system lock up

[chris]

Hi all,

I am somewhat at a loss for how to debug this problem.

Basically my system locks up, its a workstation grade Xeon I do 
development on, essentially, the screen (in X) freezes, the keyboard 
locks, the network locks (it stops responding to ping).  The only 
visible indicator I get when it freezes is sometimes, I see a 4 or 5 
pixel high band of grey/brown that spans the width of the window I am 
currently working in.

I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I can 
let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start doing 
work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in about 3 
hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row without a 
problem.

I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
Thanks in Advance
chris

My System:
Motherboard: IWill DP533
Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
Memory: 1G RAM
O/S: Fedora Core 4

thanks in advance.

[Mike McCarty]

chris wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am somewhat at a loss for how to debug this problem.
>
> Basically my system locks up, its a workstation grade Xeon I do 
> development on, essentially, the screen (in X) freezes, the keyboard 
> locks, the network locks (it stops responding to ping).  The only 
> visible indicator I get when it freezes is sometimes, I see a 4 or 5 
> pixel high band of grey/brown that spans the width of the window I am 
> currently working in.
>
> I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I can 
> let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start doing 
> work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in about 3 
> hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row without a 
> problem.

This sounds like it might be a hardware problem.
> I would like any ideas on how to debug this.

First suggestion: run MEMTEST for a few days without interruptions.

No, wait, my Zeroth suggestion: Check that your fans are running
and that the CPU temp is not out of spec.

[snip]

Mike

[Benjamin Franz]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, chris wrote:

[...]
> I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I can let 
> the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start doing work on it, 
> I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in about 3 hours today).  But 
> sometimes I can work several days in a row without a problem.
>
> I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
> My System:
> Motherboard: IWill DP533
> Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
> Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
> Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
> Memory: 1G RAM
> O/S: Fedora Core 4

I would look at your power supply. If you have a spare high wattage (480 
Watt or bigger) P/S handy, I would try swapping it. A flaky power supply 
can cause random crashing - particularly under load. Other things that 
commonly cause random crashes on previously stable systems are overheating 
and bad RAM.

[Bill Rees]

Benjamin Franz wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, chris wrote:
>
> [...]
> > I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I 
> > can let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start 
> > doing work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in 
> > about 3 hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row 
> > without a problem.
> >
> > I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
> > My System:
> > Motherboard: IWill DP533
> > Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
> > Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
> > Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
> > Memory: 1G RAM
> > O/S: Fedora Core 4
>
> I would look at your power supply. If you have a spare high wattage 
> (480 Watt or bigger) P/S handy, I would try swapping it. A flaky power 
> supply can cause random crashing - particularly under load. Other 
> things that commonly cause random crashes on previously stable systems 
> are overheating and bad RAM.

Is this a new Xeon system will multicore?  I.E. are you running an up 
kernel on an mp system?

[Robin Laing]

chris wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am somewhat at a loss for how to debug this problem.
>
> Basically my system locks up, its a workstation grade Xeon I do 
> development on, essentially, the screen (in X) freezes, the keyboard 
> locks, the network locks (it stops responding to ping).  The only 
> visible indicator I get when it freezes is sometimes, I see a 4 or 5 
> pixel high band of grey/brown that spans the width of the window I am 
> currently working in.
>
> I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I can 
> let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start doing 
> work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in about 3 
> hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row without a 
> problem.
>
> I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
> Thanks in Advance
> chris
>
> My System:
> Motherboard: IWill DP533
> Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
> Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
> Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
> Memory: 1G RAM
> O/S: Fedora Core 4
>
> thanks in advance.

I just got over a similar problem and my fault was traced to a 
insufficient power supply.  Changed from 400 to 500 watt and no lockups.

I checked with a power calculator and it showed that I needed about 
440 watts.

Do the Math to Get Your PC All the Power It Needs
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119585,pg,2,00.asp

[Tim]

On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 14:53 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
> Do the Math to Get Your PC All the Power It Needs
> http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119585,pg,2,00.asp

Hmm, and mine does so well with its 90 Watt supply whereas their list
suggests I need around 210 Watts...  I find the power needs of some
computer parts to be a bit over-the-top, likewise with the amount of
heat some things generate and don't adequately dissipate.  Design
doesn't appear to be too fantastic in a lot of cases (whoever decided
that PCI cards should be upside down with the hottest parts underneath
ought to be flogged).

It really would help if manufacturers put their power requirements on
their parts.

[Anil Kumar Sharma]

Try running your system with Knoppix or with WinXP (via a separate hard
drive) and do a systematic elimination of faulty hardware which may be a as
simple as mouse/keyboard/external HDD . Since the problem has a random
repeatable nature it may be time consuming. Therefore least expensive
options may be tried first. First I will check memtest as much as can be
afforded / tolerated but not more than overnight. Second I will double check
external HDD then mouse/keyboard. After that (it can be a week) try other
expensive items. It can be as complex as CPU/mobo if ur solution is not
simple.
I hope U post the solution in detail when U arrive at by any means.
Wish U Good luck.

On 10/13/05, Tim  wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 14:53 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
> > Do the Math to Get Your PC All the Power It Needs
> > http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119585,pg,2,00.asp
>
> Hmm, and mine does so well with its 90 Watt supply whereas their list
> suggests I need around 210 Watts... I find the power needs of some
> computer parts to be a bit over-the-top, likewise with the amount of
> heat some things generate and don't adequately dissipate. Design
> doesn't appear to be too fantastic in a lot of cases (whoever decided
> that PCI cards should be upside down with the hottest parts underneath
> ought to be flogged).
>
> It really would help if manufacturers put their power requirements on
> their parts.
>
> --
> Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
> I read messages from the public lists.
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

--
Anil Kumar Shrama

[Gordon Keehn]

chris wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am somewhat at a loss for how to debug this problem.
>
> Basically my system locks up, its a workstation grade Xeon I do 
> development on, essentially, the screen (in X) freezes, the keyboard 
> locks, the network locks (it stops responding to ping).  The only 
> visible indicator I get when it freezes is sometimes, I see a 4 or 5 
> pixel high band of grey/brown that spans the width of the window I am 
> currently working in.
>
> I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I can 
> let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start doing 
> work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in about 3 
> hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row without 
> a problem.
>
> I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
> Thanks in Advance
> chris
>
> My System:
> Motherboard: IWill DP533
> Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
> Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
> Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
> Memory: 1G RAM
> O/S: Fedora Core 4
>
> thanks in advance.

Hi, Chris
    I've seen this problem myself in FC3, and in Win2K.  In each case 
the problem was a mismatched video driver.  The common factor is the 
line across the screen when the system locks up.
    Cheers,
Gordon Keehn

[chris]

Thanks for all of the postings/suggestions,

I have looked at the video driver, it is using the RADEON driver, is 
there possibly a problem with the generic/oem cards?

I tried running memtest for a few hours, several times.

One thing I have noticed, a couple of the times before the system 
shutdown was it started doing a DHCPREQUEST for eth0 (built into the 
MB)  about once every minute, the last time, it did that for about 12 
hours starting at 6pm, and continued until the system shutdown at 2am...

I was on the system until about midnight, but didnt even notice it was 
having this issue....

Also, I did get sensors running, and it shows a couple of numbers being 
off... below is what sensors currently telling me, The one that seems to 
always be out of whack is VCore2... could this be sensors not reporting 
correctly or more likely a problem with my power supply?  Thanks again 
for any suggestions, unfortunatelly, I require this sytem for my daily 
work, so its pretty tough for me to debug this very quickly...

w83627hf-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore 1:   +1.46 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.57 V)
VCore 2:   +1.18 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.57 V)
+3.3V:     +3.30 V  (min =  +3.14 V, max =  +3.47 V)
+5V:       +4.97 V  (min =  +4.76 V, max =  +5.24 V)
+12V:     +11.80 V  (min = +10.82 V, max = +13.19 V)
-12V:     -11.62 V  (min = -13.18 V, max = -10.80 V)
-5V:       +3.54 V  (min =  -5.25 V, max =  -4.75 V)
V5SB:      +5.46 V  (min =  +4.76 V, max =  +5.24 V)
VBat:      +3.22 V  (min =  +2.40 V, max =  +3.60 V)
fan1:     6192 RPM  (min = 4115 RPM, div = 2)
fan2:     6250 RPM  (min =   -1 RPM, div = 2)
fan3:        0 RPM  (min = 1622 RPM, div = 8)
temp1:       +67°C  (high =    +8°C, hyst =  -126°C)   sensor = 
thermistor     
temp2:      +7.0°C  (high =  +120°C, hyst =  +115°C)   sensor = diode
temp3:     +57.0°C  (high =  +120°C, hyst =  +115°C)   sensor = 
thermistor     
vid:      +1.500 V  (VRM Version 9.0)
alarms:   Chassis intrusion detection                      ALARM
beep_enable:
          Sound alarm disabled

Gordon Keehn wrote:
> chris wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am somewhat at a loss for how to debug this problem.
> >
> > Basically my system locks up, its a workstation grade Xeon I do 
> > development on, essentially, the screen (in X) freezes, the keyboard 
> > locks, the network locks (it stops responding to ping).  The only 
> > visible indicator I get when it freezes is sometimes, I see a 4 or 5 
> > pixel high band of grey/brown that spans the width of the window I am 
> > currently working in.
> >
> > I dont see anything out of the ordinary that something is wrong, I 
> > can let the system sit for days and it runs fine, but when I start 
> > doing work on it, I start seeing the freezes (it froze up twice in 
> > about 3 hours today).  But sometimes I can work several days in a row 
> > without a problem.
> >
> > I would like any ideas on how to debug this.
> > Thanks in Advance
> > chris
> >
> > My System:
> > Motherboard: IWill DP533
> > Processors: Dual 2.4GHz Xeon 533MHZ processors
> > Video: ATI Radeon 6500LE
> > Hard Drive: several small external SCSI Hard drives
> > Memory: 1G RAM
> > O/S: Fedora Core 4
> >
> > thanks in advance.
>
> Hi, Chris
>    I've seen this problem myself in FC3, and in Win2K.  In each case 
> the problem was a mismatched video driver.  The common factor is the 
> line across the screen when the system locks up.
>    Cheers,
> Gordon Keehn

[James Wilkinson]

chris wrote:
> I have looked at the video driver, it is using the RADEON driver, is 
> there possibly a problem with the generic/oem cards?

Didn't see the earlier messages, but I had a problem with my old Radeon
card. I found that by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, commenting out
        Load  "dri"
(with a # at the start of the line), and changing the radeon driver to
ati, I could get a stable desktop.

Warning: this will disable 3D acceleration, but leave 2D working.

You might want to try this and see if it helps system stability.

I never worked out if this was a board problem or a chipset problem.

Hope this helps,

James.

[Tim]

On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 13:20 -0700, chris wrote:
> Also, I did get sensors running, and it shows a couple of numbers
> being off... below is what sensors currently telling me, The one that
> seems to always be out of whack is VCore2... could this be sensors not
> reporting correctly or more likely a problem with my power supply?
>
> w83627hf-isa-0290
> Adapter: ISA adapter
> VCore 1:   +1.46 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.57 V)
> VCore 2:   +1.18 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.57 V)

I see similar silliness one two of my systems (out of range voltages,
negative and wildly excessive temperatures).

My motherboard BIOS has its own display of the same sorts of
information, but yields different results.  I tend to believe that
lm_sensors is returning bogus values, and its documentation makes it
seem worse than useless.