I have been experiencing this problem for quite some time now, but I have found that when I use gentoo-sources-2.6.20-r4 instead of other kernels, the problem seems to go away.

Last night, I was trying 2.6.21-r2 to see if I still experienced the problem. I had started a lengthy copy process before going to bed. When I woke this morning, the computer was in fact locked up. Like always, the cursor still moved around the screen when I moved the mouse, but button clicks and keyboard keystrokes had no effect. Again, I had to use the Magic SysRq sequence to reboot the machine. When it had rebooted, back to 2.6.20-r4, I restarted rsync to finish the copy process. To my surprise, the copy was already finished.

I should point out that every time I experience this, I try unsuccessfully to ssh into my computer. The computer does not respond to any network traffic I initiate, SSH, ICMP, HTTP, etc.

I have an nVidia GeForce 6600 running the proprietary "nvidia" driver. I h ave no DPMS option in my xorg.conf, and xscreensaver is running, though set to never display a screen saver.

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

Peter Humphrey wrote:

On Friday 08 June 2007 10:19:08 Sebastian Redl wrote:

Michael Ulm wrote:

In xorg.conf, in the monitor section, I was missing the line
Options="DPMS"

I'll still have to research how leaving out this option could lead to
crashes, so I appreciate any insight this group may give.

Since practically every monitor supports this, and since it's
practically always enabled, it may be that other code paths of X.org are
insufficiently tested, causing the server to crash when it wants to put
the monitor into a power saver mode. That's my best guess.


My experience doesn't match this. I've had to remove the DPMS option from my 
xorg.conf to prevent lockups. Those only happened if I left the KDM login 
screen up until the screen blanker cut in, but then the only way out was a 
hard reset.

Apart from wanting my machine to do only what I tell it to, and I'm quite 
capable of switching my monitor off when I'm not using it, I think it's 
dangerous for any system to make assumptions about what facilities will be 
required in any particular case.

My hardware is an nVidia GeForce 7300 GS driving an Iiyama AU4831D screen, 
and the X nv driver comes from x11-base/xorg-x11-7.2. Or sometimes I play 
with the nVidia closed-source drivers, but as far as I know that doesn't 
affect the lockups.