[gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm finding
that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo has crashed at fairly
inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and not once has it crashed
meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a directory, and it totally
froze, and then the second time I was unzipping a bzipped archive of the
latest kernel sources and it came to a dead halt. I had to hard reboot the
machine, it wasn't fun. I'm starting to get worried, especially since if it
can't handle a little tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge anything.
I'm sure you'll be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time I
boot gentoo. I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those
aren't the problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space (talking gigs
here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's something really obvious
that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand how it could just stop. Even
the normal clicking associated with the processor "thinking" just halts.
Isn't that weird?

-Peter

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Dustin C. Hatch]

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I have been having that problem for quite some time now.  It was really
bad when I upgraded to 2.6.21.  I downgraded back to 2.6.20-r4 and I
haven't had near the problems.  I am not sure what it is, but you aren't
the only one with that problem.

Peter Davoust wrote:
> Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm
> finding that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo has
> crashed at fairly inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and
> not once has it crashed meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a
> directory, and it totally froze, and then the second time I was
> unzipping a bzipped archive of the latest kernel sources and it came
> to a dead halt. I had to hard reboot the machine, it wasn't fun. I'm
> starting to get worried, especially since if it can't handle a little
> tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge anything. I'm sure you'll
> be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time I boot
> gentoo. I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those
> aren't the problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space
> (talking gigs here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's
> something really obvious that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand
> how it could just stop. Even the normal clicking associated with the
> processor "thinking" just halts. Isn't that weird?
>
> -Peter

-- 
Dustin C. Hatch
http://www.dchweb.com


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Barry.SCHWARTZ]

> Peter Davoust wrote:
> Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm
> finding that gentoo is crashing on me! ...


"Dustin C. Hatch" <admiralnemo@dchweb.com> skribis:
> I have been having that problem for quite some time now.  It was really
> bad when I upgraded to 2.6.21.  I downgraded back to 2.6.20-r4 and I
> haven't had near the problems.  I am not sure what it is, but you aren't
> the only one with that problem.

I quit using Gentoo kernels on my AMD64 some while ago, after
determining that with Gentoo kernels bad things happened with some
kernels, while with vanilla kernels those bad things happened with
none of the kernels. I don't know if my situation is related to this
latest.

I use the Gentoo kernel on x86 (my wife's computer) without any
problems.

-- 
Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
              Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Naga]

On Monday 14 May 2007 07.25.46 Dustin C. Hatch wrote:
> Peter Davoust wrote:

I would check my memory, only time I've had this kind problem has been with 
faulty memory.
-- 
Naga
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Ok, I'll just unzip it on another partition and compile as quickly as
possible I guess. It's pretty much a pain. Just hope it let's me compile
before it crashes again.

On 5/14/07, Barry.SCHWARTZ@chemoelectric.org <
Barry.SCHWARTZ@chemoelectric.org> wrote:
>
> > Peter Davoust wrote:
> > Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm
> > finding that gentoo is crashing on me! ...
>
>
> "Dustin C. Hatch" <admiralnemo@dchweb.com> skribis:
> > I have been having that problem for quite some time now.  It was really
> > bad when I upgraded to 2.6.21.  I downgraded back to 2.6.20-r4 and I
> > haven't had near the problems.  I am not sure what it is, but you aren't
> > the only one with that problem.
>
> I quit using Gentoo kernels on my AMD64 some while ago, after
> determining that with Gentoo kernels bad things happened with some
> kernels, while with vanilla kernels those bad things happened with
> none of the kernels. I don't know if my situation is related to this
> latest.
>
> I use the Gentoo kernel on x86 (my wife's computer) without any
> problems.
>
> --
> Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
>               Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
> 'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
> (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Wil Reichert]

On 5/13/07, Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm finding
> that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo has crashed at fairly
> inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and not once has it crashed
> meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a directory, and it totally
> froze, and then the second time I was unzipping a bzipped archive of the
> latest kernel sources and it came to a dead halt. I had to hard reboot the
> machine, it wasn't fun. I'm starting to get worried, especially since if it
> can't handle a little tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge anything.
> I'm sure you'll be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time I
> boot gentoo. I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those
> aren't the problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space (talking gigs
> here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's something really obvious
> that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand how it could just stop. Even
> the normal clicking associated with the processor "thinking" just halts.
> Isn't that weird?

Did this just start when you loaded Gentoo?  For the sake of
troubleshooting I'd start with taking Gentoo out of the loop and
verifying your hardware is not the problem.  Memtest86, cpuburn, and
bonnie++ from a live cd should give you a decent sanity test.  From
there look at your kernel then compiler flags.  You also may want to
consider heat as well since the weather in most places is starting to
warm up this time of year.

Wil
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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I have Vista on this machine too, and I'm pretty sure that it would wig out
if it detected memory errors, and it hasn't been freezing... any more than
usual, that is. Actually, come to think of it, I would wig out if I found
memory errors in my laptop, so we're going to hope it's not that.

On 5/14/07, Naga <nagatoro@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Monday 14 May 2007 07.25.46 Dustin C. Hatch wrote:
> > Peter Davoust wrote:
>
> I would check my memory, only time I've had this kind problem has been
> with
> faulty memory.
> --
> Naga
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop and
there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?), or anything
with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this thing.
Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to kill
anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first thing that
came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods of time with no
issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the morning and see what it
does.

On 5/14/07, Wil Reichert <wil.reichert@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/13/07, Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm
> finding
> > that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo has crashed at
> fairly
> > inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and not once has it
> crashed
> > meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a directory, and it totally
> > froze, and then the second time I was unzipping a bzipped archive of the
> > latest kernel sources and it came to a dead halt. I had to hard reboot
> the
> > machine, it wasn't fun. I'm starting to get worried, especially since if
> it
> > can't handle a little tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge
> anything.
> > I'm sure you'll be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time
> I
> > boot gentoo. I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those
> > aren't the problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space (talking
> gigs
> > here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's something really
> obvious
> > that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand how it could just stop.
> Even
> > the normal clicking associated with the processor "thinking" just halts.
> > Isn't that weird?
>
> Did this just start when you loaded Gentoo?  For the sake of
> troubleshooting I'd start with taking Gentoo out of the loop and
> verifying your hardware is not the problem.  Memtest86, cpuburn, and
> bonnie++ from a live cd should give you a decent sanity test.  From
> there look at your kernel then compiler flags.  You also may want to
> consider heat as well since the weather in most places is starting to
> warm up this time of year.
>
> Wil
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Florian D.]

Hello,
from your bug report, it is unclear if your are running kde/gnome or whatever under X-server or not.
If the latter is the case, try to boot without X (press i during boot and omit xdm) and try your
unzip commands in a console. If that works, you know your X-config is faulty. Then try to turn off
all hardware acceleration options and disable dri and drm modules in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
If you have also crashes in a normal console without X, I think your hardware is broken. I know that
your notebook is new, but also new notebooks can be faulty.
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[dustin]

On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:04:30AM -0400, Peter Davoust wrote:
>    Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop
>    and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?), or
>    anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
>    thing. Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to
>    kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
>    thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods
>    of time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the
>    morning and see what it does.

Any new laptop should have the hardware smarts not to smoke itself, or
something really is broken.  It may shut down "unexpectedly" (which I
also consider a design bug), but actually causing damage is unlikely.

That said, this really sounds like a RAM problem, so I would run
memtest86 first.  Memtest86 has zero chance of smoking any system that
has passed a factory QA check.

I had a Gentoo system (a server) that pretty much ran (to be honest, it
was a heavily used database server that stayed up for a good 3 months in
this state).  However, its clock was skewed something like 10m/hour (I
now think this was due to lost ticks during processing of memory
faults).

I tried all the various kernel flags, largemem, etc., only to find out
that the problem was (as others on this thread have posted) incompatible
RAM.  I point this out only to say that bad RAM can cause *very* unusual
problems (not just the segfaults you'd expect), and to say that lots of
complex operations (like Vista, for example) can continue to run just
fine in such a broken environment.

Dustin
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Ok, so I compiled a new kernel, and it seemed to work. I booted the new
kernel, I was able to unzip and install dhcpcd, ndiswrapper, wireless-tools,
and cab extract. Then, once the wireless was working, I tried emerge
--search dhcpcd, because gentoo apparently doesn't like my manually
configured dhcpcd.... CRASH! I ran memtest86+, as suggested, and it got to
at least 30% without a failure. I'll try it again, but at least 30% of my
memory is in tact. I'll try to emerge some other things, and see how it
goes.

-Peter

On 5/14/07, dustin@v.igoro.us <dustin@v.igoro.us> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:04:30AM -0400, Peter Davoust wrote:
> >    Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop
> >    and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?), or
> >    anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
> >    thing. Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to
> >    kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
> >    thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods
> >    of time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the
> >    morning and see what it does.
>
> Any new laptop should have the hardware smarts not to smoke itself, or
> something really is broken.  It may shut down "unexpectedly" (which I
> also consider a design bug), but actually causing damage is unlikely.
>
> That said, this really sounds like a RAM problem, so I would run
> memtest86 first.  Memtest86 has zero chance of smoking any system that
> has passed a factory QA check.
>
> I had a Gentoo system (a server) that pretty much ran (to be honest, it
> was a heavily used database server that stayed up for a good 3 months in
> this state).  However, its clock was skewed something like 10m/hour (I
> now think this was due to lost ticks during processing of memory
> faults).
>
> I tried all the various kernel flags, largemem, etc., only to find out
> that the problem was (as others on this thread have posted) incompatible
> RAM.  I point this out only to say that bad RAM can cause *very* unusual
> problems (not just the segfaults you'd expect), and to say that lots of
> complex operations (like Vista, for example) can continue to run just
> fine in such a broken environment.
>
> Dustin
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Antoine Martin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Peter Davoust wrote:
> Ok, so I compiled a new kernel, and it seemed to work. I booted the new
> kernel, I was able to unzip and install dhcpcd, ndiswrapper,
> wireless-tools, and cab extract. Then, once the wireless was working, I
> tried emerge --search dhcpcd, because gentoo apparently doesn't like my
> manually configured dhcpcd.... CRASH!
What exactly do you mean by crash?
complete system lockup? oops on screen?
Does it happen with X turned off?

> I ran memtest86+, as suggested,
> and it got to at least 30% without a failure. I'll try it again, but at
> least 30% of my memory is in tact.
You are mis-reading memtest, it means 30% of all the tests, but each
test does go through all the ram at least once, so your ram is probably
ok as far as memtest is concerned. Note that this may not be enough to
trigger your kind of problems - which may have something to do with
system load or disk, etc.

> I'll try to emerge some other things,
> and see how it goes.
Really sounds like a hardware problem.

Antoine
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-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Antoine Martin]

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Hash: SHA512

Peter Davoust wrote:
> Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop
> and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?)
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/
>, or
> anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
> thing.
Well, if you want to get to the bottom of things, you may have to.
And in fact, if the laptop is under warranty, you are better off finding
out if it is broken now rather than later.
Note: cpuburn doesn't burn your cpu (unless your laptop's design is
flawed) and it is quite likely to cause a crash if there is a problem
with your system.

> Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to
> kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
> thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods of
> time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the
> morning and see what it does.
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gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.

-Peter

On 5/14/07, Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA512
>
> Peter Davoust wrote:
> > Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop
> > and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?)
> http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/
> >, or
> > anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
> > thing.
> Well, if you want to get to the bottom of things, you may have to.
> And in fact, if the laptop is under warranty, you are better off finding
> out if it is broken now rather than later.
> Note: cpuburn doesn't burn your cpu (unless your laptop's design is
> flawed) and it is quite likely to cause a crash if there is a problem
> with your system.
>
> > Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to
> > kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
> > thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods of
> > time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the
> > morning and see what it does.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFGSRC1GK2zHPGK1rsRCsflAJ0bF0EmeIzDdPkxtokXzfRn6tGgYQCfZsTj
> y8Hb2SNLxD6caVPOUP2M39c=
> =Uo6k
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Actually, one thing I probably should mention is that it hasn't locked up
while running anything GUI yet. Maybe that's just luck of the draw, but it
may be important. Who knows. And to answer your previous question, by crash
I mean it locks up completely. The mouse driver operates for a few seconds,
but after that it's frozen entirely. Not even ctrl+atl+del does it. You
know, the other thing that makes me curious about it being a hardware glitch
is that it does this with gdm, I think (see previous thread: "GDM hates
me"). Well, the last time it locked up was while running emerge --sync,
which I'm running now with no apparent problems... yet.

-Peter

On 5/14/07, Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago)
> for hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run
> the computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
>
> -Peter
>
> On 5/14/07, Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA512
> >
> > Peter Davoust wrote:
> > > Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop
> > > and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?)
> > http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/
> > >, or
> > > anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
> > > thing.
> > Well, if you want to get to the bottom of things, you may have to.
> > And in fact, if the laptop is under warranty, you are better off finding
> > out if it is broken now rather than later.
> > Note: cpuburn doesn't burn your cpu (unless your laptop's design is
> > flawed) and it is quite likely to cause a crash if there is a problem
> > with your system.
> >
> > > Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to
> > > kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
> > > thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods
> > of
> > > time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the
> > > morning and see what it does.
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
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> > =Uo6k
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > --
> > gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> >
> >
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Barry.SCHWARTZ]

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Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> skribis:
> Well, the last time it locked up was while running emerge --sync,
> which I'm running now with no apparent problems... yet.

I'm no expert, but locking up during syncing seems to me the sort of
thing a screwball kernel might do. I can't explain bzip troubles as
easily that way, but is it just that the system has frozen up while a
bzip was going on?


-- 
Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
              Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

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Well, I suppose it might have been because it was bzipping the second time
(I'm not to familiar with the way portage syncs, I assume it as un-bzipping
an archive of files). I've been running it for a few hours how, non stop,
emerging things left and right plus an emerge --sync, and it hasn't locked
up, now this, as I described before, is running in Gnome. I don't know. It's
weird.

On 5/14/07, Barry.SCHWARTZ@chemoelectric.org <
Barry.SCHWARTZ@chemoelectric.org> wrote:
>
> Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> skribis:
> > Well, the last time it locked up was while running emerge --sync,
> > which I'm running now with no apparent problems... yet.
>
> I'm no expert, but locking up during syncing seems to me the sort of
> thing a screwball kernel might do. I can't explain bzip troubles as
> easily that way, but is it just that the system has frozen up while a
> bzip was going on?
>
>
> --
> Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
>               Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
> 'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
> (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Barry.SCHWARTZ]

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Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Well, I suppose it might have been because it was bzipping the second time
>  (I'm not to familiar with the way portage syncs, I assume it as un-bzipping
>  an archive of files).

I'm thinking of all the networking that is involved in syncing, and
thus all the kernel code that gets run then.


-- 
Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
              Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Antoine Martin]

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Barry.SCHWARTZ@chemoelectric.org wrote:
> Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> skribis:
>> Well, the last time it locked up was while running emerge --sync,
>> which I'm running now with no apparent problems... yet.
> 
> I'm no expert, but locking up during syncing seems to me the sort of
> thing a screwball kernel might do. I can't explain bzip troubles as
> easily that way, but is it just that the system has frozen up while a
> bzip was going on?
I've had bzip2 problems with overheating laptop cpus before.
Also gcc would mis-compile and tell you about it.

Antoine

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Antoine Martin]

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Peter Davoust wrote:
> Actually, one thing I probably should mention is that it hasn't locked
> up while running anything GUI yet. Maybe that's just luck of the draw,
> but it may be important. Who knows. And to answer your previous
> question, by crash I mean it locks up completely. The mouse driver
> operates for a few seconds, but after that it's frozen entirely.
Quite odd. Could be interrupt related, have you tried booting with
"noapic" and/or "acpi=off"?

> Not
> even ctrl+atl+del does it. You know, the other thing that makes me
> curious about it being a hardware glitch is that it does this with gdm,
> I think (see previous thread: "GDM hates me"). Well, the last time it
> locked up was while running emerge --sync, which I'm running now with no
> apparent problems... yet.
> 
> -Peter
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gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Tue, 15 May 2007 08:57:01 -0400
"Peter Davoust" <worldgnat@gmail.com> a écrit:

> Ok, I thought I had turned it to plain text, but gmail is obsessive
> about these things. Ok, so I haven't tried with acpi off. 

My brother's computer (intel dual core, as far as I remember) used to hang up randomly when used with acpi. He also had a problem with the preemption option inkernel, leading to hang-ups. But those issues had nothing to do with loading X.

I'll have a glance at gmail's options next time I use the web interface; sorry for the inconvenience if the [ originally text ] message gets blown as html.
--
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Hoff]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1724 bytes --]

I can't even get 2.6.21 to compile. I was getting unhappy about that, but perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way?


----- Original Message ----
From: Dustin C. Hatch <admiralnemo@dchweb.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 10:25:46 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?




  
  

I have been having that problem for quite some
time now.  It was really bad when I upgraded to 2.6.21.  I downgraded
back to 2.6.20-r4 and I haven't had near the problems.  I am not sure
what it is, but you aren't the only one with that problem.



Peter Davoust wrote:
Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread,
and now I'm finding that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo
has crashed at fairly inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and
not once has it crashed meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a
directory, and it totally froze, and then the second time I was
unzipping a bzipped archive of the latest kernel sources and it came to
a dead halt. I had to hard reboot the machine, it wasn't fun. I'm
starting to get worried, especially since if it can't handle a little
tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge anything. I'm sure you'll
be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time I boot gentoo.
I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those aren't the
problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space (talking gigs
here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's something really
obvious that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand how it could just
stop. Even the normal clicking associated with the processor "thinking"
just halts. Isn't that weird? 

  

-Peter




-- 
Dustin C. Hatch
http://www.dchweb.com





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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Ok, I thought I had turned it to plain text, but gmail is obsessive
about these things. Ok, so I haven't tried with acpi off. One
interesting development is that I've been trying to get my nvidia
graphics card working (no luck, by the way), and when I logon, startx
(doesn't work), then kill x, edit the config and try to start it
again, it crashes, sure thing. So if nothing else that establishes a
point where it will definately crash and I can reproduce the error.
Other than that I'm clueless.

On 5/15/07, Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA512
>
> Peter Davoust wrote:
> > Actually, one thing I probably should mention is that it hasn't locked
> > up while running anything GUI yet. Maybe that's just luck of the draw,
> > but it may be important. Who knows. And to answer your previous
> > question, by crash I mean it locks up completely. The mouse driver
> > operates for a few seconds, but after that it's frozen entirely.
> Quite odd. Could be interrupt related, have you tried booting with
> "noapic" and/or "acpi=off"?
>
> > Not
> > even ctrl+atl+del does it. You know, the other thing that makes me
> > curious about it being a hardware glitch is that it does this with gdm,
> > I think (see previous thread: "GDM hates me"). Well, the last time it
> > locked up was while running emerge --sync, which I'm running now with no
> > apparent problems... yet.
> >
> > -Peter
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> q6n4iUvbxwNAYxOddALMUxQ=
> =mH8T
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Cool, so it isn't hardware (hopefully). How to I downgrade my kernel?

-Peter

On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> I can't even get 2.6.21 to compile. I was getting unhappy about that, but
> perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Dustin C. Hatch <admiralnemo@dchweb.com>
> To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
> Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 10:25:46 PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
>
>  I have been having that problem for quite some time now.  It was really bad
> when I upgraded to 2.6.21.  I downgraded back to 2.6.20-r4 and I haven't had
> near the problems.  I am not sure what it is, but you aren't the only one
> with that problem.
>
>  Peter Davoust wrote:
> Ok, I just conquered my gdm issues in a previous thread, and now I'm finding
> that gentoo is crashing on me! Twice so far, gentoo has crashed at fairly
> inappropriate times. I've used gentoo before, and not once has it crashed
> meaninglessly. First, I think I was listing a directory, and it totally
> froze, and then the second time I was unzipping a bzipped archive of the
> latest kernel sources and it came to a dead halt. I had to hard reboot the
> machine, it wasn't fun. I'm starting to get worried, especially since if it
> can't handle a little tar.bz2 file, then it certainly can't emerge anything.
> I'm sure you'll be wanting some logs, and I'll get them to you next time I
> boot gentoo. I've got 2 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor, so those
> aren't the problem, and my hard drive has plenty of free space (talking gigs
> here), so that's not it either. It sounds like it's something really obvious
> that I'm overlooking, but I don't understand how it could just stop. Even
> the normal clicking associated with the processor "thinking" just halts.
> Isn't that weird?
>
>  -Peter
>
>  --
> Dustin C. Hatch
> http://www.dchweb.com
>
>
>
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Hoff]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2953 bytes --]

Just because Memtest86 went 30% without failure does not mean your RAM is 30% OK. It should run for at least a full loop, and I typically run it for at least 2 loops (though only once have I seen a system suddenly start spewing errors it didn't have during the first loop, and I've run it on a lot of systems). It does take a while, so you probably don't want to sit around watching it. I usually let it run overnight while I sleep.


----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 2:08:42 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

Ok, so I compiled a new kernel, and it seemed to work. I booted the new kernel, I was able to unzip and install dhcpcd, ndiswrapper, wireless-tools, and cab extract. Then, once the wireless was working, I tried emerge --search dhcpcd, because gentoo apparently doesn't like my manually configured dhcpcd.... CRASH! I ran memtest86+, as suggested, and it got to at least 30% without a failure. I'll try it again, but at least 30% of my memory is in tact. I'll try to emerge some other things, and see how it goes. 


-Peter

On 5/14/07, dustin@v.igoro.us <dustin@v.igoro.us> wrote:
On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 02:04:30AM -0400, Peter Davoust wrote:
>    Ok, first, while I appreciate your advice, this is a brand new laptop

>    and there's no way I'm running bonnie++ (that's prime95, right?), or
>    anything with the words "cpu" and "burn" in the same sentence on this
>    thing. Memtest86 might be an option as long as it has no potential to

>    kill anything. I agree, it could be the heat, and that was the first
>    thing that came to my mind, but Vista boots and runs for long periods
>    of time with no issues. I'll check it out with the new kernel in the

>    morning and see what it does.

Any new laptop should have the hardware smarts not to smoke itself, or
something really is broken.  It may shut down "unexpectedly" (which I
also consider a design bug), but actually causing damage is unlikely.


That said, this really sounds like a RAM problem, so I would run
memtest86 first.  Memtest86 has zero chance of smoking any system that
has passed a factory QA check.

I had a Gentoo system (a server) that pretty much ran (to be honest, it

was a heavily used database server that stayed up for a good 3 months in
this state).  However, its clock was skewed something like 10m/hour (I
now think this was due to lost ticks during processing of memory

faults).

I tried all the various kernel flags, largemem, etc., only to find out
that the problem was (as others on this thread have posted) incompatible
RAM.  I point this out only to say that bad RAM can cause *very* unusual

problems (not just the segfaults you'd expect), and to say that lots of
complex operations (like Vista, for example) can continue to run just
fine in such a broken environment.

Dustin
--

gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list








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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Bernhard Auzinger]

Am Dienstag 15 Mai 2007 schrieb Peter Hoff:
> I can't even get 2.6.21 to compile. I was getting unhappy about that, but
> perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way?

My suggestion is to boot without X, without loading the graphic driver module 
(nvidia, ati) and without any other driver that is not needed for basic 
functionality (dvb, bttv, alsa, usb . . .). Maybe you should try not to load 
the network driver too. If it is not the heat, you could have some interrupt 
issues. A while ago, with my old P3, I had a similar problem. My problem was 
that my network-controller and my soundcard didn't like to share an interrupt 
together :) and the system hung up very often. For me it was unreproduceable, 
what caused my problems, but finally I got behind it by testing each 
component step by step.

So don't become desperate. Try everything you have in your mind. Sometimes the 
least promising possibility solves the problem

rgds
Bernhard
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Hoff]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2593 bytes --]



----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible? Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee. So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 
10.2 would have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the computer harder, but that doesn't quite click. 

-Peter




You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).

As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to replace them yourself anyway.

More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can ruin your hardware by running them.







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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Now wait a minute, not everyone has $100k to spend on a brand new
laptop. I'm a student, and I have a single computer to last me through
two years of highschool and and at least a few years of college, and
there's no way I'm going to screw up my computer without some
insurance, ok? Before I run anything on this machine, I'm going to
make sure that I'm still under warrantee, whether the parts are user
servicable or not. Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.

On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
memory's chill. Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
(enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
"downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.

I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.

-Peter

On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
> To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
>
> I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
> hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
> computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
>
> -Peter
>
>
>
> You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your
> hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the
> address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine
> which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually
> verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).
>
> As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically
> considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of
> those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to
> replace them yourself anyway.
>
> More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all
> vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical
> device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I
> used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at
> $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out
> none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising
> number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the
> original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding
> (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so
> paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can
> ruin your hardware by running them.
>
>
>
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Bob Sanders]

Peter Davoust, mused, then expounded:
> Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
> choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.
>

Computers are routinely tested at the design stage to run full load 
from a temperature range of 0F to 120F.  If you're concerned about heat,
insure there is at least 1" of air space between the bottom of the
case and the surface it's on - prop it up.  It'll be fine.
 
> On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
> and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
> get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
> memory's chill. 

Memtest will only find bit errors.  It's not able to test much other
than that.  It's pretty poor at finding memory problems that exist at
the bonderies of the dimm.  The easist way to do that is, if it's
possible on your laptop, is to swap the dimms.  If the problem moves
or occurs much, much sooner, then it's a dimm issue.  If it doesn't
change, then run only one dimm at a time and try again.  That would
eliminate the memory as the cause of the problem.

> Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
> (enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
> of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
> starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
> portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
> sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
> "downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.
>

No it sounds like a flakey Gfx driver.  Try running a later or earlier
driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
a different version of Xorg.

And if it is a third party driver, try running just the 2D Xorg variant
and see if the issue still occurs.

Also, it would help us a bit if the specs of your laptop - chipset, etc.
were given. 

And FWIW - our corp spam filter thinks your email may be spam.  So there
still seems to be a formatting issue.

Thanks,

Bob
-  
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Wil Reichert]

> Now wait a minute, not everyone has $100k to spend on a brand new
> laptop. I'm a student, and I have a single computer to last me through
> two years of highschool and and at least a few years of college, and
> there's no way I'm going to screw up my computer without some
> insurance, ok? Before I run anything on this machine, I'm going to
> make sure that I'm still under warrantee, whether the parts are user
> servicable or not. Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
> choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.
Keep in mind the programs mentioned are not supposed to break your
hardware but to discover if its already got problems.  Yes, they do
put stress on various components, but thats the entire point - a lot
of issues don't show themselves under 'normal' usage.

> On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
> and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
> get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
> memory's chill. Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
> (enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
> of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
> starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
> portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
> sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
> "downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.
Try 'badblocks' from a livecd.  Its got a read-only mode which will
not harm your existing data.  This is sounding more and more like a
kernel issue.  You haven't mentioned the specs on your laptop, but its
a recent core 2 model, you'll find its devices are poorly supported in
anything less that 2.6.19 / 2.6.20.

Wil

>
> I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
> this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
> it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.
>
> -Peter
>
> On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
> > To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
> > Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
> > Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
> >
> > I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> > components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> > the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> > makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> > recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> > what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> > violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> > Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> > question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> > and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> > So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> > have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
> > hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
> > computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
> >
> > -Peter
> >
> >
> >
> > You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your
> > hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the
> > address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine
> > which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually
> > verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).
> >
> > As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically
> > considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of
> > those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to
> > replace them yourself anyway.
> >
> > More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all
> > vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical
> > device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I
> > used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at
> > $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out
> > none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising
> > number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the
> > original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding
> > (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so
> > paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can
> > ruin your hardware by running them.
> >
> >
> >
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Gentoo crashing?

[Duncan]

"Peter Davoust" <worldgnat@gmail.com> posted
7c08b4dd0705150848v7736297p2499585046f2772d@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Tue, 15 May 2007 11:48:41 -0400:

> I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
> this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
> it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.

Thanks. (^_^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Antoine Martin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

>> Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
>> (enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
>> of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
>> starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
>> portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
>> sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
>> "downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.
>>
> 
> No it sounds like a flakey Gfx driver.
I second that.

>  Try running a later or earlier
> driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
> a different version of Xorg.
IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.

Antoine
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Hoff]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6129 bytes --]

Yes, thinking that running a software based test is going to damage your hardware is silly. Maybe 20 years ago that was possible, but on modern hardware the very idea is absurd. You really should run all of the tests recommended earlier in this thread.

I don't think you understand what I mean by a "loop" in Memtest. Unless you have run all of the tests at least once, you have not done a loop (there are 8, IIRC). The amount of time you ran it for is irrelevant, as that's totally system dependent. I've had systems with 32M take 3 hours to complete a loop, and I've had systems with 1G do it in less than 45 minutes. Processor type and speed, RAM type and speed, memory controller, system bus... all of these are factors in how long it takes to complete a Memtest loop. BTW, Memtest tells you how many loops it has completed, and it automatically starts over on the first test once it completes the last one.

As for not wanting to put your fingers on the hardware, that's justifiable, especially if you aren't prepared to protect your equipment from electrostatic discharge. But, warranty questions can't be answered here, you'd have to talk to the vendor you got it from. I'm just telling you what my experience has been. Dell, for example, really doesn't want to pay someone to swap parts for you, and will do everything they can to get you to do it yourself. If you're really that worried about it, though, you could take it to the local computer repair shop. Most of the good ones can handle Linux these days.

I am also a student, and I have never had $100k to spend on a system, I was just trying to give you an idea of the level of experience I have with hardware testing. Those are systems that I used to test and repair, not systems that I owned.


----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 8:48:41 AM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?


Now wait a minute, not everyone has $100k to spend on a brand new
laptop. I'm a student, and I have a single computer to last me through
two years of highschool and and at least a few years of college, and
there's no way I'm going to screw up my computer without some
insurance, ok? Before I run anything on this machine, I'm going to
make sure that I'm still under warrantee, whether the parts are user
servicable or not. Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.

On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
memory's chill. Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
(enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
"downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.

I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.

-Peter

On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
> To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
>
> I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
> hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
> computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
>
> -Peter
>
>
>
> You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your
> hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the
> address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine
> which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually
> verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).
>
> As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically
> considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of
> those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to
> replace them yourself anyway.
>
> More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all
> vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical
> device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I
> used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at
> $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out
> none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising
> number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the
> original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding
> (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so
> paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can
> ruin your hardware by running them.
>
>
>
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Barry.SCHWARTZ]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 787 bytes --]

Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Other than that I'm clueless.

Have you tried vanilla-sources? After all, anything in gentoo-sources
that isn't in vanilla-sources is by definition unaccepted code. :)

Also with the nvidia, it's easier to keep the nv driver running than
the nvidia driver, as long as you remove anything to do with the
nvidia driver; plus with nv you don't need to patch a big,
suspicious-looking black box into your kernel, the way you do with the
nvidia driver.

-- 
Barry.SCHWARTZ ĉe chemoelectric punkto org  http://chemoelectric.org
              Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com
'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Ok, so I may try a stress test if I get a chance, but I'd much rather
try an older kernel version first. As far as specs, Turion64 dual
core, nvidia GeForce go 6150, 2gb ram (of some kind, not sure, I know,
it's deplorable), 120 gb hard disk, other than that I'm not sure,
unless you're looking for asthetics, which I assume you aren't. Can
anyone tell me how to emerge an older kernel? I'm not that good with
portage, and I'm not sure how to emerge older versions. I think I knew
at one point, but that was a while ago. Thanks.

-Peter

On 5/15/07, Wil Reichert <wil.reichert@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now wait a minute, not everyone has $100k to spend on a brand new
> > laptop. I'm a student, and I have a single computer to last me through
> > two years of highschool and and at least a few years of college, and
> > there's no way I'm going to screw up my computer without some
> > insurance, ok? Before I run anything on this machine, I'm going to
> > make sure that I'm still under warrantee, whether the parts are user
> > servicable or not. Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
> > choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.
> Keep in mind the programs mentioned are not supposed to break your
> hardware but to discover if its already got problems.  Yes, they do
> put stress on various components, but thats the entire point - a lot
> of issues don't show themselves under 'normal' usage.
>
> > On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
> > and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
> > get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
> > memory's chill. Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
> > (enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
> > of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
> > starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
> > portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
> > sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
> > "downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.
> Try 'badblocks' from a livecd.  Its got a read-only mode which will
> not harm your existing data.  This is sounding more and more like a
> kernel issue.  You haven't mentioned the specs on your laptop, but its
> a recent core 2 model, you'll find its devices are poorly supported in
> anything less that 2.6.19 / 2.6.20.
>
> Wil
>
> >
> > I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
> > this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
> > it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.
> >
> > -Peter
> >
> > On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message ----
> > > From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com>
> > > To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
> > > Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
> > >
> > > I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> > > components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> > > the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> > > makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> > > recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> > > what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> > > violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> > > Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> > > question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> > > and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> > > So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> > > have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
> > > hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
> > > computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
> > >
> > > -Peter
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your
> > > hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the
> > > address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine
> > > which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually
> > > verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).
> > >
> > > As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically
> > > considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of
> > > those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to
> > > replace them yourself anyway.
> > >
> > > More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all
> > > vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical
> > > device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I
> > > used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at
> > > $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out
> > > none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising
> > > number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the
> > > original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding
> > > (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so
> > > paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can
> > > ruin your hardware by running them.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > --
> > gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> >
> >
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Bob Sanders]

Peter Davoust, mused, then expounded:
> Ok, so I may try a stress test if I get a chance, but I'd much rather
> try an older kernel version first. As far as specs, Turion64 dual
> core, nvidia GeForce go 6150, 2gb ram (of some kind, not sure, I know,
> it's deplorable), 120 gb hard disk, other than that I'm not sure,
> unless you're looking for asthetics, which I assume you aren't. Can
> anyone tell me how to emerge an older kernel? I'm not that good with
> portage, and I'm not sure how to emerge older versions. I think I knew
> at one point, but that was a while ago. Thanks.
>

emerge -av =gentoo-sources-2.6.18-r7  (something like that)


But, as yu have an nvidia card, I suggest doing the following

vim /etc/portage/package.keywords
i
#
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers ~amd64
<ESC>
:wq
emerge -uDNav nvidia-drivers

Bob
-  
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Tue, 15 May 2007 19:58:40 +0100
Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> a écrit:

> >  Try running a later or earlier
> > driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
> > a different version of Xorg.
> IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
> Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.
> 
> Antoine

Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, which doesn't work since we've been presented. I even tried to update udev rules, moving the "nvidia*" rule to "nvidia", so that it would only load the private firmware, but in vain.

Florent
--
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Mittwoch, 16. Mai 2007, Isidore Ducasse wrote:
> le Tue, 15 May 2007 19:58:40 +0100

> >
> > IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
> > Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.

>
> Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, 

why are you building the nvidiafb crap in the first place?


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[david]

Isidore Ducasse wrote:
> le Tue, 15 May 2007 19:58:40 +0100
> Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> a écrit:
>
>   
>>>  Try running a later or earlier
>>> driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
>>> a different version of Xorg.
>>>       
>> IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
>> Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.
>>
>> Antoine
>>     
>
> Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, which doesn't work since we've been presented. I even tried to update udev rules, moving the "nvidia*" rule to "nvidia", so that it would only load the private firmware, but in vain.
>
> Florent
>   
>From the guide;

*Important: * For x86 and AMD64 processors, the in-kernel driver
conflicts with the binary driver provided by nVidia. If you will be
compiling your kernel for these CPUs, you must completely remove support
for the in-kernel driver as shown:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml

-- 
Powered by Gentoo/Linux

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Ok, so I just did a fresh install of 2007.0. I used the same method as
before (networkless install and then configured sources from
kernel.org), to get my system running again. It crashes far less
often, but still has a little trouble with compiling linux sources
(that was while using the livecd kernel). However, I'm writing you
from the machine in question, so that's a good sign. I'll mess with it
and emerge some stuff, try 2.6.20 vanilla-sources and let you know how
it goes. I'm also going to try the Linux drivers from the nvidia
website. While I trust Gentoo, I'm sure NVidia is more up to date. I
don't think I enabled the in-kernel nvidia drivers, so I should be
fine.

-Peter

On 5/15/07, david <abbottdavid@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Isidore Ducasse wrote:
> > le Tue, 15 May 2007 19:58:40 +0100
> > Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> a écrit:
> >
> >
> >>>  Try running a later or earlier
> >>> driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
> >>> a different version of Xorg.
> >>>
> >> IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
> >> Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.
> >>
> >> Antoine
> >>
> >
> > Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, which doesn't work since we've been presented. I even tried to update udev rules, moving the "nvidia*" rule to "nvidia", so that it would only load the private firmware, but in vain.
> >
> > Florent
> >
> From the guide;
>
> *Important: * For x86 and AMD64 processors, the in-kernel driver
> conflicts with the binary driver provided by nVidia. If you will be
> compiling your kernel for these CPUs, you must completely remove support
> for the in-kernel driver as shown:
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml
>
> --
> Powered by Gentoo/Linux
>
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

Actually, I wanted to ask a some what unrelated question as well: I've
heard it's possible to update kernel without rebooting, and while I'm
not sure of the advisability, I'm getting things to work here and I'd
like to not have to reboot my computer so many times. Besides, it just
sounds cool. Could someone tell me how to do it?

-Peter

On 5/19/07, Peter Davoust <worldgnat@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, so I just did a fresh install of 2007.0. I used the same method as
> before (networkless install and then configured sources from
> kernel.org), to get my system running again. It crashes far less
> often, but still has a little trouble with compiling linux sources
> (that was while using the livecd kernel). However, I'm writing you
> from the machine in question, so that's a good sign. I'll mess with it
> and emerge some stuff, try 2.6.20 vanilla-sources and let you know how
> it goes. I'm also going to try the Linux drivers from the nvidia
> website. While I trust Gentoo, I'm sure NVidia is more up to date. I
> don't think I enabled the in-kernel nvidia drivers, so I should be
> fine.
>
> -Peter
>
> On 5/15/07, david <abbottdavid@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Isidore Ducasse wrote:
> > > le Tue, 15 May 2007 19:58:40 +0100
> > > Antoine Martin <antoine@nagafix.co.uk> a écrit:
> > >
> > >
> > >>>  Try running a later or earlier
> > >>> driver, if it's an nvidia or ati.  If it's not then you'll need to try
> > >>> a different version of Xorg.
> > >>>
> > >> IIRC, there are issues with nvidia and framebuffer modes.
> > >> Try booting with vga=normal on the kernel command line.
> > >>
> > >> Antoine
> > >>
> > >
> > > Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, which doesn't work since we've been presented. I even tried to update udev rules, moving the "nvidia*" rule to "nvidia", so that it would only load the private firmware, but in vain.
> > >
> > > Florent
> > >
> > From the guide;
> >
> > *Important: * For x86 and AMD64 processors, the in-kernel driver
> > conflicts with the binary driver provided by nVidia. If you will be
> > compiling your kernel for these CPUs, you must completely remove support
> > for the in-kernel driver as shown:
> >
> > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml
> >
> > --
> > Powered by Gentoo/Linux
> >
> > --
> > gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> >
> >
>

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1176 bytes --]

On Friday 18 May 2007 23:45:42 Peter Davoust wrote:
> Actually, I wanted to ask a some what unrelated question as well: I've
> heard it's possible to update kernel without rebooting, and while I'm
> not sure of the advisability, I'm getting things to work here and I'd
> like to not have to reboot my computer so many times. Besides, it just
> sounds cool. Could someone tell me how to do it?

I've done it before via kexec, but I don't remember exactly how.  Google for:
linux kexec how-to
and you should get some useful links.

I really should try and convince my computer to kexec again.  It takes forever 
to initialize my hw RAID card and the BIOS felt slow even before that card 
was added.

There's also the older and more flakey method of modifying a running kernel by 
writing to /proc/kcore, but I've not actually seen code to load a new kernel 
that way, only code to hide a (GPL'd) rootkit in a running kerenl.

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
http://iguanasuicide.org/                      \_/     

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Gentoo crashing?

[Duncan]

"Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss03@volumehost.net> posted
200705190231.33752.bss03@volumehost.net, excerpted below, on  Sat, 19 May
2007 02:31:27 -0500:

> On Friday 18 May 2007 23:45:42 Peter Davoust wrote:
>> Actually, I wanted to ask a some what unrelated question as well: I've
>> heard it's possible to update kernel without rebooting, and while I'm
>> not sure of the advisability, I'm getting things to work here and I'd
>> like to not have to reboot my computer so many times. Besides, it just
>> sounds cool. Could someone tell me how to do it?
> 
> I've done it before via kexec, but I don't remember exactly how.  Google
> for: linux kexec how-to
> and you should get some useful links.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (but not so far, I think), and say 
most folks shouldn't be worried about kexec at this point.  There are a 
lot of unpredictables in terms of hardware state once the new kernel is 
started, many of which the kernel isn't yet expecting (it expects to 
start with everything in a known or just initialized state) or prepared 
to deal with, and most folks won't be prepared to deal with the potential 
crashes and even possible data loss, if things don't go quite right.

kexec is coming along (just with kernel 2.6.22-rc1 a critical piece was 
placed for x86_64/amd64 users, an x86_64 kernel can now be compiled as 
relocatable, according to the changelog), but I don't believe any 
involved kernel hacker would tell you it's ready for ordinary prime-time 
use, yet.  I'd say another six months to a year, anyway, maybe more if 
development focuses on other areas more and less on kexec.

Without kexec, in general, no, one has to reboot to make use of a new 
kernel or its features.  However, it IS possible to build modules and 
insert them into a running kernel.  Of course, that works best if it's 
modules for the same kernel and using the same CFLAGS. I'm sufficiently 
cautious not to even consider otherwise, but it does sometimes work (and 
in fact, with proprietary closed source modules, /must/ work, to /some/ 
extent, but I don't run those, either).  So yes, even without kexec, if 
all you are doing is building additional modules, particularly if it's 
the same kernel sources and cflags, you should be able to load those 
modules in the running kernel without damage or indeed undue risk.  The 
kernel is in fact designed for such module loading.  (The big risk is in 
unloading modules, particularly in /force/ unloading, because it can 
create serious race and unknown state conditions.  There's still an 
option for forced unload, however, with the caveat that it's discouraged, 
and only for use where the alternative would be reboot anyway, and the 
risk of kernel instability is considered less of a loss than the reboot 
might be.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Samstag, 19. Mai 2007, Peter Davoust wrote:
>I'm also going to try the Linux drivers from the nvidia
> website. While I trust Gentoo, I'm sure NVidia is more up to date. I
> don't think I enabled the in-kernel nvidia drivers, so I should be
> fine.

YOU ARE WRONG!

DO NOT DO THIS!

The latest nvidia-drivers in portage are also the latest stable drivers from 
nvidia PLUS some patches that are needed! If you want to play with the beta 
drivers, get the ebuild from the gentoo bugzilla.

NEVER INSTALL THE NVIDIA-DRIVERS WITHOUT USING THE EBUILD!

NEVER!

You will hurt yourself, believe me, been there, got hurt badly, had lots of 
trouble.

JUST SAY NO.

And about changing kernel without rebooting:

you have enough trouble at the moment without it. It can only get worse.
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Wed, 16 May 2007 01:03:42 +0200
"Hemmann, Volker Armin" <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> a écrit:
> >
> > Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM, 
> 
> why are you building the nvidiafb crap in the first place?
> 
> 

As far as I remember, I used the default genkernel. Now in fact, and though stated differently on NVIDIA_HOWTO , nvidia LKM works fine here even with nvidiafb loaded. It's just that I have no framebuffer functionality.


To stick to the subject: (Why was his gentoo crashing all of a sudden?) this "Kernel hacking" option seems to be enabled by default by genkernel. It caused my brother's dual core machine to turn into a black screen under X:

 Linux Kernel v2.6.20-gentoo-r8 Configuration
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ┌────────────────────────── Detect Soft Lockups
──────────────────────────┐ │
CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP:
Say Y here to enable the kernel to detect "soft lockups",
which are bugs that cause the kernel to loop in kernel
mode for more than 10 seconds, without giving other tasks a
chance to run.                                                          │

When a soft-lockup is detected, the kernel will print the current stack trace (which you should report), but the system will stay locked up. This feature has negligible overhead.


(Note that "hard lockups" are separate type of bugs that can be detected via the NMI-watchdog, on platforms that support it.)
--
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Davoust]

I'll try that. Actually, I haven't had any problems with locking up
recently. I've got kde running and I can emerge all I want. Thank you
all for the help.

-Peter

On 5/19/07, Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> wrote:
> le Wed, 16 May 2007 01:03:42 +0200
> "Hemmann, Volker Armin" <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> a écrit:
> > >
> > > Yes, I use nvidia-drivers and udev keeps loading the nvidiafb LKM,
> >
> > why are you building the nvidiafb crap in the first place?
> >
> >
>
> As far as I remember, I used the default genkernel. Now in fact, and though stated differently on NVIDIA_HOWTO , nvidia LKM works fine here even with nvidiafb loaded. It's just that I have no framebuffer functionality.
>
>
> To stick to the subject: (Why was his gentoo crashing all of a sudden?) this "Kernel hacking" option seems to be enabled by default by genkernel. It caused my brother's dual core machine to turn into a black screen under X:
>
>  Linux Kernel v2.6.20-gentoo-r8 Configuration
>  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>   ┌────────────────────────── Detect Soft Lockups
> ──────────────────────────┐ │
> CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP:
> Say Y here to enable the kernel to detect "soft lockups",
> which are bugs that cause the kernel to loop in kernel
> mode for more than 10 seconds, without giving other tasks a
> chance to run.                                                          │
>
> When a soft-lockup is detected, the kernel will print the current stack trace (which you should report), but the system will stay locked up. This feature has negligible overhead.
>
>
> (Note that "hard lockups" are separate type of bugs that can be detected via the NMI-watchdog, on platforms that support it.)
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>