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    #1

    System Locks-Up For No Apparent Reason

    Would someone please comment on this problem please? Here is an output from top. Does anything look suspicious or abnormal?

    Code:
    Tasks: 115 total,  3 running, 112 sleeping,  0 stopped,  0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.6%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem:  1035364k total,  595600k used,  439764k free,  51648k buffers
Swap: 3028212k total,    0k used, 3028212k free,  362076k cached


 PID USER   PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM  TIME+ COMMAND
 7298 mark   20  0 155m 59m 24m S 1.0 5.8  0:27.32 firefox
 5585 root   20  0 55904 29m 4748 S 0.7 2.9  0:28.54 Xorg
 7335 mark   20  0 34332 14m 11m R 0.7 1.4  0:02.08 konsole
 6840 mark   20  0 21216 7132 5272 R 0.3 0.7  0:06.39 artsd
  1 root   20  0 2844 1692 544 S 0.0 0.2  0:01.34 init
  2 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kthreadd
  3 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 migration/0
  4 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.08 ksoftirqd/0
  5 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 watchdog/0
  6 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.02 events/0
  7 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 khelper
  41 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.06 kblockd/0
  44 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kacpid
  45 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kacpi_notify
 149 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kseriod
 186 root   20  0   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 pdflush
 187 root   20  0   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 pdflush
 188 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kswapd0
 231 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 aio/0
 1523 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd
 1526 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 khubd
 1549 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.22 ata/0
 1556 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 ata_aux
 1752 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
 1754 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.64 scsi_eh_1
 2535 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 scsi_eh_2
 2537 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 usb-storage
 2541 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 scsi_eh_3
 2543 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.04 usb-storage
 2547 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 scsi_eh_4
 2549 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.04 usb-storage
 2870 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kjournald
 3090 root   16 -4 2424 976 384 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.48 udevd
 3704 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kpsmoused
 3719 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kgameportd
 4846 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kjournald
 5141 root   20  0 1716 512 440 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 getty
 5142 root   20  0 1716 508 440 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 getty
 5146 root   20  0 1716 508 440 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 getty
 5147 root   20  0 1716 508 440 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 getty
 5149 root   20  0 1716 508 440 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 getty
 5317 root   20  0 2456 1348 692 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.00 acpid
 5347 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 kondemand/0
 5427 syslog  20  0 1936 648 512 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.02 syslogd
 5485 root   20  0 1868 536 444 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.02 dd
 5487 klog   20  0 3624 2512 424 S 0.0 0.2  0:00.16 klogd
 5509 messageb 20  0 2836 1212 796 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.18 dbus-daemon
 5525 root   20  0 12772 2092 1836 S 0.0 0.2  0:00.00 NetworkManager
 5539 root   20  0 3416 1292 1124 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.00 NetworkManagerD
 5578 root   20  0 3252 720 564 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.00 kdm
 5607 avahi   20  0 2756 1388 1176 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.02 avahi-daemon
 5608 avahi   20  0 2756 464 288 S 0.0 0.0  0:00.00 avahi-daemon
 5609 root   20  0 4048 1748 1380 S 0.0 0.2  0:00.00 kdm
 5665 root   20  0 1772 520 436 S 0.0 0.1  0:00.00 mysqld_safe
 5709 mysql   20  0 124m 16m 4680 S 0.0 1.6  0:00.95 mysqld


The number of processes increases even though I'm only running one program. I also see duplicate entries, but I don't know if that's normal or not. Please advise.

mhumm2
    "If you're in a room with another person who sees the world exactly as you do, one of you is redundant." Dr. Steven Covey, The 7-Habits of Highly Effective People
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    #2
    Re: System Locks-Up For No Apparent Reason

    Do you mean that it completely freezes? Does it only freeze for a few moments/minutes and then resume acting normally? From that process list it doesn't look like anything's wrong on that end, I do know though that my sister's crappy old Acer 17" laptop would randomly hang for a few seconds to a minute sometimes until we realized that it was hanging whenever hal polled the DVD drive, due to some idiocy with the BIOS and ACPI (on Acer's part; apparently it was an error that Linux noticed a fair bit more than Windows, so Acer may never even have noticed that they screwed up). We disabled polling of the drive (and hell, she has never used it anyways) and the freezes entirely disappeared.

    You might want to check some log files; you can find most of the major log files in /var/log, of particular interest might be syslog, kern.log, Xorg.0.log, and maybe kdm.log. Best thing to do would be, right after a freeze, go into /var/log and sort by date, then take a look at the most recently modified log files and see if there's anything there that looks like an error. I know that for my sister, her kern.log has some very obvious and explicit error messages in it that helped us easily find out what the problem was.
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      #3
      Re: System Locks-Up For No Apparent Reason

      Thank you.

      It's funny that while I was opening two log files in Kwrite just to get somewhat familiar with them, the system did freeze again. CPU running at 100% (as displayed in the superkaramba widget I use), mouse locked, both iterations of Kwrite on the status bar with their little hour glasses frozen in time.

      When it happened, I remembered you mentioning that it could be some innocent system activity like disk polling so I let me system alone for 30 minutes. When I returned, the screen still looked like a screenshot and was still locked up tight; no change in symptoms.

      Anyway, this is the advice I was looking for. After a hard shutdown and reboot, I checked the most recent logs, but didn't find anything obvious. I'll keep checking when I recover again from a system lock.

      Maybe it's just time to upgrade if I can to 9.04.

      "If you're in a room with another person who sees the world exactly as you do, one of you is redundant." Dr. Steven Covey, The 7-Habits of Highly Effective People
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        #4
        Re: System Locks-Up For No Apparent Reason

        i had similar problems

        my system is an upgraded hp desktop from a few years ago, i selected the new components with power consumption in mind. i did not replace the power supply. the new system worked well but locked up often, i adjusted the setups and the lockups occurred less frequently but still happened too often.

        then i replaced the power supply. the lockups almost stopped and i have even tried some overclocking without excessive lockups. with clocks set to default i now get a lockup every few days (i run demanding software).

        i was running 8.04.2 without swap. i now run compcache compressed ramdisk swap and i hope those last few lockups will stop.

        as my software became more demanding my system needed more power which my original ps could not supply. the condition did not produce immediate failure, only as the system began to demand more from the ps did the problems begin.
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          #5
          Re: System Locks-Up For No Apparent Reason

          Thanks phil42. Good to know. I think I have a 450watt ps -- it's a bit one, but I'm not sure what my system requirements are. I can't imagine it would be anywhere close to 450 watts, but I don't know. Time to add everything up and see where I stand.

          Then again, even if I'm only pulling 300 watts doesn't mean the ps is able to handle that load anymore. This is worth checking out. Thanks again.

          mhumm2
          "If you're in a room with another person who sees the world exactly as you do, one of you is redundant." Dr. Steven Covey, The 7-Habits of Highly Effective People
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