kubuntu 8.10 hangs

[aimar]

Hi,

I installed Kubuntu 8.10 in my desktop and laptop and lately (something I did or something I installed) the system hangs several times every day in both PC.

They keyboard is not working and although the mouse keeps moving through the screen the system does not respond and I can do nothing but reboot pressing the reset button.

Doing so I have lose some information in my files but also in the configuration of Kontact program, for example.

Any ideas? Any help?

Thank you in advance.

[eamner]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

For a moment I thought you had my same problem:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3100943.0
...which I haven't managed to solve, by the way... but if you say you can move the mouse, then it's not.
Anyway you can read my post and try some of the proposed solutions, maybe they can help you.

[aimar]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Hi,

I already read your posts in hardy, not the one you send me. I'll read it and try something.
I'll try all the day with the konsole and the "top" command. Never hapened yet with it on the scrren so don't know if it is software or hardware problem. I think the first one, because at the beginning nothing hapened and now it hangs every day (and the hardware is the same)

Seems not to be exactly your problem, but thank you anyway.

aimar

[dibl]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

When you see it "hanging", if a top window is open, you should still be able to see the processes running. If that is true, then it is only the X server that is hanging, and probably you will see the process "xorg" using a lot of CPU and memory. But, that should not last for long.

Also look for "strigi daemon" -- that one can use a lot of resources. You can disable strigi daemon in the "services at startup" settings.

[aimar]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Hi,

Since I had the konsole opened with "top" running, nothing hapenned.

I don't see that "daemon" anywhere.

When I say "it hangs", it really hangs. I can leave it an hour and afterwards it is still hanged.

Thank you for your replies.

[dibl]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Since I had the konsole opened with "top" running, nothing hapenned.

I don't understand this. If "top" is running, then you should see the processes listed, right? If the entire computer is truly "hung", then the process list, and the CPU utilization, and the memory utilization figures will never change. If it was just the X server that was hung, then if you watch the "top" numbers, they will change at times. Which one is it?

[aimar]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

sorry,

I meant that since I run the "top" command yesterday, the computer did not hang.
When it happens, I will tell you what happens.

[aimar]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

OK! I make it happen. The desktop is hanged and I am writing from the laptop.
Totally hanged. No movement in the konsole window with "top" command.
I remember it happened once while I was printing some documents. I try again and it hanged.

Xorg --> 10% CPU and 12% MEM
plasma --> 2% CPU and 10,7% MEM
kate --> 12% CPU and 3,2% MEM

This are the main activities. There are a lot but with less %. Although I don't see all because the window is small.

Some information more. Above the list, more information is showed.
Task(s) --> 1 running, 116 sleeping
Cpu(s) --> 10.6%us ... 87,5%id ...
Mem --> 1032288k total 918988k used 113300 free
Don't know if it is important

What is strange is that I can move the mouse. But can do nothing with it. Good for X files.

[eamner]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Except for the mouse movement, and the fact that, in my case, the computer comes back to life after a few minutes, it's exactly my same problem.
You can try the hard disk tests that dibl mentioned in my post... just to discard a hardware problem.
In my case, I'm thinking about re-formating the whole thing and start over. I'm even thinking about going back to KDE3, since I never had problems with it.
Good luck.

[dibl]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Interesting. I have a question, and a suggestion.

Question: Does that system include a swap space, and can you verify that swap is active when you boot the system? Open Kmenu>System>Kinfocenter and click "memory" to watch it. If swap is gray (not running), then that's a problem.

Suggestion: When it is hung, hold down Alt and SysRq keys, and while holding them down, press R S E I U B slowly, in sequence. Tell us what happens.

[aimar]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

The trick of the elephant (rseiub) don't think could success, because the keyboard is frezzed.
I install Kinfocenter and look for "swap". Not really grey, something like green, but seems to be working although numbers doesn't change.
As I could see with "top" command, I only use 1 MB from 500 MB. Rest is free.
Tomorrow I will try what eammer says, the hard disk test. But never had problems before.

[dibl]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

OK -- try the elephant thing anyway, please. I have had the experience of a "frozen" keyboard that doesn't seem to do anything, but when I did the Alt-SysRq RSEIUB, it suddenly did reboot (which shows the Linux system is still running). But I think your keyboard is "disconnected" electrically -- I don't expect the elephant to work this time.

I'm guessing that this problem is a USB bus or a Keyboard definition issue, not a hard drive or other hardware. I'm not an engineer, but as I understand it the USB bus "polls" the connected devices periodically. On some computers, if a device doesn't "answer", like it hasn't been used for awhile, the USB bus decides it is no longer present. I'm not sure what the fix would be -- you might want to take a look in BIOS and see if there are "USB mode" settings available. Or if you have an old PS/2 keyboard handy, and the computer has a PS/2 keyboard port, it would be interesting to see whether it works better that way.

Also, during the installation process, you selected a keyboard "class", like PC-105 or something similar. I have never had the need to go in and change that, so I can't tell you off the top of my head how to do it, but that would be another avenue to investigate.

Note that a reinstallation of Kubuntu will not fix either of these issues, if this is indeed the problem.

[eamner]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Mmmm, as for me....
I'm not sure if I said this before, but I don't use my swap memory... it is gray and it says that I have 1.2 gb of swap memory, but "0%" used. Same thing in "top". I've been thinking that this is normal, because I have 2gb of ram... am I wrong? could this be related to my problem?
And to me, the Elephant thing never worked.
Sorry for invading the post...

[dibl]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

@eamner, if you determine the device ID for your swap partition with

sudo fdisk -lu

then you can enable it for the running system with

sudo swapon /dev/sdxn

where "x" is the device number and "n" is the partition number.

For example

sudo swapon /dev/sdb2

You can find reports and theories that swap is not required on a system with lots of memory and no big memory loads, but I don't buy it. I have 4G of memory and a 1.5G swap partition. And sometimes it gets used a bit, I noticed.

[eamner]

Re: kubuntu 8.10 hangs

Dibl:
This is the description of my swap device:
/dev/sdb5 57239658 59793929 1277136 82 Linux swap / Solaris

...and this is what I get from "sudo swapon /dev/sdb5":
swapon: /dev/sdb5: Device is busy (*)

Does it mean that it's being used? I've never seen anything different from "0" in my swap memory, when using Top or other monitors...

(*) that's more or less the translation... my kubuntu is in Spanish :P