Fedora 11 suddenly freeze [Archive]

rpcarnell

2nd August 2009, 07:45 AM

I am having a similar problem with Fedora 11.

For starters, when I log in, after starting the system, it is really slow (GNOME), so I do this:

(1) I log out of Gnome
(2) Ctrl-Alt-F2, I started a console, where I log in with my user name. Then I type startx -- :1
(3) Gnome is now really fast
(4) But from time to time, it freezes, and I have to press ctrl-alt-f2 to go back to the console again, but there's no message telling me why it is freezing.

I have an old Savage DDR video card.

rpcarnell

2nd August 2009, 09:12 AM

Okay, if I type something inside the Gnome console, and I get a message like this:

Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_x11_atom_to_xatom_for_display: assertion `atom != GDK_NONE' failed

then, the computer keeps functioning. Nothing happens.

But the message does not appear in the main console (ctrl+alt+f2). It is not there.

But when a message like it, does show up, it is because Gnome froze up completely.

rpcarnell

2nd August 2009, 09:20 AM

bianchi77

3rd August 2009, 01:49 AM

What should I do for repairing this problem ?
is FC 11 not stable yet ??

rpcarnell

3rd August 2009, 12:34 PM

Maybe it is Xorg-related:

(1) yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing

Update as many packages as you can.

(2) When you start your computer, press E to edit Grub before booting.

You may see a line like this one:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i686.PAE ro root=UUID=b031b03c-8a0a-4b94-84af-94a5006ffe9e rhgb quiet

Get rid of rhgb quit, and replace it with a 3, so you start a runlevel 3 (console). Type b and Linux will boot up.

Then, once Linux has booted up, log in and type startx

You can shift between the console and gnome (or kde) with ctrl-alt-f1 and ctrl-alt-f7. If it suddenly freezes, you may get back to the console by pressing those keys and you might see a message telling you what's wrong, if you are lucky. In my case, the messages are usually GTK related.

(3) You can get Linux to choose a resolution for you:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i686.PAE ro root=UUID=b031b03c-8a0a-4b94-84af-94a5006ffe9e rhgb quiet

Replace rhgb quiet with vga=ask and then boot Linux

Keep looking at the messages in the console while running Gnome or KDE. You might be able to see the problem.

bianchi77

3rd August 2009, 03:56 PM

thanks for the info i will try..

sonoran

4th August 2009, 05:38 AM

Maybe it is Xorg-related:

(1) yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing

Update as many packages as you can.

The testing repo means just what it says: TESTING
Enabling it will bring in unstable, untested packages.
It is decidedly not a way to fix things.

Sligo

4th August 2009, 04:03 PM

Test updates can be useful, if you are desperate enough, but agreed they can be very dangerous.

Myself, I was having an identical problem with Fedora 11 just randomly freezing up, even at the graphical login screen. After trying everything I knew, and at the verge of doing something unthinkable like installing Ubuntu on the system, I gave the test update for the Xorg server a try, mainly because the description claimed it fixed a crash due to uninitialized VModMap fields. It didn't work.

However, after changing several BIOS settings and getting rid of the xorg.conf file I had written, it stooped randomly freezing. Unfortunately I'm not sure which one did it.

I have a Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H motherboard, with an integrated ATI Radeon HD3300, an AMD Phenom II X4 CPU, and a Netgear WG311T PCI wireless adapter. In BIOS all I did was disable USB Wake Up, set the CPU voltage to auto, and DDRII Timing to auto. Then I got rid of the xorg.conf file I had written to get 1280x1024 resolution. Not sure which if any of these worked, or maybe it just stopped freezing by itself, but it is not doing it now, and hopefully it doesn't start again.

It would seem, my problem anyway, was either the radeon driver not liking my custom xorg.conf file, or Fedora 11 not liking the static values for voltage and timing. I'm not sure if any of this information is helpful, but it might give someone better than me an idea.

Magickman

4th August 2009, 09:31 PM

I had this problem too, and I think it's a memory allocation problem. I had frequent lock ups trying to multi task, like browser open with three tabs, Thunderbird open, text editor open at the same time...lock up.

Trapper

6th August 2009, 04:09 AM

Fedora is not alone concerning this freeze problem. Ubuntu is plagued with it too. 64 bit even moreso than 32 bit. In the past 6 months every linux flavor I try is very reminiscent of Windows 95. A number of forced reboots daily. It's not the machine. Several machines and all have differing video. I've stopped encouraging anyone to install linux for now too, unless they are interested in an older version. I hate to say it but later versions of Windows run better than linux does right now. I detest Windows though. My solution has been to drop back to an older version of Ubuntu for 64 bit. No freezes anymore. The 32 bit version of U9.04 doesn't seem to give me much trouble. It surprises me now and then but freezes are not a daily issue. But freezes should not be an issue at all.

bianchi77

6th August 2009, 05:19 AM

or may be i use i386 version ISO ? since i'm using 64 bit processor...??
but it should be compatible..shouldn't it...
??

Trapper

6th August 2009, 01:07 PM

I use i386 versions with AMD 64 bit processors with good results bianchi77.

Trapper

6th August 2009, 01:38 PM

Maybe it is Xorg-related
You can shift between the console and gnome (or kde) with ctrl-alt-f1 and ctrl-alt-f7. If it suddenly freezes, you may get back to the console by pressing those keys and you might see a message telling you what's wrong, if you are lucky.

I see this sort of suggestion often. There's a problem though. When things are frozen there is no usable keyboard, no usable mouse and any software functions that happen to be running at the time also cease. The display is there but absolutely nothing works. This includes modem activity and hard drive writes too.

I will add that my freeze problem goes on with whether I use nvidia drivers or basic video drivers and it goes on with various machines and various hardware configurations. The frequency of the freezes remains that same no matter what video I use.

Sligo

6th August 2009, 02:56 PM

I was glad to read your post Trapper. Having these problems on a newly built system makes me a little nervous, particularly one I built. Though it is not encouraging that all new distros may have this problem.

Anyway, I was writing to update that I had another freeze at the login screen. So my fix did not work, however I'm now leaning toward the problem being with Power Management. I noticed my screen saver always seemed to be on, at first I didn't think much of it. but as I paid more attention to it I realized that the screen was never shutting down. The system was no longer freezing, but it wasn't going to sleep when inactive either.

Concerned about wasting power, I logged out and let it sit at the graphical login screen. This was still sending the monitor to sleep, however, once it goes to sleep it doesn't wake up. The screen becomes dark and the keyboard will not respond to anything. Services like FreeRadius and NFS do not work. The only thing that can be done is to hit the reset button on the computer.

Anyway, my next experiment will be having nothing go to sleep, ever. It might do nothing, but at least it is something to try, before I install Fedora 10 again.

Hopefully, someone eventually finds a fix to this freeze.

Trapper

6th August 2009, 03:38 PM

Anyway, my next experiment will be having nothing go to sleep, ever. It might do nothing, but at least it is something to try, before I install Fedora 10 again.

I have my settings so nothing goes to sleep. That did resolve my issues of my monitor not waking up from sleep. Unfortunately though, it did not resolve lockups during normal usage. It's not like I do anything heavy duty either. Just, a little surfing, email, etc. normally. Sadly, the lockups don't seem to have any one function that causes them. At least I cannot pinpoint it. It sometimes happens when file browsing, using the web, doing email, looking at pics, or even when just sitting for 2 minutes while I go get something to drink. The only time I do not recall a lockup is when playing music. I seem to be able to do that for extended periods and have no lockups, even if I am heavy multitasking at the time.

I maybe give the perception my machines continuously lockup. They do not. It might be several times a day. It might be once a day. It might be every several days. There's no pattern. That makes it even more difficult to pinpoint.

Sligo

6th August 2009, 09:58 PM

Agreed, tried it and failed.

My symptoms are the same. I think for awhile there I got lucky, but it is freezing randomly again. On my old system I have an old AMD Athlon with a NVIDIA card also running Fedora 11 64bit. It is using the proprietary NVIDIA driver. Occasionally while using it the screen will suddenly go black, then a second or two later will come back as if nothing has happened. Now I think that may be the same freeze, but for some reason it can recover from it.

Trapper

6th August 2009, 10:18 PM

Agreed, tried it and failed.
On my old system I have an old AMD Athlon with a NVIDIA card also running Fedora 11 64bit. It is using the proprietary NVIDIA driver. Occasionally while using it the screen will suddenly go black, then a second or two later will come back as if nothing has happened.

I've experienced the same with this box. F11, Sempron LE1100 64 bit processor and nvidia driver. But, I also had times where it just froze. I say had because F11 is gone. Maybe 12 will be better.

R3353

6th August 2009, 10:47 PM

I had similar symptoms on a late model HP as well as an antiquated SUN microsystems box and ended up reverting to F10 on both. As a last ditch effort, I ran top and kept the terminal visible on the desktop as I did light tasks. When the freezes occurred, Xorg had always jumped to 99% CPU usage. I saw a bugzilla report for this problem with Xorg, but have not found a solution.

Trapper

7th August 2009, 02:36 AM

chadikins

7th August 2009, 02:47 AM

I have had the same problem in both fedora and mandriva. I see the freeze problem alot in the forums. Mine occurs at random times,sometimes when the system is swamped, sometimes when it isn't. There is no common cause associated when it happens, so I just assumed it was a driver or kernel associated problem. But I am not as smart as others, just my two cents. i hope it is resolved soon as possible as it is very frustrating restarting the comupter often. And I am sure it turns newbies away.

Trapper

7th August 2009, 01:05 PM

Last night while running top as suggested by R3353 I noted something. This box only has 1 GB RAM. With me running top and nothing more I noted my RAM usage was no less than 688 MB. To me that seems a bit high for a system that's just basically sitting idle. To make matters worse, I have onboard video and was running a 256 MB frame buffer for it. That takes away another 256 MB of my RAM, leaving me with just about none free. For testing purposes I went into the bios and dropped my frame buffer size way back to 32 MB, freeing up another 224 MB of RAM. (I am not running the nvidia driver, desktop effects, etc.) I've yet to have a freeze since then but really have not used enough time in to give a reasonable evaluation. I am going to continue using what I have until something happens. I do consider that the 32 MB frame buffer is low in itself and could cause problems of it's own, so I will adjust up accordingly, if I have too.

This leaves me perplexed over something though. Why is an idle machine using right around 600 MB of RAM? Top doesn't seem to be indicating that much usage in the process readouts. It does show it in the overall status though. So does free -m.

I would guess another GB of RAM would be more than beneficial for this box. I am still going to keep working on this freeze problem but, meanwhile, I am ordering up another stick of RAM. Something tells me that will alleviate much of this freeze problem.

CSchwangler

7th August 2009, 01:48 PM

Memory management in Linux is different from Windows. Linux uses spare RAM to buffer e.g. file system operations. Its sort of a cache. If an application requests RAM, Linux then reduces the buffer in order to provide the application with the requested RAM. The philosophy in Linux is, that unused RAM doesn't make sense, so it uses that RAM as a cache to speed things up.

Sligo

7th August 2009, 01:49 PM

CSchwangler

7th August 2009, 02:10 PM

or may be i use i386 version ISO ? since i'm using 64 bit processor...??
but it should be compatible..shouldn't it...
??

You can use the i386 version. However, if you have more than 4GB of memory, it is probably not being recognized.

CSchwangler

7th August 2009, 02:13 PM

I have four GB and it froze in the middle of typing this message. Apparently in Fedora 11 one has to do things fast. :rolleyes:

I seem to run around 350MB being used when idle, with the on-board video having 128MB. However, perhaps X doesn't like the video card messing with its RAM. I may try to change the BIOS setting also.

Nothing about this problem seems predictable, aside from having X11 running at the time.

I am running F11 Gnome on a 5 year old ThinkPad X31 with 16MB ATI card and haven't had the problems you describe. You should be fine with 32MB as long as you are not using fancy decorations and effects.

Sligo

7th August 2009, 02:19 PM

Well, enabling sidePort only for the video memory lasted the shortest of all before a freeze, but I got a screen shot of "System Monitor" while the system was frozen -- taken with a Canon digital camera of course.

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q217/agfasligo/th_screen.png (http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q217/agfasligo/screen.png)

Right now I have the BIOS set for UMA, and so far no immediate crash.

joe.pelayo

7th August 2009, 04:17 PM

Hi guys.

Sorry to read about all those problems. I have a little theory, but might need some data about your systems to see if it is actually worth pulling it through.

What is your system's partitioning scheme? I mean, where in your hard drives is Linux installed? Beginning of the drive, middle, end? Dual boot?

Thanks,
Joe.

CSchwangler

7th August 2009, 04:57 PM

So that is my layout:

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa1b63a04

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 204800 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 1331 10485760 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1331 1723 3145728 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1724 4870 25278277+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1724 4870 25277440 83 Linux

First comes /boot, then / followed by swap and /home. My box is dedicated solely to Fedora. And, by the way, I am the guy without problems:D.

Sligo

7th August 2009, 05:34 PM

When typing this reply the screen went black and the computer froze again. However, with the file system in my mind I changed another setting in BIOS. Originality when I installed Fedora 11 I could not get it to boot with the SATA drive in Native IDE mode. Instead it would only boot in AHCI mode. But now after a few Kernel updates, it boots fine in Native IDE mode. I don't know if this fact means anything, I just found it a little odd.

Anyway, my dive only has Fedora 11 on it. It was set up automatically during install. Now using Kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64

Model: ATA ST31000528AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 210MB 210MB primary ext3 boot
2 210MB 1000GB 1000GB primary lvm

R3353

7th August 2009, 07:50 PM

beginning of drive, standalone on both the HP and the SUN.

F11 runs wonderfully on my 5 year old T60 dual boot, in which it is installed in the middle.

Sligo

8th August 2009, 01:18 AM

So far no problems after changing BIOS from AHCI to Native IDE mode, but it could just be a lucky boot.

I also have a laptop running running the 32 bit version of Fedora 11 and it has never shown the freezing problem. It may well be a 64 bit thing.

chadikins

8th August 2009, 01:39 AM

I only run 32 bit stuff. I was running f10 and tried to upgrade to f11 and I couldn't so I thought I would try mandriva until f12. But in both these distros, the freezing occurs. So it must be something common to linux and combining with something in the machines.

Trapper

8th August 2009, 02:33 AM

I don't have Fedora on my box at the moment but have Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit on the first partition, swap on the second. Both /boot and /home are simply part of the install on partition 1.

Since I dropped my frame buffer to 32 MB I've still had no freeze ups or any other problems. I know that may not mean anything but I will just continue on. If I hit a snag I'll post. Otherwise I will do an update post in a few days.

In regard to conversation concerning 64 bit vs. 32 bit. I've also found 32 bit to be much more stable than the 64 bit in both Fedora and Ubuntu.

Sligo

8th August 2009, 08:07 PM

After nearly a day of operation without freezing, I've rebooted to see if it lasts.

Does anyone else who is experiencing the freeze have their BIOS setup for their hard drive to be in AHCI mode?

Trapper

8th August 2009, 09:35 PM

Does anyone else who is experiencing the freeze have their BIOS setup for their hard drive to be in AHCI mode?

I have a via chipset and cannot even find an AHCI setting in the bios. Is this an intel chipset thing, Sligo?

Glad to hear your box has stopped freezing. So has mine after doing the frame buffer change. It's nice going a couple of days without having to hit the reset button.

Sligo

8th August 2009, 10:33 PM

It is an Award Software BIOS. It is in the option for "OnChip SATA Type" where the choices are: Native IDE, RAID, or AHCI. I can't say I've ever heard of AHCI before now, however, when I first installed Fedora 11 on the system it installed fine, but couldn't read the drive upon first boot. Only when I set it to AHCI could it boot. Then I reinstalled thinking the difference between settings at the time of install was causing the freezing. However, since then there must have been a patch for that, because it is now booting fine in Native IDE and appears to not be freezing any more.

Anyway, if an AHCI setting existed it should be in with the BIOS RAID setup. It seems like an unusual setting issue, but Native IDE appears to be working. Oddly changing the frame buffer did not stop the freezing for me, but if it works that is all that matters.

Anyway, good luck with enjoying Linux the way it was meant to be, without random, annoying freezes thought the day.

Trapper

9th August 2009, 12:07 AM

It is an Award Software BIOS. It is in the option for "OnChip SATA Type" where the choices are: Native IDE, RAID, or AHCI.

Anyway, if an AHCI setting existed it should be in with the BIOS RAID setup..

I have an award bios too. In my case I have OnChip USB and OnChip IDE but no OnChip SATA. I would guess AHCI came after my board. I do not have any SATA devices onboard though and have the SATA controller disabled anyhow.

Sligo

9th August 2009, 03:04 AM

Trapper

9th August 2009, 03:15 AM

Well, we are no closer to the cause, but have found two completely different solutions to the problem. Anyone else who has this issue should look into the frame buffer, or AHCI settings in BIOS. However, hopefully, this soon will be an old bug.

Right, and just because you found something that apparently works for you and I have found something that appears to be working for me it doesn't mean these are things that will help anyone else. Hopefully they do though.

I'm going to bump up to a 128 MB frame buffer tomorrow and see how that works for me. I will also be testing other machines. Hopefully I get positive results from them too.

I agree ... hopefully this issue becomes an old bug real soon.

Sligo

9th August 2009, 03:18 PM

patrickian

9th August 2009, 03:38 PM

I am using Fedora 11 as well, and my computer semi-freezes when I try to resize emacs.
The reason I say "semi" is because:
- the mouse CAN move but there is NO keyboard button nor mouse button response
- I can press Ctrl+Alt+F2 and get to the console login
This is very irritating considering that emacs is my editor of choice. I have a multi-boot computer so I can use Fedora 10, where the problem is not present. But, the thought of switching to Ubuntu has occurred to me...
Is there a way to file a bug report to the developers?
pats

CSchwangler

9th August 2009, 04:13 PM

Here is information on how to file a bug:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests

and this is the link for the bug tracking system:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/

londoh

10th August 2009, 12:12 PM

I'd like to add my experience here - mainly cos the problem is doing my head in!!!!

I used fedora since 5, on more machines that I can remember. I use it as my work OS but I never ever had issues like these with fc11.

I normally leave (or used to) the machine on for weeks or months even, but this constant stop start is incredibly frustrating - as somebody said... its just like win95 used to be.

machine is asus P5Q3 mobo, intel e8500, 4gb ddr3 1333, geforce 9500 with new nvidia drivers. running FC11 64 bit.

Machine is used in anger - often a lot of stuff running...
Zend, Eclipse, gimp, OO, Apache, mysql, pg, winXP in a vm, a ton of firefox windows. etc.

BUT... it ran as steady as rock with fc10. Then I stooopidly ran the upgrade to 11. I never did an upgrade before and just before I clicked OK - I thought is this a mistake? 2 days later I hit the first freeze and knew it was. I put up with it for a couple of weeks and then reinstalled completely 2 weeks ago. But its still happening.
So its not the machine, or at least it got along just fine with FC10

I dont really want to go back to fc10 and 32 bit's not an option becos of memory.

Whilst not an expert, after several years I'm pretty savvy but I cant figure out what it is/might be. There's not track or trace - I found nothing in logs that might give a clue. It will hang after 1 hour or 48. Under stress or idling. There's no rhyme or reason to it. seems totally inconsistent and I cant recreate it.

like sligo I had an idea it was power management, so I turned it all off. Nope
also tried reconfiging x. Nope
then I had an idea it was Firefox 3.5 - But I've uninstalled ff-fc11 and tried running 3.13 and 3.5.2, 32 and 64 bit from downloaded tarballs.
FC11 Firefox is now up to 3.5.2 so have reinstalled that.
And it still freezes.

any ideas anybody please? or should I find another distro?

l.

Trapper

10th August 2009, 12:30 PM

Here is information on how to file a bug:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests

and this is the link for the bug tracking system:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/

Are you aware of how many bugs have previously been filed on this freeze problem? And it isn't as if this just started happening yesterday. The situation is that it's been here for a while, it isn't getting fixed and people are desperate because the linux experience is really beginning to suck.

Trapper

10th August 2009, 12:48 PM

Well, I just had another freeze up. :rolleyes:

All I can say is that the problem is better, but still there.There were also a lot of updates for the Ext 4 file system yesterday. It might well be a problem with the file system.

Unfortunately, I also had another freeze up, or two, or 3 ... prior to boosting my frame buffer so I just dropped the frame buffer theory.

For me here's how it stands:

(all 64 bit)

Fedora 11 freezes frequently.
Fedora 10 sometimes does.
Fedora 9 doesn't and proves rock solid for weeks on end.

Ubuntu 9.04 freezes frequently.
Ubuntu 8.10 freezes off and on.
Ubuntu 8.04 is like F9 ... rock solid.

We're done with dealing with this.We simply are not going to use what doesn't work for us.

Sligo

10th August 2009, 02:52 PM

Perhaps the best that can be said, is there are things that might make the problem worse, but nothing that truly gets rid of it. However, no second freeze for me so far, but I may be due for one tonight.

I assume this is the best bug report to follow?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488395

It is a little disturbing that everything but runlevel 1.may be affected.

Anyway, right my system is usable, however, I would say I run it with apprehension.

Trapper

10th August 2009, 10:09 PM

Just a note here. Remember that I am using Ubuntu at the moment. It seems that ubuntu's 2.6.28 kernel has a bug that affects some chipsets and not others and causes random freezes. The fix suggested is to upgrade to a 2.6.29 kernel. It seems to apply to both 64 and 32 bit. I've done that but it's too soon to determine if this resolved my problem. No freezes so far though.

You Fedora users may want to research this and see what's available for you. Also, keep in mind this "is not" a fix for those of you that are having the known ext4 freeze problems related to deleting, moving, copy & pasting files, etc. It's for random freezes that a lot of users are experiencing and many others are not.

Sligo

11th August 2009, 03:02 AM

I upgraded to kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64 at the beginning of this, however, maybe it took a culmination of updates. But I can now say, even after a reboot or two and working the system hard, there have been freezes in over 24 hours.

Perhaps when I get more adventurous I will enable AHCI again and see if the freeze comes back. When I troubleshoot a computer I often try various actions and assume because one appears to work it must be the solution. Unfortunately, sometimes it has nothing to do with the solution, but is only a coincidence.

Kernel 2.6.29 may still be in the test repo for Fedora, but it all gets back to my first post in this thread, when one gets desperate enough it no longer matters.

Trapper

11th August 2009, 03:20 AM

When I troubleshoot a computer I often try various actions and assume because one appears to work it must be the solution. Unfortunately, sometimes it has nothing to do with the solution, but is only a coincidence.

I surely can relate to this. I am guilty of the same.

I am having success with kernel 2.6.29 so far. I have my frame buffer back to where it originally was too and anything else I did, I've undone. Everything is running smoothly but , like you, I am apprehensive and gun shy. It's better to be that than disappointed though. Hopefully the apprehension reverts back to confidence soon. If I can get 3 to 4 trouble free days in I'll start feeling better about things. I haven't gotten more than 2 freeze free days in a long while. Actually, even 2 freeze free days were infrequent.

Hopefully you are successful too. Let me know.

Sligo

11th August 2009, 04:17 PM

And another freeze late last night. It does seem like 48 hours is the maximum window between freezes. It is better than one or two an hour, but still not good. I can say I am no longer getting the freeze where the screen goes black, only the one where the mouse and keyboard will not respond.

Anyway, I'll look through the logs again tonight for something useful.

Sligo

11th August 2009, 05:56 PM

The last messages before the freeze were 9 of these:

Aug 10 23:20:34 computer kernel: ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2412MHz)

It does look like a documented bug that can lock up the system. I think I will try removing the wifi card and see if the system can make it past 24 hours this time.

Trapper

12th August 2009, 02:52 AM

I've made it okay on U9.04 X86_64 ext3 since the kernel upgrade last night, I have F11 64 ext3 on the same box right now and so far it has done okay. I haven't done anything special except the latest normal updates, installed the nvidia driver, threw on a lot of multimedia support, etc.

I have no idea what your error messages refer to Sligo but I'll shake a few bushes and see what I can find.

( I just did some research and note the redhat bugs concerning this. I assume you've already discovered them.)

Tuahaa

12th August 2009, 08:00 PM

Sligo

12th August 2009, 10:35 PM

I don't see why anyone would want to leave their computer on for so long (then again, it's just my nooby laptop).

Well, right now my system is being left on for a extended time to test the bug. It is the only way I can think to test that it is really gone. Sometimes it can hit in 24 hours and others it might hit in 5 minutes. However, for the most part, unless I am running a program that can take a few days, I don't leave the system on constantly.

Anyway, one other thing I discovered, which was dumb on my part, is that I had the floppy drive enabled in the BIOS, however, I do not have a floppy dive. If any remember there was one version of DOS that that hated this, so it could be a similar thing. As for the wifi card, once I have confirmed that the freeze has gone away I'll look into getting that working.

To summarise what I have done, since likely I will forget this all in a few weeks, and maybe the solution is in one of these:

Originally I was experience random freezes all the time. It seemed that the system couldn't make it longer than an hour without freezing. Some of these were the keyboard and mouse becoming unresponsive and the screen displaying whatever was on it last. And some freezes was the screen just going black, either way the only way to unlock the system was to manually reset it.

What I have tried:

1. Update all packages. I'm currently using kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64 and X.Org X Server 1.6.2

2. Tried to disable power management to no affect.

3. Experimented with changing the frame buffer for my video card. I found I could make the problem much worse, but could not eliminate it.

4. Change hard drive from AHCI to native IDE mode.

5. Remove wifi card to eliminate it as a suspect.

6. Turned off floppy disk in BIOS, which I do not have.

So far I am no longer experience the freeze every hour, as I did at first. In fact the system seems to be able to run for longer than 24 hours, even with multiple restarts, without a probelm. I'm now hopeful that it can do 48 hours. Hopefully someone else might find this information useful, or maybe the developers finally got rid of this bug. Whatever the case may be, I hope not to see it again.

Trapper

12th August 2009, 11:38 PM

I don't see why anyone would want to leave their computer on for so long (then again, it's just my nooby laptop). According to some different sources Ubuntu/Mint are more stable than the others (but less freedom), so I believe it would be a good idea to dual boot Fedora with one of those.

And just confirming the fact that the older versions are more stable than the newer ones, it also used to happen in Windows (remember Vista's first debut?). That's why I looked for a different Linux OS other than Ubuntu 9.04 since I wanted to use the newest technology without the bugs.

Anyway, good luck with your problems!

Not speaking for anyone else, but I surely have had valid reasons to leave a computer running for extended periods. Web server, mail server, workstations utilized 24/7, etc.

The problem we are dealing with here involves the kernel and it's interaction with chipsets. It is not solely limited to one distro. It affects any and all linux distros that use it. Not every machine is affected though. It has nothing to do with one distro's stability but rather what hardware and kernel combination an individual is using.

You are just a vulnerable to difficulties on Linux Mint as someone is on Ubuntu, Fedora, Slack, Debian, SUSE, etc. Eventually something in a linux kernel or X or something else will zing you. Maybe even one of those debian/ubuntu packages that Mint uses.

As far as having the newest technology without bugs, there's no such animal.

------------------------------

Progress report:

Up 2 days on 2 Ubuntu machines with updated 2.6.29 kernels. No lockups.
Up a day and 1/2 on a fresh install of F11 and updates through kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64 . No lockups.

All machines previously had freeze issues.

conbonjovi

13th August 2009, 02:57 AM

Hey eveyone, it has been a while since I've used Ubuntu but I never had these problems on Ubuntu (Hoary to Intrepid) , Fedora 10, OpenSUSE 11

I was wondering, if I could perform the suggested tweaks in this documentm tweaks which I had always used in Ubuntu. (as an experimental workaround):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

Does Fedora not use /etc/X11/xorg.conf? I don't see the file.

Trapper

13th August 2009, 03:11 AM

Trapper

14th August 2009, 02:39 PM

Today's progress update is not so good. Freezes in Ubuntu 9.04 and irritating frequent black screens in Fedora 11. We've decided to label both U904 and F11 as unreliable here and are suspending usage of both in a production environment. There's been enough time spent on attempting to find fixes. It's up to the developers to fix the problems but we can't wait around on them this time.

Sligo

14th August 2009, 09:49 PM

Trapper

15th August 2009, 05:32 PM

Sorry to hear about your lack of success.

Myself, I finally made it well over 48 hours without a freeze. Then I put the wireless card back into the system, and in about five minutes of running I encountered a freeze again. Now to trouble shoot around that. Of course if someone already knows the fix please share. The card is a Netgear WG311T 108Mbps PCI Adapter.

Cool Sligo. Sounds like you may be zeroing in on your difficulty.

I still have F11 up on this particular box. I've been following a number of bugs regarding the screen blanking problem. One, in particular caught my eye and I've kept a close monitor on it. Late last night I received an update post regarding it. It said xorg-x11-server-1.6.3-2 had been pushed to testing because of this problem. I installed it and have not seen any screen blanking going on since. That not to say I won't but so far I have not.

The bug link:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501601

What I did to install 1.6.3-2:

su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-server-common'

Update Note Aug. 18th.
Version 1.6.3-3 is the latest and the greatest. No blank screen here with either version.

BobPoljakov

19th August 2009, 04:12 PM

Cool Sligo. Sounds like you may be zeroing in on your difficulty.

I still have F11 up on this particular box. I've been following a number of bugs regarding the screen blanking problem. One, in particular caught my eye and I've kept a close monitor on it. Late last night I received an update post regarding it. It said xorg-x11-server-1.6.3-2 had been pushed to testing because of this problem. I installed it and have not seen any screen blanking going on since. That not to say I won't but so far I have not.

The bug link:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501601

What I did to install 1.6.3-2:

su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-server-common'

Update Note Aug. 18th.
Version 1.6.3-3 is the latest and the greatest. No blank screen here with either version.

It's interesting, I have no update for xorg-x11-server*. I see the packages in koji, and my installed version is 1.6.1.901 ...

Trapper

19th August 2009, 10:56 PM

They are up to 1.6.3-4 now and indicated that should be the final for the fix. Try here for a manual download:

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=127812

Sligo

20th August 2009, 02:11 AM

After a few days of testing it out with an active wifi connection I've come to concluded my freezing is related to the network card. I've moved the card to my Frankenstein computer (one made from spare parts) and still get the error messages:

ath5k Phy0: unsupported jumbo
ath5k Phy: noise floor Calibration timeout (2442Mhz)

It is also running the same 64 bit version of Fedora, however, I do not get the freeze, instead the screen goes black for a second or two, and then recovers -- perhaps the NVIDIA card or driver is better at handling this than the ATI one.

So far my fix has been to remove the wifi card from the first system, which is not a great solution but has stopped the freezing. Unfortunately, there now seem to be many things that can cause the Linux to suddenly freeze. The hard part is finding which probelm is affecting you. Myself, I will say my probelm is resolved, until I want to use my wifi card on the new system that is.

Trapper

20th August 2009, 03:42 AM

Here's a snip from bugzilla mail that I received earlier this evening:

--- Comment #98 from Fedora Update System <updates@fedoraproject.org> 2009-08-19 19:18:13 EDT ---
xorg-x11-server-1.6.3-4.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 testing
repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug
report. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501601
If you want to test the update, you can install it with

su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xorg-x11-server'

You can provide feedback for this update here:
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-8766

Note to Sligo:

The above bug deals with the screen going blank for a few seconds and then returns. It might be worth checking.

Trapper

20th August 2009, 12:53 PM

Some additional info on screen blanking.

The fix I have been referring to in previous posts fixes the problem of the screen going blank while the computer is not idle but the normal screen returns on it's own or by moving the mouse, etc. There is another screen blanking problem that exists though for some users. In this situation the screen blanks out but you cannot get the normal screen to return with mouse movement or by using the F keys, etc. It's a gnome-power-manger bug. Info on that bug can be found here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501601

The F11 fix for the bug can be found here:

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=128025

joe.pelayo

21st August 2009, 03:50 PM

Thanks for the useful info. I am not experiencing freezes in my F11 x86_64 machine, but I was a little concerned because of the screen going black for no reason. I am glad to learn it isn't my machine's fault.

BTW that fix is already included in the updates (installed it last night), and so far so good it solves the problem (dark screen).

Joe.

Trapper

22nd August 2009, 12:49 PM

Thanks for the useful info. <----ship---->

BTW that fix is already included in the updates (installed it last night), and so far so good it solves the problem (dark screen).

Joe.

Glad to hear you've found your fix. Works for some and not for others apparently. The fix leaves some with screensaver issues or screen blanking during video playbacks in totem and that's still being worked on. Fortunately, I have not been experiencing those issues and consider this bug as fixed here, along with some others. All of the sudden I find myself with no issues in Fedora or Ubuntu. A free weekend. :)

Verdna

28th August 2009, 04:06 PM

I am also having this suddenly freeze on my Sony notebook using Fedora 11 64bits. Like most of you, I have already tried many different settings and now I suspect that I found one that stop this unpleasant freezes. At least for me. :)

A while ago, my F11 frozen very late at night in the middle of a very important task and I've chosen to left it on and went to sleep. In that next morning the computer was running normally without any reset/reboot. In that moment I started to suspect that this freezes could be related with some memory management problem. I also started notice that this freezes happen when some swap space had already been used. So, 3 days ago I set the swappiness to 1 and since then no freezes happened.
It is good to mention that I am using the 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.x86_64 kernel and all my files and swap are encrypted.

BobPoljakov

28th August 2009, 04:19 PM

I have set swappiness to 0 after install. I have changed it to 1, and I hope that it will help. BTW I have one or two freezes/day, one freeze completely f*cked up my eclipse. Swappiness seems to be ignored, I have 4 Gb of RAM, system uses 2,5 Gb, 1,2 is buffer, but swap is also 120Mb and after 3-4 hours swap grows to 400-500 Mb... then I have a one minute swapping period, when computer is totally unusable... arrgh... F10 was so good, I hate myself because of the upgrade... f11 és a penalty for me...

Verdna

9th September 2009, 06:42 PM

Hi BobPoljakov,

Have this swappiness change helped with the F11 freezes? Just to give you a feedback, I have never gotten any freezes since them.

BobPoljakov

9th September 2009, 06:52 PM

Hi, I had freezes after swappiness change, but maybe an update fixed something because my computer haven't frozen for 2 or 3 days. But with the latest kernel it doesn't boot :-)

jpollard

9th September 2009, 07:28 PM

hmmm. Interesting.

I've been having difficulty with video/audio playing DVDs.

The last update from last night made things better, but is definitely not right.

I'm running on a 750 MHz P3 in an old laptop, which aggravates the problem.
I'd been attributing most of the pauses/slowness/momentary hangs to an ethernet/winmodem problem
(lightning took out the winmodem, but everything else seemed to be working :-).

During DVD playing prior to last night, stuttering/audio hang occurred after about 10 seconds.
Now things last about 30 seconds before becoming unusable. Unfortunately, the system doesn't
recover (neither before the update or after).

Hmmm.... kernel memory leak maybe? Or a pulseaudio problem? (pulse audio was also updated).

MichaelClerx

9th September 2009, 10:15 PM

Are any of you guys experiencing massive hard disk action at the time of the freeze? Any info would be greatly appreciated since I'd like to be sure of myself before starting a brand new thread...

Verdna

9th September 2009, 10:23 PM

Hi Michael, in my case, when it happened the answer is yes, but just for the first couple of minutes. After that, the hard disk light just blink sometimes.

jpollard

9th September 2009, 11:46 PM

I would say "sometimes". Once I managed to see the yum backend doing things, but most of the time
I see nothing - I suspect the activity I saw was not related, as I was trying to start "top" at the time.
I think whatever the activity is may not be related to disk, but possibly a pathological case for the
CFS (scheduler) where very short lived sleeps boost priority until the process (which may be polling)
becomes invisible to top.

But I have no proof, just that it feels like that.

Chonzu

17th September 2009, 11:55 AM

Hello everyone,

I don't know if that may help but since I've upgraded from fedora 10 (x86_64) to fedora 11 (x86_64 also) , my computer began to freeze randomly (right at the end of the boot, after 5 minutes, 1 hour, etc...). The screen didn't went black, it just froze. The mouse didn't respond, ctrl-alt-F2, F3, ..., Fx didn't work either. Since I have only one computer I could not try to ssh from another source.
I removed my wifi card (Netgear WPN 311) and it did the trick. It's been several weeks now, and my computer doesn't freeze anymore.

Sligo

17th September 2009, 04:09 PM

It sounds like we may be the only two experiencing the same bug. I had a Netgear WG311T 108Mbps PCI Adapter, which once I removed stopped the freezing. However, it is now running trouble free in a different Fedora 11 box.

In case you notice a similarity, my affected system consist of: Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H motherboard, with an integrated ATI Radeon HD3300, an AMD Phenom II X4 CPU, and formerly a Netgear WG311T PCI wireless adapter.

Chonzu

17th September 2009, 06:04 PM

My system consists of : Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, Intel Core I7 920 CPU, RAM 6 Go GSkill DDR3 1333, Gainward 9800 GTX+ 512 Mb DDR3 (NVidia) graphics card, and formerly a Netgear WPN311 PCI wireless adapter.

Bipedal_Linuxer

19th September 2009, 08:30 AM

Hi all, I'm sorry we have to meet like this but I have also been having strange probs with fc11. Now, call me dumb because I've installed x86_64 on a system that's only a Celeron-D but after the last "box-change" I decided to think ahead to my next system. I was hoping that I would be able to just transplant the hard-drive(s) & make a few changes to grub.conf. As far as I can see, Celeron-D is 64-bit between CPU & DRAM so I hoped it would be ok for the moment. Seems to work (albeit slowly) but I jumped straight from a long-running fc8_i386 (on a 500MHz-PIII) install which was fine for a long time.
My "freeze" problems mostly seem to be related to Opengl - I mainly use my system for embedded programming but I (used to) like veg'ing-out with a game or two - Not any more !
I usually get ONE chance (shortly after the "freeze") to ctrl-alt-F2 & kill the offending process (often requiring a "KILL" signal (9 rather than SIGINT-15)). I notice masses of CPU activity - rest of system goes extremely sluggish or eventually, unresponsive - whatever is causing my problem isn't freezing the entire system, it's just almost totally hogging the CPU.
I'm willing to accept that this is probably my fault for going x86_64 when the instructions clearly suggested a minimum dual-core CPU for this type of install. I just want to be "sure" before I trash it for an i386 re-install. (I've downloaded Gigabytes of upgrades since the install)
Any suggestions and I'll include you in my will ... (someone will have to pay off my Mastercard!)

Thanks ...

jpollard

19th September 2009, 11:02 PM

I've got a PIII laptop with the same problem. There appears to be a scheduling problem - recently discussed on the
Linux kernel mailing list. They are working on it.

I don't notice it (yet) on my x86-64, but then I have 8 cores to throw at it...

Gaurav Prabhu

28th September 2009, 07:41 PM

My friend has a Biostar A785GE motherboard which has an Ati HD4200 integrated graphics with an AMD Phenom 550 B.E Processor. It is in dual boot - Windows XP & Fedora 11. He got the PC four days ago. Today, I downloaded the Ati linux driver & went to his place to install it. The installation went fine & we were booted into Fedora 11. Enabled Compiz & all was fine. But after a few minutes the PC froze. Restarted the system but again the PC froze. Then I booted into single user mode & uninstalled the driver. Rebooted & then it didn't. So is the driver the culprit? My friend has no Internet connectivity at his place so do note I will need to download patches or fixes on my machine & install it there.

ghostdawg

28th September 2009, 08:20 PM

I've been having freezing issues also with F11. I had a thread below.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=230784

I can't say for certain but I'm beginning to believe mine have something to do with kernel 2.6.30...since the issue happens with Mandriva-2009. But using Debian with kernel 2.6.26, it doesn't freeze after running it for three days.

My system is using a C2D 2.0ghz, Biostar mobo with the Nforce chipset, 2gb memory, nVidia GeForce 7050/nForce 610i.

Thnx.

bazzoola

2nd October 2009, 06:31 AM

Recently I have experienced random mouse freezes. The USB mouse just hangs, I can use the keyboard to navigate, save, and reboot. But I can't get any productivity out of this machine anymore.

It started acting up the past three days. I am suspecting that one of the updates I installed is causing the trouble.

uname -a

Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE #1 SMP Fri Sep 25 04:56:58 EDT 2009 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

CPU model name : AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor
RAM 8GB

There is nothing in dmesg and /var/log/messages

cloudyscreen

6th October 2009, 04:35 PM

Hi,

I was having a similar problem with the screen freezing on F11, so I went back to F10. :(
Unfortunately the problem persisted. I finally located the source of my screen freezes as some bad ram, that kept overheating. When I got rid of the bad memory the screen freezes stopped.
Also had a problem of the monitor going blank, and having to reboot every time this happened, but this also has not happened since. :D
Don' t know if this is any help to you, but just thought I add my 2c. :)

bazzoola

6th October 2009, 07:51 PM

I temporarily fixed it by booting an older version.
I am not using .30 anymore. I am using the latest .29
My Desktop is pretty new I doubt I have any bad hardware.

jpollard

6th October 2009, 10:51 PM

I've had similar problems ever since upgrading from Fedora 9 to Fedora 11. It seems that 30% of the CPU is suddnly
taken by a bug for 20-40 seconds, then the system recovers.

I can force it to start freezing by running glxgears, and just watch the frame rate. It starts off normal (29-30 frames/sec) but after about 15 seconds brief freezes occur, and the frame rate drops. after 20-30 seconds the
frame rate drops to less than one per second, and recovers after 15-20 seconds, works normally for 10-20, then
hangs again.

Still poking around, it may be a bug in the scheduler.

I have run all of the normal kernels (2.6.29/30) and am testing 2.6.32-rc2, but it too has the same problem.