, but realistically, everything on most PCs still works when the users get tired of them and throws them away. When MoBos do fail its almost always a blown capacitor. Memory problems are even rare these days. We use to worry about every 78pin simm we touched, and had more than a few fail, but that was 10 years ago. The newer ram, and CPUs are seldom bothered by this. After 20 years in the business I've only seen 2 dead processors, one due to lightning, the other to user forcing it in the socket wrong. So in the vast majority of cases, the sensitivity to ESD has been engineered out of the computer products in general use. Now on the other hand, too much handling and my punchcards still get all warped and have trouble feeding thru the gate. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Gerhard, On Thursday 26 August 2004 04:31, Gerhard den Hollander wrote:

* Ken Schneider (Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 07:10:09AM -0400)

...

On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 06:17, Rikard Johnels wrote:

...

KDE locks up randomly after a few minutes.

No keyboard, no network no nothing but the button-on-the-front can unluck it.

What am i to do???

...

4) heat ... If your CPU fan is not spinning the system will overheat and shut itself down (if you're lucky) or fry itself (which means a new CPU, new motherboard &c .. however, since you didn;t mention smoke and a bad smell, it hasn;t fried yet)

4a) Heat sink(s) clogged with dust Personal experience leads me to claim this one is insidious, since unless you remove the CPU heat-sink fan and blow out the heat sink, you probably have no idea how much dust is in there, And though the fan happily spins, it moves almost no air through the heat sink. My system went from working fine to slightly instable to completely useless in less than a day!

Gerhard, == The Acoustic Motorbiker == -- __O =`\<, (=)/(=)

Randall Schulz -- Ride, Eat, Sleep ... Ride, Eat, Sleep ... Ride, Eat, Sleep

On Thursday 26 August 2004 17.03, Randall R Schulz wrote: There is no hardware problem, as i use the same box dualboot with 9.0 The 9.0 has been flawless form MONTHS running compiles, multiple browsers, Open Office, Quanta and Gimp2 simultaneously. CPU's (dual celleron) running at 40-50 degrees Celsius -- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >

On Friday 27 August 2004 07.46, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Rikard,

On Thursday 26 August 2004 22:30, Rikard Johnels wrote:

...

On Thursday 26 August 2004 17.03, Randall R Schulz wrote:

There is no hardware problem, as i use the same box dualboot with 9.0 The 9.0 has been flawless form MONTHS running compiles, multiple browsers, Open Office, Quanta and Gimp2 simultaneously. CPU's (dual celleron) running at 40-50 degrees Celsius

I did not write these words. Please be careful with your quoting and attribution.

My contribution was to add that even when the CPU heat-sink fan was working well, dust clogging the heat sink fins can allow considerable overheating of the CPU chip.

As to your claim that there's no hardware problem--it may be so, but it does not really follow from the observations you've made. For one thing, there's no plausible way for a flaw in KDE to suppress network activity, both incoming and outgoing as well as other interrupt-driven actions (keyboard handling, e.g.).

The problem may or may not be hardware, but it's not very likely that KDE is responsible for the symptoms you report.

...

-- /Rikard

------------- Rikard Johnels

Randall Schulz My apologies Randall. I missed some cutting as i replied. :(

And as i stated in another post, i have tracked y2base as a possible candidate. It peaks at 99.5% and about 1/4 of a second later the system is hung. Dont know why it races like that, but that is the last thing i see as i monitor the system. All after the init of y2base is lost as all connections to the box dies. No keyboard, no network, frosen display.. the works. -- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >

Ken Schneider wrote:

On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 06:17, Rikard Johnels wrote:

...

Hi all!

Tried a fresh install of 9.1 today (for the third time) No frills, just a clean from scratch install of the standard system. And i've gotten the same problem EVERYTIME!

KDE locks up randomly after a few minutes.

No keyboard, no network no nothing but the button-on-the-front can unluck it. I cant seem to find the answer to why or what causes the lockup. Thought it to be YAS, but even if i dont run it it locks. Thought it was a number of other things, none applied. It just wont run. It looses keyboard, CAPS and NUM toggles, but you cant shift to another terminal to kill X, and you cant even bail out with ctrl-alt-backspace. YOu cant access the box via keyboard at all. It also kills network connections, i cant ping let alone ssh to the box as it hangs.

What am i to do???

-- /Rikard

This is most likely a hardware problem. Try reseating all of the boards in the box and see if that clears up the problem. Also boot to the bios setup and let it sit there to see if it hangs there as well, this will mean a hardware problem for sure.

It's not always a hardware problem, as in defective hardware or a bad connection, or a thermal issue. Sometimes the cause is that Linux crashes, due to some device driver incompatibility with perfectly good hardware. I have had this, for example with a Matrox video card that locked the system after it was running for a while, until I found some obscure option to put in the X config file to luckily be able to fix it. The OP should boot Suse using the Failsafe option to see if the problem goes away. Additionally, they should install and use the memtest86.bin boot image to scan the RAM. A RAM problem might not show up until some application has caused access to that part of RAM, so just running the BIOS screen might not expose this problem. It could be an APM thing, or IDE DMA (I have a machine that locks when that is turned on), or any number of other subtle hardware driver incompatibilities or bugs that don't show up in the immediate bootup sequence. Good luck solving your problem. Good day! -- _____________________ Christopher R. Carlen crobc@earthlink.net SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

On Thursday, 26 August 2004 15:16, Johan Nielsen wrote:

Torsdag den 26. august 2004 12:17 skrev Rikard Johnels:

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Hi all!

Tried a fresh install of 9.1 today (for the third time) No frills, just a clean from scratch install of the standard system. And i've gotten the same problem EVERYTIME!

KDE locks up randomly after a few minutes.

a.: try unistalling any power save tools; b.: also remove any USB Flash drives if any. this worked for me but the powersave is usually the problem. Chipo -- chipo@unix.za.net Registered Linux User #353653 "Please only text mail (no HTML); I cant afford Microsoft Outlook"