Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@×××.de>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] Any way of tracing kernel freezes?
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:48:02
Message-Id: 20130613134746.GA3283@nukleus.lan
1 Hello list,
2
3 recently my netbook got the habit of freezing sporadically. It happens
4 apparently out of the blue. Until now I thought it might have something
5 to do with audio playback, because I remember always having music
6 playing when it happens. But just now it happened without music:
7
8 One second I was surfing along, the other second -- dead. While I was
9 already 3 hours in of a 4-hour emerge. :-(
10
11 If music is playing at a freeze, the last bit of it (less than a
12 second's worth) is looped indefinitely. The screen output is still
13 there, but there is no reaction to any input, not even sysrequests.
14 I also tried SSHing in without success.
15
16 I have no experience with Kernel debugging. Is there any possibility at
17 all of finding out what the problem is? Perhaps enable some log output?
18 Being a netbook, there is no serial port (which I don't have the means
19 to connect to anyway). In the hopes that the problem started with a 3.9
20 kernel, I am building a 3.8.13 again (using kernel.org archives).
21
22
23 I ran a memtest a few months back and stopped it after 8 successful
24 passes. I might try that again as soon as I find out how¹, but I'd
25 think that a corrupt memory would cause something different than a full
26 freeze.
27
28 I'm running a 64 bit kernel and 32 bit userland with march=atom. I'd
29 really hate to find out the machine has a hardware problem, it's a very
30 neat piece of silicon with a great screen. Who cares that the 6.5 Watt
31 CPU is a tad slow. It's perfect for a console environment. :-)
32
33
34 ¹ I have the in-kernel memtest enabled, so I tried booting it with the
35 "memtest" option right after the last freeze happened. But all I got
36 was a black screen with blinking cursor.
37 --
38 Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
39 Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service.
40
41 The circle is the parallel to the dot.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Any way of tracing kernel freezes? Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.com>