hang/crash about twice a day... any idea what it's about?

[przxqgl]

i have been using Trusty since it was released. i have also been using Firefox (currently 40.0.3), kontact (currently 4.14.2), and amarok (currently 2.8.0) on a daily basis. i have also been using audacity (2.0.5) and GRAMPS (4.0.3-1) occasionally...

and i have been experiencing a hang/crash bad enough that i have to reboot the machine about twice a day, for several months. i get the impression that it may have something to do with firefox and javascript, because occasionally i'll get a firefox error message saying that a script has stopped responding... but other times, i don't have firefox running at all. i also get the impression that it may have something to do with amarok, especially when amarok and firefox are running together, and even moreso when i have amarok paused so that i can play a video using firefox. during these situations, what happens is that amarok either arbitrarily stops playing, and stops responding, and then firefox stops responding, and then the mouse stops responding, and i have to do a hard reboot in order to get things back.

is there some obvious thing that i am missing? does one or more of the applications i'm using have a memory leak or something that upgrading might fix?

it's too soon to think about upgrading the system, because trusty still has a year or so left before the next LTS comes out. is it possible that what i'm running needs more hardware than i've got?

[Rod J]

Sounds like a hardware issue to me. Have you tried checking the memory for problems? Another possibility is a failing PSU. Also, are the temps within a good range (overheating could cause this too). Maybe time to blow out the dust!

[Guest]

Sounds like a hardware issue to me. Have you tried checking the memory for problems? Another possibility is a failing PSU. Also, are the temps within a good range (overheating could cause this too). Maybe time to blow out the dust!

Not all lock ups are hardware issues, and since he said he had to restart, i.e. he had control to actually restart then he may only have driver issues or similar.
My laptop has been freezing at the login screen if left for a time and needs a hard reset to restart (power off for 5 secs or pull battery & AC). I am running Amarok and Firefox latest versions and greasemonkey with 3rd party scripting... yeah yeah I know... but it was doing the lock up thing before I installed greasmonkey or the scripts. It blew up so badly a few days ago that the desltop went black and then kde loaded from scratch. I have dropped the custom ATI video drivers to test any changes.

[GreyGeek]

I agree with Rod. Before you go messing with drivers and apps you always want to make sure the hardware checks out OK, starting with RAM first, then the GPU. Then purge the app (s) in question and re-install them. If the problem persists check the video driver and/or see if a kernel upgrade or downgrade helps.

[przxqgl]

after a hang as soon as i started up firefox, after having the machine run fine with just kontact and amarok running for about 3 hours, i blew the dust out of the machine -- and there was a significant quantity thereof... i also re-seated the memory for good measure.

now we'll see if it does any good. 8)

[GreyGeek]

There are temperature widgets that monitor CPU temps. I have one setting in the system tray showing me the temp all the time. Idling at 98F the max temp I've experienced was yesterday when I tested Win7 as a guest OS. The temp reached 162F. CPU max is 195, but things get flaky around 185F. BTW, even with 2CPUs and 4GB of RAM Win7 ran hot and slooow as a guest OS. After playing with it for a couple of hours, spent mostly waiting, I hit the shutdown. After five minutes of waiting for that to happen I used a VB's kill switch and then deleted it all.

[przxqgl]

it's good so far, but when i blew the dust out of the machine, it responded by not being able to find two of the three internal hard disks, and i had to figure that out for the rest of the afternoon... it turned out the demons wanted alcohol, because it didn't work when i left to buy beer, and it did work when i returned, despite doing nothing to the computer itself... 8/

i got the hardware temperature widget, so i'll be able to more closely monitor the temps. presumably that will give me more information.

[przxqgl]

after having rebooted for the second time today, i am going to venture a guess that the dust had little to do with the actual problem.

however, installing the System Load Viewer widget has shed some light on the issue: i launch amarok, if firefox is running, or i launch firefox if amarok is running, and almost imediately, IOWait goes up to 100%, then RAM goes to 100%, then SWAP goes to 100% and then the whole thing grinds to a halt.

i'm going to see what happens when i fill the 3 empty RAM slots with actual RAM... i'm guessing that will help.

[Rod J]

I think your problem could be with one or more of your hard drives. Check the SMART status and run the inbuilt tests on the drives. You can check them with gsmartcontrol or gnome-disk-utility.

Also check your syslog for recurring errors in connection with I/O or similar.

[GreyGeek]

In addition to what Rod said, each app has a "nice" setting which tells the kernel how much priority to give it. The value is between +20 and -20. IIRC, the system monitor has an adjustable nice setting available for each memory object. I am not on my Kubuntu box right now so I can't add further details.

EDIT:"nice" is accessed via the System Monitor Processes tab. Right click on a process and click "Select Priority". Notice that most are centered on the scale (nice=0) for both CPU and I/O, but disk access and certain other processes are set to highest priority. For processes owned by root you will have to start System Monitor using kdesudo.

[vinnywright]

it's good so far, but when i blew the dust out of the machine, it responded by not being able to find two of the three internal hard disks, and i had to figure that out for the rest of the afternoon... it turned out the demons wanted alcohol, because it didn't work when i left to buy beer, and it did work when i returned, despite doing nothing to the computer itself... 8/

i got the hardware temperature widget, so i'll be able to more closely monitor the temps. presumably that will give me more information.

I would also re-seat all the connections,wire harnesses,plug-ins that you can .

that is to say unplug and replug everything a few times to make sure the connectors are making good contact ,,,,,,,,if blowing it out made 1 of the drives not show up for a few tries I'll wager their is excessive oxidation of the contacts.

VINNY

[przxqgl]

"nice" is accessed via the System Monitor Processes tab. Right click on a process and click "Select Priority"...

the "System Monitor Processes tab" where? i don't have a "System Monitor Processes tab" in a place where i can see it...

[przxqgl]

I would also re-seat all the connections,wire harnesses,plug-ins that you can .

did that... it didn't obviously help.

[przxqgl]

Check the SMART status and run the inbuilt tests on the drives. You can check them with gsmartcontrol or gnome-disk-utility.

i don't have those applications installed... i have had consistent problems with KDE and gnome, so i don't use any gnome applications unless there is no other option. is there something else that i can use to see the SMART status, and run the inbuilt tests?

[LinkBot]

Thread: How to Test Your Hard Disk Drive