Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

[scogzy]

Howdy kubuntu'ers,

With the intro of lucid I thought it a good time to try kubuntu. Installation, (on three systems - 1 desktop and 2 laptops), went pretty smoothly. However, the desktop, (my main system for work), is experiencing frequent KDM and system crashes, and screen freezes. With the KDM crash I am taken to the KDE login screen, with a system crash the system restarts. When the screen, mouse and keyboard freeze I can ssh in to the system, but can not get KDM or X to restart and end up rebooting.


Here is what I am running on:

AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 240 Processor
4 GB RAM
2 300GB SATA HDrives
ASUS MoBo - don't remember the model
ATI Radon HD 4350


I have also have several KDE apps crash regularly, K9Copy every time, Amarok sometimes, openoffice sometimes.

The events appear to be random and do not seem connected with each other. Sometimes an event will happen shortly after startup and other times 2 days go by without incident. The only thing that is consistent is that network performance slows considerably before an event, but not always. To be more clearer, if network slows there will be an event, but network performance does slow before every event.

The log files do not seem to provide any info that might indicate a particular problem at least to me. Haven't looked for or at any crash files.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanx,
Dan
--

[oshunluvr]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

My first thought is you have network shares mounted.

I've had this behavior when my network or server went down.

If I'm right - I would also guess you're using knetworkmanager? It has caused a lot of issues for me.

[scogzy]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

No network shares. Yes, I am using knetworkmanager and I don't care for it. Is there a replacement?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

wicd.

Use Synaptic and search for anything with wicd in its name. Install all of them.

THEN, after wicd is installed, using Synaptic remove knetworkmanager, knm-runtime, and everything else with networkmanager in its name. If you leave knetworkmanager or its packages installed it will block wicd from getting a dhcp connection.

Reboot. Then configure wicd.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

All that what GG said - unless you aren't using wireless. Then remove everything he said and add nothing. The configuration for wired connections is to edit /etc/network/interfaces and resolv.conf thats it.

Back to you issue - next time the desktop locks - ssh in and run top to see what's running and go into /var/log and see what event(s) preceded the lock.

Have you con away and left it in this state? Usually, my network related lock-ups would self-cure after a fashion.

[scogzy]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

I followed GG's recommendations and removed knetworkmanager and added wicd. This is the first 8 hour stretch without an event. I'll start a sizable download and let the system run over night to see if there are any issues. So far, so good.

oshunluvr, I have left the system over night in a frozen state with no change. If these changes don't fix the problem I will take your advice and set the networking up via the /etc/network/interfaces and resolv.conf method. I prefer that anyway.

We'll see.

Thanx again for the assistance.

[scogzy]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

I have had 19 hours of event free computing, (the longest since installing Kubuntu 10.04), better system performance and network throughput. I am amazed to think that one application like a network manager could cause so much headache! Maybe someone should consider pulling this app from the distro.

Removing knetworkmanager and installing wicd, (if there is a wireless connection), has been added to my personal Kubuntu How-To.

One last item, K9Copy still crashes, but I will open a new thread for that one if necessary.

Props to GreyGeek and oshunluvr for your timely and clear assistance.

I'll mark this issue resolved if there are no events through the weekend.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Help - am having frequent random KDM/system crashes and screen freezes.

I haven't used K( copy but my first step when a program crashes is to run it from within a terminal because you get more direct error output. Then go to the logs and see if something crops up there.