mint x64 7 - hard crash

[athanasfire]

I am having troubles with my install of mint. I currently experience irregular hard crashes that freeze the screen and audio with a power off being the only recourse. I have been unable to determine the cause but it may be related to web browsing, file transfers over the network or video playback. What I am looking for is a possible way to troubleshoot the issue and then hopefully a resolution.

[lagagnon]

Is this machine dual booting with another operating system? If so, are these crashes occuring on that OS? Have you tried the Live Linux Mint CD or another Live CD and are you experiencing crashes with the Live CD?

Also, watch the system monitor to see if you have a process consuming inordinate amounts of RAM/CPU. Then go to System Log File Viewer and have a look at the logs (esp. messages) and see if you see any errors there....

[DrHu]

If it didn't happen in another OS, it probably has to do with acpi control within Linux

And do you have the computer connected to a UPS
--sometimes that happens for the battery (in the UPS); problems

• Do you have a good power connection
• Are your power cables all OK
• Is there anything loose inside the PC
  --power supply plugs, power connections to hard dries, ribbon or sata cable connections to hard drives
• Loose parts
• Loose mainboard, shorting within the case
  --same with video shorting within the computer case ?

Those are the typical problems if it is not the OS, and it easier to eliminate the hardware problems/issues first before going after the software, not in time necessarily, but in certainty..

[athanasfire]

I dual boot linux with the Windows 7 RC and have not experienced any similar problems within that os. I built the computer myself and I am sure that all the hardware is functioning correctly. I did trawl the syslog and system messages for a bit and before the restart point i get the following; in syslog

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Jul 27 13:46:08 tonyx48mint ntpdate[4175]: adjust time server 91.189.94.4 offset -0.020123 sec
Jul 27 13:50:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[4513]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:00:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[5447]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:00:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[5450]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd hourly 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:10:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[6314]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:17:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[6924]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Jul 27 14:20:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[7189]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:30:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[7999]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:40:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[8810]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:50:01 tonyx48mint /USR/SBIN/CRON[9617]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/update-motd ] && /usr/sbin/update-motd 2>/dev/null)
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint syslogd 1.5.0#5ubuntu3: restart.
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.6.28-13-generic
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Cannot find map file.
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Loaded 63763 symbols from 167 modules.

and in message log:

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Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.203428] sky2 eth0: enabling interface
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.203904] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.253327] [fglrx] DRM MCIL: MCIL_QuerySystemInfo command :4 not implement
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.253405] [fglrx] DRM MCIL: MCIL_QuerySystemInfo command :4 not implement
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.253428] [fglrx] DRM MCIL: MCIL_QuerySystemInfo command :4 not implement
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.253961] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 3752
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.270717] [fglrx] Gart USWC size:1217 M.
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.270718] [fglrx] Gart cacheable size:483 M.
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.270721] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.270723] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:fc2f000, size:3d1000
Jul 27 13:42:29 tonyx48mint kernel: [   24.270724] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:1fffb000, size:5000
Jul 27 13:42:30 tonyx48mint kernel: [   25.887533] sky2 eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex, flow control both
Jul 27 13:42:30 tonyx48mint kernel: [   25.888149] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
Jul 27 14:02:20 tonyx48mint -- MARK --
Jul 27 14:22:20 tonyx48mint -- MARK --
Jul 27 14:42:20 tonyx48mint -- MARK --
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint syslogd 1.5.0#5ubuntu3: restart.
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.6.28-13-generic
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Cannot find map file.
Jul 27 14:56:28 tonyx48mint kernel: Loaded 63763 symbols from 167 modules.

I believe this crash was related to a network file transfer.

I have conky running in the background to monitor what is happening but I have not noticed anything suspicious. I will attempt to pay more attention to it.

Originally I had thought there might be a conflict between compiz/fglrx/vlc as I often experienced a crash while watching videos but I disabled desktop animation (compiz) and changed my players and their output but to no avail. I will check out the next crash log to look for similarities between it and the above posted.

Cheers for the help guys; I'm stumped on this one.

p.s. I had tried a live cd but not for a significant period. That may be the next stop if the logs can not resolve the problem.

[DrHu]

There is a bug report on motd..
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/312809
--this is the one Mint has, so maybe that bug is gone already..
In terminal, check

apt show update-motd
Package: update-motd
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 1.11.1

acpi or video, proprietry drivers ATI..
ACPI is sometimes problematic with Linux, can you run the system with acpi=off on boot
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... unty&num=1

[athanasfire]

i have checked the update-motd and it is V 1.11.1

Have also disabled ACPI in the bios and will post more if/when I experience another crash. So far so good though.

[cdysthe]

Hi,

I am having the exact same problem on my Mint 7 x64 laptop: Random total freezes/lockups. I can not find anything conclusive in the logs, but have a feeling it has to do with network activity. It mostly happens when I am not using the computer, but yesterday it happened in the middle of watching a movie. In addition to the screen locking up sound was left in a loop playing until I did a hard reboot.

[athanasfire]

but have a feeling it has to do with network activity

Agreed, I have disabled wifi and that appears to have corrected the problem...no more crashing . Did you use the automated wifi driver install as I did? If so perhaps they are not stable under 64bit and it may be worth trying the windows network driver import tool in the control panel with the correct windows driver for your laptop. I have ethernet so I was not to worried about disabling wifi, but I may look into it in the future.

[swordthrower]

Could this be related to the following bug? I've had issues exactly as you described, using both Ubuntu Jaunty and Linux Mint 7 64 installs. The only solution was to use a different kernel other than 2.6.28-11, as described in #122 in the bug report thread. Take a look.

Unfortunately, the fix will only work for Ubuntu, not Linux Mint, as far as I can tell. I hope that there will be some way to get around this issue because it is very serious: data loss and system crashes happened to me many times before I figured out what was wrong.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/346691

In fact, I think I will start another thread to see if anything can be done about this...

[athanasfire]

I am afraid I do not know enough about Linux to make direct comparisons between my bug and the one swordthrower mentioned. Since I have had this bug I have reinstalled mint7x64 and also converted some of my storage devices to ext4. The file system is still ext3. I also disabled my wifi permanently and the number of crashes I have experienced to date have been - touch wood - minimal. I also have not experienced problems with file corruption, file system and os degeneration as discussed in the bug discussion.

I do still experience occational crashes but I believe they are related to sun's virtualbox.

Next time I will endeavor to check the system logs when I crash to see if its the same problem or something else.

[hinto]

What I did (not for the faint of heart) was install Mint 7 on my x64.
Then open up /etc/apt/sources.list and change jaunty to karmic.
Then did apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade.

That seems to give me Mint 7 running on top of karmic (alpha 4 as of this week).
The freezes are gone.

The only downside is that VMPlayer (and other VMWare tools) won't compile the kernel modules, so I have to run
VirtualBox for my guest OS's (Mint 7 is my host).

My setup is an HP hp a6720y.

-H

[athanasfire]

Just had another crash. The system log and message log look almost identical to the ones I posted previously. At the time I was browsing the web and watching a *.avi and downloading.

Only features of the crash were that, my usb dropped out completely -> no power to mouse or keyboard. Total system lock, *.avi stopped, clock stopped, etc

[cdysthe]

Just had another crash. The system log and message log look almost identical to the ones I posted previously. At the time I was browsing the web and watching a *.avi and downloading.

Only features of the crash were that, my usb dropped out completely -> no power to mouse or keyboard. Total system lock, *.avi stopped, clock stopped, etc

I upgraded and reconfigured my video card (nvidia) and the problem went away for me. What kind of video card do you have?

[athanasfire]

What kind of video card do you have?

I have an ATI 4870. I have installed the latest ATI driver (I think), and the fglrx driver is currently active.

[hinto]

This might help:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/353451

I don't think it's as drastic as I've posted..

[athanasfire]

Cheers mate...I am going to try

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/ma ... _amd64.deb

which is more recent then the one suggested in the bug report. But we sill see how it goes. Fingers crossed....X

EDIT: Ok, tried to install the image, told me I needed headers, then tried to install headers and told me it had dependency problems

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$ sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic_2.6.29-02062901_amd64.deb
Selecting previously deselected package linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic.
(Reading database ... 208556 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic (from linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic_2.6.29-02062901_amd64.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic:
 linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic depends on linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901; however:
  Package linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-headers-2.6.29-02062901-generic


Problem is, I can't find out what the dependencies are... I could force the install maybe, but I don't want to break my OS.

[hinto]

I had just found that link off ubuntu.
What I actually did (and am running with) is opened sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), changed jaunty to karmic.
did apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. I'm now at Mint on top of Karmic alpha 4.
-H

[athanasfire]

Sorry to be an idiot, but is there a proper way to update the kernel. I just tried these packages from the ubuntu site mentioned above and they almost buggered my system. With the old ones restored everything is back to normal though.

EDIT: NM -> http://www.ramoonus.nl/2009/03/24/linux ... ian-linux/
EDIT2: note: had to reinstall ati gfx drivers after kernel upgrade

[hinto]

I don't know.... That's why I did the dist-upgrade mentioned in the previous post.
I've been running for about 2 weeks after doing it with no crashes, etc.
When I did the dist-upgrade, Karmic as at alpha 3. So I effectively carried Jaunty + Mint 7 to Karmic Alpha 3 + Mint 7. I've now
done a dist-upgrade again, so I'm at Karmic Alpha 4 + Mint 7
-H

[athanasfire]

Oh ok,

As a summary;
The various ubuntu builds of the kernel can be had from the following URL: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

I selected the kernel v2.6.30.5.

You need to download the following files with the version that pertains to you ie 32/64bit
linux-headers-2.6.xx___xxxx_all.deb
linux-headers-2.6.xx___-generic_xxxxx_xxxx.deb
linux-image-2.6.xx____-generic_xxxxx.deb

These files then need to be installed in that same order mentioned above. (dpkg -i <filename>)
I also had to reinstall my gfx drivers after booting the new kernel to get my screens back to normal.
Whether or not this fixes the crashes is yet to be seen...