RE: [gentoo-desktop] X freezing?

[A. Gabriel W. Daleson]

Further adventures:

	After wiping and reinstalling from scratch, the freeze still occurs.
I seem to have cut down on the frequency, though; I was able to get a good
several hours of running time before the lockup. I also tried immediately to
restart X once the computer came back up, and the next freeze was very
quick.
	This confuses me - that pattern makes me think this is heat, but
under Windows I can play any game I want for a good long time and not have
the system overheat. I've been careful to include the ACPI drivers in my
kernel, and if I understand correctly, that should make sure overheating
doesn't occur, more or less.
	It's also not related to the computer's workload. I ran glxgears and
several applications without any hitches - when the crash finally occurred,
it was at relatively low system load.

	As far as the scope of the crash, it's total. I tried pinging the
machine after it froze, and got nothing back, which also scratches the
remote access idea.

	I also threw in a Fedora Core 2 install, just to see what happened,
and I didn't get a crash. I can't put too much stock in that, given the long
running time I got here, but I'm also wondering what might happen if I put a
recent version of XFree86 on this thing instead of X.org's server.

	The threading idea is also something I've poked at: the laptop has a
Pentium 4, and I've seen the HyperThreading or whatever it's called cause
some hell, at least under Windows.
	I'm running the development-sources, and I've tried both with and
without SMP in the kernel - and I was also sure to disable the APIC option
mentioned earlier in this thread. The crash still occurred.

	Right now what I'm going to try and do is use X.org 6.8.0 and the
kernel radeon driver with DRM.

	Another idea - might this be some odd option in the kernel that's
causing this? I've seen lots of xorg.conf files posted in the forums for
Inspiron XPS laptops, but I don't have a kernel .config to test against.

	And, thank you again for all the suggestions.

		Gabe.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stuart Stegall [mailto:stuart@×××××××××××××.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:43 PM
> To: 'Paul de Vrieze'; gentoo-desktop@l.g.o
> Subject: RE: [gentoo-desktop] X freezing?
>
> To add further fun to this equation, Dell laptops have notoriously
> broken bios' and is probably part of the problem.  I use an Inspiron
> 1100 and depending on what version of X Windows I wish to
> use, I have to
> flash a particular bios (and 6.8.1 is currently not working with any
> version).
>
> Thanks,
> Stuart
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul de Vrieze [mailto:pauldv@g.o]
> > Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 4:39 AM
> > To: gentoo-desktop@l.g.o
> > Subject: Re: [gentoo-desktop] X freezing?
> >
> >
> > On Monday 25 October 2004 00:56, A. Gabriel W. Daleson wrote:
> > >  Hm. I've emerged openoffice already, and also given it
> > long lists of
> > > other packages to merge, both while X doesn't run. It
> > doesn't seem to
> > > be related to the machine load in the that sense.
> > >
> > >  Also on this note, I'm dual booting the system - Windows seems to
> > > have no trouble with it at all, and every hardware check I've run
> > > comes out fine. If it's a hardware problem, it's a real
> subtle one.
> >
> > Windows behaviour is normally not very good in detecting
> > broken hardware.
> > Windows is rather conservative in it's use of instructions
> > (it must run
> > on the whole range, while a gentoo system doesn't need to).
> > Further there
> > are normally enough other sources of crashes to make it hard
> > to see that
> > a crash is hardware related.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > ps. Do note that the X drivers are not entirely bugfree
> > either, and can
> > and will lock up your screen, keyboard and mouse. Remote access is
> > normally still possible.
> >
> > pps. There is another good source of seemingly random
> > crashes, and that
> > has to do with race conditions and other thread related issues.
> > Programming safely for multiple threads is difficult.
> > Especially if those
> > threads are executed on more than one processor.
> >
> > The causes of such behaviour could be anywhere. Given that
> > kde is normally
> > stable on multiprocessor systems I would certainly not exclude the
> > mainboard or graphics card bioses. (Yes, graphic cards have a
> > bios too,
> > and it can normally be updated)
> >
> > --
> > Paul de Vrieze
> > Gentoo Developer
> > Mail: pauldv@g.o
> > Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
> >
>
>
>
> --
> gentoo-desktop@g.o mailing list
>


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