Blue screen of death

[Alex]

Hi,

As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
screen, and the whole computer locked up.

Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.

What the hell happened?

This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
another, and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop.

Ideas greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex

[Ranbir]

On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 10:44 -0400, Alex wrote:
>  As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal
> desktop, with
>  Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>  blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>  screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>  
>  Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.
>  
>  What the hell happened?
>  
>  This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
>  another, and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop. 
Lately I've been having random desktop lockups (i.e. I can't do
anything), but I can still hear my mp3s playing.  My mouse stops working
on a whim, forcing me to use my keyboard to close apps and then switch
to a pty to kill my messed up Gnome session.  Sound stops working for no
apparent, although I can bring it back easily enough by restarting
pulseaudio.

Just a little while ago my desktop froze again and I had to do a hard
power off to get it back.

I'm not sure if it's something flaky with my hardware or if it's Fedora
12 that's somehow hosed.  My PC at work runs Fedora 12 flawlessly, so
I'm starting to think my hardware is wonky, but I'm not yet convinced.

Regards,

Ranbir


-- 
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu
Linux 2.6.32.16-150.fc12.x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 
16:51:08 up 59 min, 3 users, load average: 0.23, 0.09, 0.02

[Máirín Duffy]

On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 14:48 -0700, suvayu ali wrote:
>  On 30 July 2010 14:31, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  >> I talked to the plymouth maintainer and he said this is a known bug; I
>  >> don't know if the fix is in F13 yet but let me explain what's going on:
>  >>
>  >> You've got two bugs. One is a kernel panic. The other is that when the
>  >> kernel is panicking, rather than showing useful debug information, it is
>  >
>  > Good to know, thanks. It's just good to know there is a confirmed bug,
>  > so I'm confident it is being worked on, and a fix will be available in
>  > the near future.
>  >
>  
>  >From what I understood from Máirín's response, the bug in plymouth is
>  worked upon. But there is no way to tell the reason for the kernel
>  panic. I think you should still try to investigate the reason for
>  that. I am sorry I don't have any suggestions for you to try. Luckily
>  I have never faced a kernel panic myself. :( 
You're right, Suyayu - the bug that's being worked on is the plymouth
bug (well actually, I think it's a kernel bug, but it displays plymouth
so plymouth is the visible part.) But that won't fix the core problem -
the kernel panic - because we don't yet know what's causing Alex's
system to panic in the first place.

I think kernel panics are usually because of hardware issues, device
driver issues, or a genuine kernel bug (but I think the latter is by far
more rare.) Do you have any hardware that might be suspect, Alex? Maybe
a RAM module you recently swapped into the machine? 

One tool that might be useful is called kdump. It's part of Fedora and
it loads a second uncrashed kernel to capture data from the crashed
kernel to help figure out what's going on. There's some instructions on
how to use kdump in the Fedora wiki:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel/kdump

I would imagine if the output of running kdump after triggering a crash
doesn't indicate the problem in an obvious way (e.g., might be
obvious-ish if there was mention of the brand name of a piece of hw
you're aware of in the output), I think the output would certainly make
for a good bug report.

Hope this helps,
~m

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  There's nothing in the logs to indicate what may be causing this. I
>  didn't see it happen the last time, since the monitor was turned off,
>  but the previously it presented a blue screen with the F in the
>  center, and no mouse cursor. 
That's not really a BSOD, it's the Fedora boot splash screen.  You can
hit ESC and have the system print the text boot messages (uncovering
them by clearing the blue screen).

-- 
Chris

[JB]

Alex <mysqlstudent <at> gmail.com> writes:

>  
>  Hi,
>  
>  As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
>  Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>  blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>  screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>  ... 
Hi,
I have had a couple of similar experiences with repeating pattern:
- F13 with Gnome
- system with what I consider acceptable CPU (Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor),
  Intel graphics (well supported), RAM and swap for my average daily tasks
  Mem:    760192k total,   710384k used,    49808k free,    50372k buffers
  Swap:  1171760k total,     6080k used,  1165680k free,   479000k cached
- always Firefox open with at least 5-8 tabs
  I suspect it to be the main source of instability:
  - directly
    I happened to visit some sites that were so "intensely heavy" in content
    that they could literally lock the FF (and the machine) for good. Perhaps
    the cause was HTML plus JavaScript plus intentionally "cleverly" coded
    pages (I even had Java Runtime turned off) that apparently FF could not
    process smoothly.
    I think FF should quickly move to tabs and other processes separation as
    Google Chrome did.
  - indirectly
    I visited a very popular site with a small Java applet that on a first
    time startup almost regularly knocked the FF down; I passed its URL to FF
    devs).
    Java environment is a hog and a cause of instability, still.
- complete lockup, could not open xterm to kill some process, no reaction to
  CTL-Alt-Backspace, could move cursor only. 
  For that reason I added to my panel the "bomb" app (Force a misbehaving
  application to quit) to get access to my desktop system (I hope to be
  effective with it; waiting to try it out ...). 

I could only add that, because I prefer a text login, I capture my X and
desktop apps workings with ~/.startx.log file:
$ alias startx='/usr/bin/startx -- -nolisten tcp >& .startx.log'
This may give some clue about the nature of any problems.

I find F13 quite stable (despite its dev nature); I prefer Gnome as well over
KDE, by any means. So I do not think you should drop either of them.
JB

[Alex]

Hi,

> > Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.
>
>  you could reboot, switch to a text console (e.g ctrl f2) have a look
>  in $HOME/.xsession-errors, though I've you've logged in again already
>  it's probably been overwritten. my guess would be that something
>  killed your X session. If you're running f13 and have an nvidia card, 
It's a Sapphire HD5770 (Radeon). Here's the .xsession-errors.old,
which I believe is the one from the crash:

http://pastebin.com/GBBiQj7g

There are quite a few errors in there, but nothing that I think is
directly related to it going catatonic. Bunch of network errors from
azureus, which I assume happened after whatever killed the network and
desktop.

>  that's kind of the point of fedora. if you want something stable,
> use
>  CentOS (or RHEL) or maybe an ubuntu variant. I think the benefits of a
>  cutting edge distro outweigh the drawbacks, but I agree that it is
>  very frustrating when something fundamental stops working. 
Yes, frustrating, particularly when it's one fundamental thing after
another, like ethernet detection, printing, and basic networking.

Thanks,
Alex

[Máirín Duffy]

On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 10:44 -0400, Alex wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
>  Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>  blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>  screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>  
>  Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.
>  
>  What the hell happened?
>  
>  This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
>  another, and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop. 
Sounds like your machine started going into suspend / hibernate /
shutdown.

Did you close the lid? Did you set it to suspend on lid close?

~m

[Alex]

Hi,

>   I suspect it to be the main source of instability:
>   - directly
>     I happened to visit some sites that were so "intensely heavy" in content
>     that they could literally lock the FF (and the machine) for good. Perhaps
>     the cause was HTML plus JavaScript plus intentionally "cleverly" coded
>     pages (I even had Java Runtime turned off) that apparently FF could not
>     process smoothly. 
Had it consumed all your available swap, too? Was the disk thrashing
while this was happening? It just locks the machine, and doesn't crash
so you can create a bug report and send the FF people?

>     I think FF should quickly move to tabs and other processes
> separation as
>     Google Chrome did. 
I'm sure there's a reason they haven't done this. Perhaps we'll see it
in the v4.0 version, which should be available shortly.

>   - indirectly
>     I visited a very popular site with a small Java applet that on a first
>     time startup almost regularly knocked the FF down; I passed its URL to FF
>     devs). 
Often times these problems actually result from various add-ons which
are poorly written, leak memory, leave files open, locking problems,
etc.

>     Java environment is a hog and a cause of instability, still.
I found Azureus on FC13 consuming 5GB of RAM! Damn. Five friggin gigs!

>  - complete lockup, could not open xterm to kill some process, no
> reaction to
>   CTL-Alt-Backspace, could move cursor only.
>   For that reason I added to my panel the "bomb" app (Force a misbehaving
>   application to quit) to get access to my desktop system (I hope to be
>   effective with it; waiting to try it out ...). 
I don't understand how that would work. If you're able to click on an
application to kill something, why can't you just manually kill it?

>  $ alias startx='/usr/bin/startx -- -nolisten tcp >&
> .startx.log'
>  This may give some clue about the nature of any problems. 
There are a few errors. I'll post a separate thread to see if someone
can help me troubleshoot them.

>  I find F13 quite stable (despite its dev nature); I prefer Gnome as
> well over
>  KDE, by any means. So I do not think you should drop either of them. 
It's gotten better over the past few months.

Thanks,
Alex

[Andrew Haley]

On 07/28/2010 12:12 AM, Alex wrote:

> >> Yes, frustrating, particularly when it's one fundamental
> thing after
> >> another, like ethernet detection, printing, and basic networking.
> >
> > Sure, but it works both ways: sometimes getting up-to-date software
> > from upstream fixes bugs that in a more "stable" distro you'd have to
> > wait much longer for.  For example, I used to have to install the
>  
>  Yes, for the most part, I agree. However, I've set up FC13 on at least
>  three desktops with varying processors, motherboards, ethernet, disks,
>  etc, and have had problems that would have prevented someone with less
>  experience than myself from being able to install it. On one of them,
>  I had to rmmod the forcedeth and r8169 drivers, then modprobe the
>  r8169 driver in order for it to properly link to the switch, all while
>  the installer is running. On another, the installer would crash when
>  making changes to the disk layout.
>  
>  I've used Fedora since it was Red Hat, and started with before 4.1,
>  probably some twelve years ago. The first install was Yggdrasil Linux
>  on 60 floppy disks on my 80386. I pretty much dropped Linux on the
>  desktop entirely a number of years ago because I got frustrated with
>  the lack of progress.
>  
>  By mentioning that I've been using Linux a really long time, I don't
>  mean to imply I'm an expert, but I have quite a bit of experience, and
>  don't plan on giving up on it ever. I mentioned the forcedeth example
>  because the board was at least three years old, so it's not like it
>  was some experimental driver where I'm the first person to use it. 
OK.

>  My staff uses Ubuntu on their desktop because "it just
> works", but I
>  like RPM better, have been using Red Hat for ever, and believe that
>  they have better availability to development, new applications, and
>  wider support for new  technologies.
>  
>  I'm sure that if I spent the time I could figure out where the problem
>  is with ghostscript that is causing my printing problems, but that's
>  not my job any longer. I'm just often very surprised when I see these
>  "RHCE" guys that can't
>   troubleshoot these types of problems, and wonder if they're the same
>  clueless ones that are testing these before RH releases it.
>  
>  Thanks for listing to me rant for a bit. 
The crack about "these RHCE guys" is rather out of order.

However, fair enough: everyone's experience is valuable.  But while
I'm not going to deny your problems, I just haven't had an experience
anything like that with any of my boxes.  It's inevitable that, with
improvements, some things will break with a new release, given the
huge range of PC hardware.

But I'm not being complacent.  Any installation problems like the one
you describe are serious.

Andrew.

[Alex]

Hi,

> > As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my
> normal desktop, with
> > Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
> > blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
> > screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>
>  Having a quick look.
>  What is the host box?
>  cpu\ram
>  Is NetworkManager runnng?
>  What do you use for the VM's? Vbox xen kvm etc. 
It's an Asus Crosshair IV with 8GB and an AMD X6 1090T, Sapphire
HD5770 and a WD 6G/s SATA3 disk.

I'm using KVM, but it just happened again without any VMs running. I'm
now not using NetworkManager, and instead just 'network', since I
wanted to use bridging, which NetworkManager doesn't seem to support.

There's nothing in the logs to indicate what may be causing this. I
didn't see it happen the last time, since the monitor was turned off,
but the previously it presented a blue screen with the F in the
center, and no mouse cursor.

Thanks,
Alex

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Alex,

I talked to the plymouth maintainer and he said this is a known bug; I
don't know if the fix is in F13 yet but let me explain what's going on:

You've got two bugs. One is a kernel panic. The other is that when the
kernel is panicking, rather than showing useful debug information, it is
dumping whatever was last on the framebuffer (the plymouth splash
screen) to the screen. This is a mistake that was since found in the
relevant code.

I'm no expert on getting useful kernel panic debug info but I bet if you
check /var/log/messages you might see some clues (usually a good bet
when the system suddenly stops working like that; I'm sorry I didn't
suggest it before.) I'm sure someone else on the list can also help you
trap the kernel panic to figure out what is causing the kernel panic -
that is beyond my skill set.

I don't have the bug number for the plymouth issue handy I'm afraid; but
hopefully there's enough to go on that you or someone else here could
find it. I don't know if there is a workaround or not.

I hope this helps, good luck

~m

[Suvayu Ali]

On 30 July 2010 14:31, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
> > I talked to the plymouth maintainer and he said this is a known bug; I
> > don't know if the fix is in F13 yet but let me explain what's going on:
> >
> > You've got two bugs. One is a kernel panic. The other is that when the
> > kernel is panicking, rather than showing useful debug information, it is
>
>  Good to know, thanks. It's just good to know there is a confirmed bug,
>  so I'm confident it is being worked on, and a fix will be available in
>  the near future.
>  
> From what I understood from Máirín's response, the bug in plymouth
> is 
worked upon. But there is no way to tell the reason for the kernel
panic. I think you should still try to investigate the reason for
that. I am sorry I don't have any suggestions for you to try. Luckily
I have never faced a kernel panic myself. :(

>  I checked the logs after the reboot, and there wasn't anything
> useful
>  from syslog or the X11 logs.
>
>  Thanks again,
>  Alex 
-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

[Alex]

Hi,

>  I talked to the plymouth maintainer and he said this is a known bug;
> I
>  don't know if the fix is in F13 yet but let me explain what's going on:
>
>  You've got two bugs. One is a kernel panic. The other is that when the
>  kernel is panicking, rather than showing useful debug information, it is 
Good to know, thanks. It's just good to know there is a confirmed bug,
so I'm confident it is being worked on, and a fix will be available in
the near future.

I checked the logs after the reboot, and there wasn't anything useful
from syslog or the X11 logs.

Thanks again,
Alex

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Wednesday, July 28, 2010 22:06:22 Alex wrote:
>  > That's not really a BSOD, it's the Fedora boot splash
> screen.  You can
>  > hit ESC and have the system print the text boot messages (uncovering
>  > them by clearing the blue screen).
>  
>  Nope, it was completely unresponsive. No network, keyboard, or mouse.
>  No ctrl-alt-bs. 
Can you verify that the kernel is alive? Can you login from another machine 
using ssh? Does the machine respond to a ping?

If you use GDM/Gnome, ctrl-alt-bs is disabled, IIRC. 

>  The one time I saw it happen, the blue splash screen appeared and I
>  believe nearly immediately it became unresponsive.
>  
>  Under what circumstances would that splash screen occur, when the
>  system had already booted and I had logged in? I don't believe the
>  system was idle for longer than a few minutes, and the
>  screensaver/power management turns off the monitor after ten minutes,
>  so I don't believe that was the problem either. 
I would guess this is an X issue. And typically due to a bug in graphics 
drivers. What video hardware do you have? What drivers do you use?

When it happens again, I would take a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log (if you can 
ssh from a remote machine) or /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old (if you cannot and have 
rebooted into runlevel 5 again). If X got hung, something there should give 
you a clue what happened. If you post the log here, maybe we can help more.

HTH, :-)
Marko

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
> > That's not really a BSOD, it's the Fedora boot splash screen.  You can
> > hit ESC and have the system print the text boot messages (uncovering
> > them by clearing the blue screen).
>
>  Nope, it was completely unresponsive. No network, keyboard, or mouse.
>  No ctrl-alt-bs.
>
>  The one time I saw it happen, the blue splash screen appeared and I
>  believe nearly immediately it became unresponsive. 
You may consider disabling the splash screen in /boot/grub/grub.conf
by finding your kernel entry:

title Fedora (2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686.PAE)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686.PAE ro
root=/dev/mapper/vg_circe-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_circe/lv_root
rd_LVM_LV=vg_circe/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
	initrd /initramfs-2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686.PAE.img

Edit this entry to remove the "rhgb quiet" argument.  Then, if this
happens again, and the system is rebooting, it will freeze in a state
where you can (hopefully) see where it's frozen right there in the
boot messages.

>  Under what circumstances would that splash screen occur, when the
>  system had already booted and I had logged in? I don't believe the
>  system was idle for longer than a few minutes, and the
>  screensaver/power management turns off the monitor after ten minutes,
>  so I don't believe that was the problem either. 
I can't think of any circumstance where it would appear on an already
booted system that is actively being used so unfortunately, I can't
answer this one.

-- 
Chris

[Alex]

Hi,

>  That's not really a BSOD, it's the Fedora boot splash screen.
>  You can
>  hit ESC and have the system print the text boot messages (uncovering
>  them by clearing the blue screen). 
Nope, it was completely unresponsive. No network, keyboard, or mouse.
No ctrl-alt-bs.

The one time I saw it happen, the blue splash screen appeared and I
believe nearly immediately it became unresponsive.

Under what circumstances would that splash screen occur, when the
system had already booted and I had logged in? I don't believe the
system was idle for longer than a few minutes, and the
screensaver/power management turns off the monitor after ten minutes,
so I don't believe that was the problem either.

Thanks,
Alex

[Alex]

Hi,

> > Thanks for listing to me rant for a bit.
>
>  The crack about "these RHCE guys" is rather out of order.
>
>  However, fair enough: everyone's experience is valuable.  But while
>  I'm not going to deny your problems, I just haven't had an experience
>  anything like that with any of my boxes.  It's inevitable that, with
>  improvements, some things will break with a new release, given the
>  huge range of PC hardware. 
Yes, I agree, and appreciate your attention. I don't mean to sound
disgruntled or defamatory, and also don't mean to imply they are
categorically clueless. Probably should have left that comment out; it
just stands to my frustration, particularly after posting questions
repeatedly without solutions.

I also realize it's not "shovelware"; there are always tons of new
features, and development is rapid, and usually well-tested. It's
certainly much more complex than it was many years ago. Maybe I just
wish there was a better balance between being able to rely on it for
desktop productivity, with more of the development left for rawhide.

Thanks,
Alex

[Alex]

Hi,

> > (5 cpu cores) (version 2.20.00)
> > [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: No compatible ACPI _PSS objects found.
> > [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Try again with latest BIOS.
> >
> > The sixth core isn't enabled for some reason.
> >
> > It's a very recent board (Asus Crosshair IV) with the latest BIOS.
> > Where is the best place to go for power management docs?
>
>  There are potentially so many different things going on here that,
>  were it me, I'd want to make sure that the machine does something sane 
There isn't anything wrong with the computer. I went into the BIOS and
enabled the sixth core. For some reason it was disabled, perhaps
during the BIOS update, and I just didn't go into the BIOS to check.
I've put the board, chip, memory, and all other components through
pretty aggressive tests prior to the install.

>   Maybe all the problems aren't Fedora. 
I hacked up the installer during installation to get the ethernet
controller module to load properly. The printer works fine on Ubuntu
and Windows and a much older version of Linux. I learned what not to
do during the install to prevent the disk partitioning from crashing.
Even six months after it was released some java(script?) applications
would crash FF. That's now apparently fixed.

At this time I think the power management problems on my AMD X6
processor and Asus Crosshair MB are related to the upstream power
management developers, so it's perhaps only indirectly related to
Fedora. However, there is still a "Suspend" button on my desktop that
is ineffective, and Fedora should know that it doesn't work and either
disable it or produce some type of information/error message that lets
me know it's not working.

The VM and bridging problems I have with Fedora, including the
inability for the network-manager to support bridging configurations,
is a feature drawback which I don't blame on them, but I still wonder
how anyone could be productive with the virt-manager application
without having a bridge, which has to be done by hand. The two don't
seem to work together, which makes it pretty impossible to use in any
effective way.

Thanks,
Alex

[Alex]

Hi,

> > Yes, frustrating, particularly when it's one fundamental
> thing after
> > another, like ethernet detection, printing, and basic networking.
>
>  Sure, but it works both ways: sometimes getting up-to-date software
>  from upstream fixes bugs that in a more "stable" distro you'd have to
>  wait much longer for.  For example, I used to have to install the 
Yes, for the most part, I agree. However, I've set up FC13 on at least
three desktops with varying processors, motherboards, ethernet, disks,
etc, and have had problems that would have prevented someone with less
experience than myself from being able to install it. On one of them,
I had to rmmod the forcedeth and r8169 drivers, then modprobe the
r8169 driver in order for it to properly link to the switch, all while
the installer is running. On another, the installer would crash when
making changes to the disk layout.

I've used Fedora since it was Red Hat, and started with before 4.1,
probably some twelve years ago. The first install was Yggdrasil Linux
on 60 floppy disks on my 80386. I pretty much dropped Linux on the
desktop entirely a number of years ago because I got frustrated with
the lack of progress.

By mentioning that I've been using Linux a really long time, I don't
mean to imply I'm an expert, but I have quite a bit of experience, and
don't plan on giving up on it ever. I mentioned the forcedeth example
because the board was at least three years old, so it's not like it
was some experimental driver where I'm the first person to use it.

My staff uses Ubuntu on their desktop because "it just works", but I
like RPM better, have been using Red Hat for ever, and believe that
they have better availability to development, new applications, and
wider support for new  technologies.

I'm sure that if I spent the time I could figure out where the problem
is with ghostscript that is causing my printing problems, but that's
not my job any longer. I'm just often very surprised when I see these
"RHCE" guys that can't
 troubleshoot these types of problems, and wonder if they're the same
clueless ones that are testing these before RH releases it.

Thanks for listing to me rant for a bit.
Regards,
Alex





technologies. I just wish

[Robert Myers]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
> > Sounds like your machine started going into suspend / hibernate /
> > shutdown.
> >
> > Did you close the lid? Did you set it to suspend on lid close?
>
>  It's my desktop. I have the display set to turn off after 10 minutes,
>  but I don't think it was even idle for ten minutes. The rest of the
>  power management doesn't work.
>
>  Oh yeah, forgot to add that to the list of fundamental problems --
>  power management doesn't work. Here's a few messages relating to that:
>
>  powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor processors
>  (5 cpu cores) (version 2.20.00)
>  [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: No compatible ACPI _PSS objects found.
>  [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Try again with latest BIOS.
>
>  The sixth core isn't enabled for some reason.
>
>  It's a very recent board (Asus Crosshair IV) with the latest BIOS.
>  Where is the best place to go for power management docs?
>  
Well, let's see.

There are potentially so many different things going on here that,
were it me, I'd want to make sure that the machine does something sane
under some circumstance, even if it meant installing a different
operating system on a different hard drive.

"Sane," as far as I'm concerned, would mean recognizing all six cores.
 Maybe all the problems aren't Fedora.

Robert.

[Andrew Haley]

On 07/27/2010 04:16 PM, Alex wrote:

> > that's kind of the point of fedora. if you want something
> stable, use
> > CentOS (or RHEL) or maybe an ubuntu variant. I think the benefits of a
> > cutting edge distro outweigh the drawbacks, but I agree that it is
> > very frustrating when something fundamental stops working.
>  
>  Yes, frustrating, particularly when it's one fundamental thing after
>  another, like ethernet detection, printing, and basic networking. 
Sure, but it works both ways: sometimes getting up-to-date software
from upstream fixes bugs that in a more "stable" distro you'd have to
wait much longer for.  For example, I used to have to install the
proprietary nvidia driver, but one day I upgraded Fedora and the
latest nouveau driver just worked.  There's a lot to be said for that.

Andrew.

[Alex]

Hi,

>  Sounds like your machine started going into suspend / hibernate /
>  shutdown.
>
>  Did you close the lid? Did you set it to suspend on lid close? 
It's my desktop. I have the display set to turn off after 10 minutes,
but I don't think it was even idle for ten minutes. The rest of the
power management doesn't work.

Oh yeah, forgot to add that to the list of fundamental problems --
power management doesn't work. Here's a few messages relating to that:

powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor processors
(5 cpu cores) (version 2.20.00)
[Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: No compatible ACPI _PSS objects found.
[Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Try again with latest BIOS.

The sixth core isn't enabled for some reason.

It's a very recent board (Asus Crosshair IV) with the latest BIOS.
Where is the best place to go for power management docs?

Thanks,
Alex

[Chris Rouch]

On 27 July 2010 16:44, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
>  Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>  blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>  screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>
>  Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs. 

you could reboot, switch to a text console (e.g ctrl f2) have a look
in $HOME/.xsession-errors, though I've you've logged in again already
it's probably been overwritten. my guess would be that something
killed your X session. If you're running f13 and have an nvidia card,
then I've seen this too. The only way i got a working environment was
to switch to nouveau and disable 3d eye candy. Anything else caused
problems. (actually the f12 kernel + f13 nvidia rpms also worked on
f13, but I decided that was a backwards step) if you have other
hardware or are running f12  then this is something else (though
looking in .xsession-errors is still valid).

>  What the hell happened?
>
>  This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
>  another, 
that's kind of the point of fedora. if you want something stable, use
CentOS (or RHEL) or maybe an ubuntu variant. I think the benefits of a
cutting edge distro outweigh the drawbacks, but I agree that it is
very frustrating when something fundamental stops working.

>  and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop.
>
>  Ideas greatly appreciated.
>  Thanks,
>  Alex 

Regards,

Chris

[Rick Stevens]

On 08/05/2010 01:56 PM, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:
>  On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 10:44 -0400, Alex wrote:
> > As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
> > Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
> > blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
> > screen, and the whole computer locked up.
> >
> > Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.
> >
> > What the hell happened?
> >
> > This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
> > another, and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop.
>
>  Lately I've been having random desktop lockups (i.e. I can't do
>  anything), but I can still hear my mp3s playing.  My mouse stops working
>  on a whim, forcing me to use my keyboard to close apps and then switch
>  to a pty to kill my messed up Gnome session.  Sound stops working for no
>  apparent, although I can bring it back easily enough by restarting
>  pulseaudio.
>
>  Just a little while ago my desktop froze again and I had to do a hard
>  power off to get it back.
>
>  I'm not sure if it's something flaky with my hardware or if it's Fedora
>  12 that's somehow hosed.  My PC at work runs Fedora 12 flawlessly, so
>  I'm starting to think my hardware is wonky, but I'm not yet convinced. 
Are you using an Asus motherboard such as the M3N78-VM?  There are
known problems with the nVidia MCP78S-based USB ports on the Asus
boards (not just the model above) that can cause random lock ups.  This
isn't a Linux-only thing--there are a number of reports that it does it
with Winblows also.  The dead giveaway is the mouse and/or keyboard
freezing with X starting to suck up 100% of one of the CPU cores.  I
know--I've been bitten by it quite a lot recently.

There's no fix that I know of.  It appears to be a hardware design
issue.  I have purchased a new motherboard (can't remember the make)
that specifically does NOT use nVidia.  It uses an AMD chipset instead
of nVidia and an ATI video card.  I haven't installed it yet, but will
this weekend.  Also will give me a chance to poke around with the ATI
video drivers (fun, fun, fun!).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, C2 Hosting          ricks(a)nerd.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
-                                                                    -
-      "Doctor!  My brain hurts!"  "It will have to come out!"      
-
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Frank Murphy]

On 27/07/10 15:44, Alex wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
>  Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>  blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>  screen, and the whole computer locked up. 
Having a quick look.
What is the host box?
cpu\ram
Is NetworkManager runnng?
What do you use for the VM's? Vbox xen kvm etc.


-- 
Regards,

Frank Murphy
UTF_8 Encoded
Friend of Fedora