On Tuesday 11 January 2005 16:36, Barbara Baker wrote:

Hello,

I have installed 9.2 four times - from the downloadable DVD and by FTP - with and without updating the X org files with YOU, with and without installing the NVidia driver, with and without the YOU kernel patch, with and without updating KDE to 3.3.2 and each time the system has frozen after about 5 hours.

My monitor was correctly detected and configured during installation as IBM L170 TFT with a resolution of 1280x1024 and 16 bit colour. This is the configuration that has worked with 9.0 and 9.1. Thanks, Barbara

Barbara Baker wrote:

On Tuesday 11 January 2005 16:36, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

Hello,

I have installed 9.2 four times - from the downloadable DVD and by FTP - with and without updating the X org files with YOU, with and without installing the NVidia driver, with and without the YOU kernel patch, with and without updating KDE to 3.3.2 and each time the system has frozen after about 5 hours.

To avoid crawling around under the computer desk, I had left the USB cable for the camera connected. Didn't interfere with the operation of 9.1 or XP so I didn't suspect it. Since disconnecting it I have had no problems with 9.2 at all.

I *love* 9.2! Can't find a single bug and it's faster and nicer to look at ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ than 9.1.

Barbara

A most interesting statement considering your admission in the preceding paragraph about the USB cable :-). -- Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning. George W Bush June 2000

On Sunday 13 March 2005 09:46, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

To avoid crawling around under the computer desk, I had left the USB cable for the camera connected. Didn't interfere with the operation of 9.1 or XP so I didn't suspect it. Since disconnecting it I have had no problems with 9.2 at all.

I *love* 9.2! Can't find a single bug and it's faster and nicer to look at than 9.1.

After 11 hours the same black screen.

Goodbye 9.2,

That's a shame.. Sounds like hardware. Power supply overheating? Or memory, or even a cpu that the fan isn't working on. I'd bet on power supply though.. Mike -- Powered by SuSE 9.2 Kernel 2.6.8 KDE 3.3.0 Kmail 1.7.1 For Mondo/Mindi backup support go to http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike 10:09am up 0:36, 2 users, load average: 2.20, 2.21, 1.99

Richard wrote:

On Sunday 13 March 2005 03:11 am, Mike wrote:

...

On Sunday 13 March 2005 09:46, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

...

To avoid crawling around under the computer desk, I had left the USB cable for the camera connected. Didn't interfere with the operation of 9.1 or XP so I didn't suspect it. Since disconnecting it I have had no problems with 9.2 at all.

I *love* 9.2! Can't find a single bug and it's faster and nicer to look at than 9.1.

After 11 hours the same black screen.

Goodbye 9.2,

That's a shame.. Sounds like hardware. Power supply overheating? Or memory, or even a cpu that the fan isn't working on. I'd bet on power supply though..

Mike

Could be a bad fan on the video card, too.

Could be reiserfs also.

ra

Reiserfs?, in that event it could be the PC case also. Run "sensors" to see if there are motherboard/CPU heat problems, but as it is suggested it's only when X is running, perhaps the problem could be the video adapter fan, see if the time to failure varies significantly with the case covers removed. The last time I had a similar problem, I upgraded the CPU fan/heatsink and it's worked without further problems for a number of months now. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Large Computer Systems Specialist - Retired Hamradio Callsign G3VBV and Keen Private Pilot Aeroplanes, Linux, Computers and Cricket my major passions ===== LINUX USED HERE, A Microsoft-free Computing Environment ====

Hi Barbara, You started your initial mail from 2005-01-11 07:36 as a reply to another mail. Please do not do that if your intention was to start a new thread, because your "reply" will contain data about the mail you replied to. As a result your mail will not be recognized as the start of a new thread, but will appear in the middle of another thread, and with a different subject. This is known as "thread hijacking". To prevent yourself from thread hijacking, just start a new thread with a new mail. I use KMail, and what I do is clicking on the "To"-field of a mail sent to this list (the "To"-field contains the lists email address). Now that's of my chest, on to your problem. ;) On Sunday 13 March 2005 09:46, Barbara Baker wrote:

On Sunday 13 March 2005 14:18, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

On Tuesday 11 January 2005 16:36, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

Hello,

I have installed 9.2 four times - from the downloadable DVD and by FTP - with and without updating the X org files with YOU, with and without installing the NVidia driver, with and without the YOU kernel patch, with and without updating KDE to 3.3.2 and each time the system has frozen after about 5 hours.

How does the system respond if you do not install X? If your system freezes, we know it is not X related. OTOH, if the system does not freeze, we know it is X related. Further, did you look at the logfiles in the /var/log/ directory? Any signs of problems?

...

To avoid crawling around under the computer desk, I had left the USB cable for the camera connected. Didn't interfere with the operation of 9.1 or XP so I didn't suspect it. Since disconnecting it I have had no problems with 9.2 at all.

I *love* 9.2! Can't find a single bug and it's faster and nicer to look at than 9.1.

After 11 hours the same black screen.

Goodbye 9.2,

Does this mean you give up and do not wish to investigate? Cheers, Leen

On Sunday 13 March 2005 11:43, Barbara Baker wrote:

On Sunday 13 March 2005 20:02, Leendert Meyer wrote:

...

How does the system respond if you do not install X?

On second thought, starting in runlevel 3 instead of runlevel 5 would achieve the same thing.

...

If your system freezes, we know it is not X related. OTOH, if the system does not freeze, we know it is X related.

Further, did you look at the logfiles in the /var/log/ directory? Any signs of problems?

I couldn't interpret

It is enough to distinguish trouble from the usual "noise".

/var/log/messages or Xorg.0.log. /var/log/messages -

Don't forget /var/log/warn

or, rather, saw no messages at the time of the freezes that seemed to refer to anything but internet stuff.

Aha, so at least you had a look. :)

[snip]

...

...

Goodbye 9.2,

Does this mean you give up and do not wish to investigate?

No. It means that I thought that, over the last few weeks, I had exhausted all the possibilities - trying to understand the log files, installing Gkrell, intensive googling, installing with different options and updates, trying out all suggestions given to me and to others, running diagnostic programs on the hardware... .

But tonight people on the list have given me new ideas to try out and I will.

Ok, so it takes you a bit more time to get a well running Linux system. But apart from solving this problem, you might even get a better knowledge of this OS. ;)

Thanks!

You're welcome. Cheers, Leen

On Sunday 13 March 2005 20:05, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

On Sunday 13 Mar 2005 08:46, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

After 11 hours the same black screen.

I would look at all the hardware points raised earlier, but first perhaps you should try booting with "noacpi" and see if that makes any difference.

Up 3 days now and no more trouble. I am feeling confident that noapci has fixed my black screen/total freeze problem with 9.2. I have no idea why. Thanks, Barbara

On Wednesday 16 March 2005 07:52, Barbara Baker wrote:

On Sunday 13 March 2005 20:05, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

...

On Sunday 13 Mar 2005 08:46, Barbara Baker wrote:

...

After 11 hours the same black screen.

I would look at all the hardware points raised earlier, but first perhaps you should try booting with "noacpi" and see if that makes any difference.

Up 3 days now and no more trouble. I am feeling confident that noapci has fixed my black screen/total freeze problem with 9.2.

That's great! :)

I have no idea why.

There might be clues in /var/log/boot.msg or /var/log/boot.omsg. Maybe you need to enable acpi temporary. Cheers, Leen

John, On Sunday 13 March 2005 16:41, John Kelly wrote:

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:46:35 +1000, Barbara Baker

wrote:

...

After 11 hours the same black screen. Goodbye 9.2

Recently I started getting segfaults when compiling. My memory is relatively new so I tried reseating it; the problem disappeared.

Run a few passes of Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) to get some confidence that your memory is free from errors.

Then today I started getting scsi errors on one of my drives. So I copied the whole partition to another drive on the same controller, thinking I had a drive getting ready to fail; more of the same scsi errors told me the drive was not causing the problem.

Time to open the case again.

More than once, I've had a box which had intermittent problems with the covers on, but with the covers off, would run fine.

Then you should consider overheating. Make sure all the fans are turning when the system is powered and that none of the heat sinks are clogged with dust.

So today, I removed all the screws from the motherboard mounts, except for one in the top left corner, farthest from the adapter cards. That reduces stress between the adapter cards and the motherboard slots when the covers are screwed back on tight.

It doesn't take much physical stress to create poor electrical connections between adapter cards and their motherboard slots or between memory sticks and their sockets, even when they *appear* to be seated properly; it's the cause of many intermittent problems which are hard to diagnose.

They just don't make 'em like they used to.

That's in part because the demand for performance carries with it an implicit increase in mechanical sensitivity. I have a friend who can't fathom why I put up with as many flat tires as I do when cycling. Low rolling resistance demands high-pressure, thin-walled tires and tubes, and they're intrinsically more vulnerable to flatting. The same goes most other parts. Climbing speed is very weight sensitive, so there's a constant pressure on manufacturers to produce lighter components and frames. That invariably leads to using less material, which produces components susceptible to failure. And so it goes... Randall Schulz

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:10, Matt Gibson wrote:

On Monday 14 Mar 2005 02:09 am, Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

...

Recently I started getting segfaults when compiling. My memory is relatively new so I tried reseating it; the problem disappeared.

Run a few passes of Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) to get some confidence that your memory is free from errors.

Hear hear! I recently bought two 512Mb memory sticks. I bought Kingston first of all, and one of them turned out to be faulty (but I didn't figure it out for a week because it was the second stick, and I didn't fill up half a gig very often!) I had Corsair as a replacement, and and soon as it arrived, I was paranoid enough to run memtest86 on it. That went back to the seller the same day, because I came back to find several hundred errors reported. The replacement I got for that, exactly the same Corsair, is fine.

Either I was extremely unlucky, or memory's getting a lot less reliable these days. And when the usual symptom that anyone gets is that their Windows machine crashes, I wonder how many people are actually noticing?

The difference between Linux and windows is that Windows only uses the memory when needed by a program whereas Linux any excess for buffering, etc. Quite often you will find a system that runs fine under Windows falls over immediately on Linux for this reason. In my opinion whenever you add memory to a box you should run the memtest86 for at least 12 hours to ensure there are no problems. I have had sticks that only failed once or twice on the memory test in 24 hours but when running Linux the system fell over/locked up every week or so. Quite often the problem occurs when the two RAM sticks have different timings. It is best to use RAM having the same manufacturer and chips or better still only have one stick of double the capacity. -- Regards, Graham Smith ---------------------------------------------------------

It is best to use RAM having the same manufacturer and chips or better still only have one stick of double the capacity. Maybe my knowledge of memory is limited but what about this dual channel memory arrangement? I just bought an Asus A8V board that supports the dual channel memory. A coworker told me that when there are two sticks,

Graham Smith wrote: the processor can access both at the same time for improved performance. Damon Register

Matt Gibson wrote:

On Monday 14 Mar 2005 02:09 am, Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

...

Recently I started getting segfaults when compiling. My memory is relatively new so I tried reseating it; the problem disappeared.

Run a few passes of Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) to get some confidence that your memory is free from errors.

Hear hear! I recently bought two 512Mb memory sticks. I bought Kingston first of all, and one of them turned out to be faulty (but I didn't figure it out for a week because it was the second stick, and I didn't fill up half a gig very often!) I had Corsair as a replacement, and and soon as it arrived, I was paranoid enough to run memtest86 on it. That went back to the seller the same day, because I came back to find several hundred errors reported. The replacement I got for that, exactly the same Corsair, is fine.

Either I was extremely unlucky, or memory's getting a lot less reliable these days. And when the usual symptom that anyone gets is that their Windows machine crashes, I wonder how many people are actually noticing?

M

Go into a shop and buy some memory and you'll see just why it's unreliable, the typical "I've never damaged memory" guy will pick it up between 2 fingers and walk across a carpet with it, then stick it in an anti-static or static dissipative bag. In the plant where the memory is made, he'd be fired for doing just that. I've taught Engineers ESD (Elestrostatic Damage) for decades, some of whom were not at first convinced until I showed them under a microscope the sort of moonscape craters ESD make inside chips, how ESD is generated, the effect of materials and the partial damage that will not stop chips from working immediately, but over time will cause intermittents, then solid failures. Management provided me with $10,000.00 US to equip our Engineers, chip manufacturing and test Engineers in Europe with wrist-strap monitors to alert them when they weren't properly grounded as happens when the wrist band is dirty. For the most part guys in PC shops need a suit and tie or tea shirt and beard, but no knowledge of such things, so I have a bunch of bad memory sticks lying around despite the fact that I use large anti-static mats properly grounded (to the mains and buried hamradio grounds) to work on and a wrist strap connected to a (Ground Gard) monitor. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Large Computer Systems Specialist - Retired Hamradio Callsign G3VBV and Keen Private Pilot Aeroplanes, Linux, Computers and Cricket my major passions ===== LINUX USED HERE, A Microsoft-free Computing Environment ====

John Kelly wrote:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 01:16:24 +0000, Sid Boyce wrote:

...

the typical "I've never damaged memory" guy will pick it up between 2 fingers and walk across a carpet with it

At one shop, a PC "technician" told me he always handled components safely because his rubber soled shoes kept him grounded. Well, I thought, if he doesn't know the difference between an insulator vs. a conductor, I suppose he won't know much else either. So I said goodbye ...

Shocking!!! ;-)

On Monday March 14 2005 8:44 am, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

On Monday 14 March 2005 9:28 pm, James Knott wrote:

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Shocking!!! ;-)

Oh I *do* hope so .. <wicked grin> perhaps a couple of good sharp shocks might shake them out of their complacency.

And I thought you were a nice girl:-{ Rich -- Rich Matson Reno, Nv. USA

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 07:53:12AM -0500, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

On Tuesday 15 March 2005 12:34 am, C. Richard Matson wrote:

...

On Monday March 14 2005 8:44 am, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

...

On Monday 14 March 2005 9:28 pm, James Knott wrote:

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Shocking!!! ;-)

Oh I *do* hope so .. <wicked grin> perhaps a couple of good sharp shocks might shake them out of their complacency.

And I thought you were a nice girl:-{ Rich

My word, whatever gave you that idea ? <Grins> Actually, I'm a wonderful girl, in my goddess capacity.. <Huge Grin> It's dealing w/ *general* idiots that makes it most difficult to wish them happiness, as I ought, for my own sake. <sigh> Guess I still have more humanity lessons to learn <sigh> .

Any girl who thinks electrical shock is good for some of the idiots I've seen is nice in my book. I should do a new series, I've been published a million times with my tutorials and my story based on BOFH, I should make a new book though and call it rm -rf / I think that would be awesome.

We could all save a lot of time and trouble if we made idiots wear a sign. Those people who need warnings on things like 'Preporation H' to remind them it's for "external use only, don't eat it" !!

Just take off a few warning signs. You'd see a problem can solve itself.

If they wore signs we would all know better than to ask them for information of any kind, or trust them w/ dangerous items, like butter knives! <G>

Look on almost anything you buy and you will see at least one "warning to idiots" Even those silly air pillows people like Amazon put into their packages to keep things from breaking. They say they are NOT for use as floatation devices... uh, hello "here's your sign" !

=o So are you dating anyone?

Still, think of the waste .. all those poor dead lil chips who have harmed no one, their useful lives snuffed out, in a manner of speaking, before they even get started on their appointed jobs.

(and they yap at me for tossing a glass bottle into a trash bin, "materials to make that are scare and expensive !!" I guess some people think sand is a rare commodity , but only on the best beaches after Mother Nature has had one of her tantrums...

NP: Danzig - Trouble

-- j I try to stay awake and remember my name but Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 08:50:03PM -0600, Danny Sauer wrote:

On Tuesday 15 March 2005 07:45 pm, Allen wrote:

...

NP: Danzig - Trouble

Everyone loves Glenn Danzig. Right?

I don't know many who don't like him.

--Danny, wondering how someone named "Glenn" ever managed to appear evil. :)

He founded the Misfits, the best band in the World ;)

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On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 11:44:45AM -0500, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

On Monday 14 March 2005 9:28 pm, James Knott wrote:

...

John Kelly wrote:

...

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 01:16:24 +0000, Sid Boyce

wrote:

...

the typical "I've never damaged memory" guy will pick it up between 2 fingers and walk across a carpet with it

At one shop, a PC "technician" told me he always handled components safely because his rubber soled shoes kept him grounded. Well, I thought, if he doesn't know the difference between an insulator vs. a conductor, I suppose he won't know much else either. So I said goodbye ...

Shocking!!! ;-) Oh I *do* hope so .. <wicked grin> perhaps a couple of good sharp shocks might shake them out of their complacency.

I've found mild electrical shock to be a great LART. No user messes with shit after they get a few volts to bring them back from stupidity.

-- j I promise, I'm looking for another set of equally interesting song lyrics to go here. But so far... well, research continues til my ears bleed, I s'pose...

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

If enough of us tackle such people, perhaps they'll take notice. I've I doubt it. ignorance is pretty widespread and some seem to believe

Sid Boyce wrote: that ignorance is bliss.

educate both and keep staff honest at least when in view. Perhaps that would impact sales. The motherboard manufacturers pre-package their you must be from another planet :-) While I agree with you 100 percent, I guess I must also be cynical. The world is full of people who don't like rules and think they are for fanatics. Just look at the countless discussions in this very list from people who top post and get angry if you try to correct them.

At my company we have to take periodic training for ESD handling. Some years ago we had 3M give us a presentation on ESD and it was very interesting. Using just ordinary mosfets, he showed us how the gate current increased after static exposure. Then he did the same demo with the fet in an antistatic bag (their brand, of course) and showed us how the gate current was still the same. Damon Register

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 07:41, Sid Boyce wrote:

...

I think 3M is the largest if not the only producer. Antistatic materials will not let static build up, static dissipative materials will disperse the static over its area, so the volts/m at measured is less. In my demos, I used a static meter with different materials to make the point. Your ordinary plastic bags will hold static, the black bags and the clear ones with black (carbon) stripes are antistatic, the orange ones are static dissipative and the static will decay over time, so the reading from an antistatic bag should be zero even when you rub them on carpet tiles or your clothing. Back in the 1970's a bank was experiencing corruptions on one of their machines, our Engineers and Specialists would run extensive tests, scope for hours and find no problems, it only happened when she was operating and they were watching perplexed, then the specialist asked the operator if she was wearing nylon underwear, blushing she asked why, he explained and she said she did, problem solved. Off Topic, then there was the one of the well endowed young lady whose machine kept inserting extra characters, many hours of Engineers's and Specialist's time expended, they decided to watch while she typed, oops, appendages other than fingers were occasionally hitting keys, another one bit the dust. Regards Sid.

It looks like you have had some fun on the job at times. Maybe frustrating when first finding the problem but then fun when the problem was solved. A co-worker of mine was having a problem trying to find out why a server was running so slow one time, a VAX/VMS system. Turns out someone had set something on the system keyboard and the key repeat was going bonkers. The sysadmin rarely used the system keyboard. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 * Only reply to the list please* "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge

Hans Witvliet wrote:

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 13:51, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

It looks like you have had some fun on the job at times. Maybe frustrating when first finding the problem but then fun when the problem was solved.

A co-worker of mine was having a problem trying to find out why a server was running so slow one time, a VAX/VMS system. Turns out someone had set something on the system keyboard and the key repeat was going bonkers. The sysadmin rarely used the system keyboard.

It can be worse (not even from BOFH) College of mine was complaining that he didn't get any response anymore from a vax-780. He phoned the helpdesk several times, but they didn't observe any different system behaviour. An hour later the "problem" was found: The silly sod had pressed the "hold-screen-key" .....

Since then my favourite acronym is "pebkac" Or Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Hans

BEFH (E=Engineer). Big system down problem in Vienna, the worldwide Tech Support guy from the States on site, thinking aloud, he said it could be a driver card or cable, he left the computer room for a few minutes, returning to see Herr Schmirder, the site Engineer, cutter in hand and a ribbon cable severed saying he was remaking the connections - swift trip to the toolbox for a hammer, he chased him out of the computer room and whenever he poked his head around the door, out came the hammer and the term schmirderized was born. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Large Computer Systems Specialist - Retired Hamradio Callsign G3VBV and Keen Private Pilot Aeroplanes, Linux, Computers and Cricket my major passions ===== LINUX USED HERE, A Microsoft-free Computing Environment ====