Strange Hard Drive Behaviour
Hi Folks, I need a little help on a frustrating little problem I am having with my SuSE v8.1 box! Spec: P4, 512Mb Ram, 60 Gb HD, GX100/200 Graphics SuSE 8.1, KDE 3.0.4, 2.4.19-4Gb Every once in a while (hmmm weeks apart) I come back to my machine after not having used it for a while (say 1/2 day) and I find the hard drive light hard on and the machine jammed solid. Not a single thing works, no keyboard, no mouse etc - hard reset is the only thing that frees it up. I have been lucky so far in that I have not lost any data and do not seem to have corrupted any files. I'm running Reiser on all drives except boot partition which is ext2. I do have a couple of vfat drives manually mounted most of the time. Apart from this problem, the machine purrs along like a kitten for days at a time (it is left on 24/7 other than in storms). The only power management I use is for the monitor which I send to standby after 25 minutes but I do not have any bios or os settings for hard disk suspend or standby or hibernate. I am stumped to even know where to start looking on this one. I have been under Linux for a year or so now so I can understand how to follow good advice if given. Any ideas on which logs to start looking in would be appreciated; or perhaps tests I should try? I have been doing frequent backups in case (especially if it turns out to be hardware related). Regards, Paul.
On Sunday 09 March 2003 17.30, Paul Conn wrote:
Hi Folks,
I need a little help on a frustrating little problem I am having with my SuSE v8.1 box!
Spec: P4, 512Mb Ram, 60 Gb HD, GX100/200 Graphics SuSE 8.1, KDE 3.0.4, 2.4.19-4Gb
Every once in a while (hmmm weeks apart) I come back to my machine after not having used it for a while (say 1/2 day) and I find the hard drive light hard on and the machine jammed solid. Not a single thing works, no keyboard, no mouse etc - hard reset is the only thing that frees it up.
I have been lucky so far in that I have not lost any data and do not seem to have corrupted any files. I'm running Reiser on all drives except boot partition which is ext2. I do have a couple of vfat drives manually mounted most of the time.
Apart from this problem, the machine purrs along like a kitten for days at a time (it is left on 24/7 other than in storms).
The only power management I use is for the monitor which I send to standby after 25 minutes but I do not have any bios or os settings for hard disk suspend or standby or hibernate. I am stumped to even know where to start looking on this one.
I have been under Linux for a year or so now so I can understand how to follow good advice if given. Any ideas on which logs to start looking in would be appreciated; or perhaps tests I should try?
I have been doing frequent backups in case (especially if it turns out to be hardware related).
Regards, Paul. Sounds like a memory leak to me.. Disk is filled up due to excesive swap usage. The round about way i can think of to check is to start a 'top' session and wathc the memory usage over time. Is there anything in the system logs? Any hints at all? What programs are you running when you leave the box?
-- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rjhn@linux.nu Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 70 464 99 39 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >
If you are using the kernel that originally came with SuSE 8.1, I would
suggest downloading & installing an updated kernel. Back in December, a
kernel was made available which SuSE described by saying: "This kernel
update fixes several problems that can result in crashes or other
malfunctions, in particular if using ICP Vortex RAID controllers or
multiple IDE disks."
This could very well be the source of your problem. Use YOU to download
and install the newer kernel.
Rick
On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 17:39:35 +0100, "Rikard Johnels"
On Sunday 09 March 2003 17.30, Paul Conn wrote:
Hi Folks,
I need a little help on a frustrating little problem I am having with my SuSE v8.1 box!
Spec: P4, 512Mb Ram, 60 Gb HD, GX100/200 Graphics SuSE 8.1, KDE 3.0.4, 2.4.19-4Gb
Every once in a while (hmmm weeks apart) I come back to my machine after not having used it for a while (say 1/2 day) and I find the hard drive light hard on and the machine jammed solid. Not a single thing works, no keyboard, no mouse etc - hard reset is the only thing that frees it up.
I have been lucky so far in that I have not lost any data and do not seem to have corrupted any files. I'm running Reiser on all drives except boot partition which is ext2. I do have a couple of vfat drives manually mounted most of the time.
Apart from this problem, the machine purrs along like a kitten for days at a time (it is left on 24/7 other than in storms).
The only power management I use is for the monitor which I send to standby after 25 minutes but I do not have any bios or os settings for hard disk suspend or standby or hibernate. I am stumped to even know where to start looking on this one.
I have been under Linux for a year or so now so I can understand how to follow good advice if given. Any ideas on which logs to start looking in would be appreciated; or perhaps tests I should try?
I have been doing frequent backups in case (especially if it turns out to be hardware related).
Regards, Paul. Sounds like a memory leak to me.. Disk is filled up due to excesive swap usage. The round about way i can think of to check is to start a 'top' session and wathc the memory usage over time. Is there anything in the system logs? Any hints at all? What programs are you running when you leave the box?
--
/Rikard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rjhn@linux.nu Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 70 464 99 39
------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >
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-- Rick Friedman rickfriedman@myfastmail.com Registered Linux user: #269579 Einstein: "God does not play dice." Bohr: "Stop telling God what to do." -- http://www.fastmail.fm - IMAP accessible web-mail
participants (3)
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Paul Conn
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Rick Friedman
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Rikard Johnels