So much for stable XD

[SamF]

Running Ubuntu latest version for the last 3 days and twice now it's just froze, any linux gods know what could be the cause ?

[Mancie]

Entwisi is the god of linux ..(at the very least an angel).. he will sort it out

[entwisi]

What version of Ubuntu?

are you doing anything specific at the time or is it totally at random? Its unusual to lock up completely.

Couple of things you can try.

Press CTRL ALT and Backspace together.(Not Delete as per the windows three fingered salute). This will restart X ( The graphical element).

If the above doesn't work then try CTRL ALT F1-F5 This will open a command line terminal ( NO X, that is sent to the background, Press CTRL ALT F7 to bring it back)

If you can get in to CLI then let me know and I'll tell you what to type then.

If none of teh above do anything press teh num lock key a few times and look if teh light on the keyboard goes on and off as expected

If the above don't work then after you restart open a terminal and type

cd /var/log
ls -lrt

the last command will list all files with full details in date/time order with the latest files last in the list. Look for any files that were written to just before the time the PC last froze.

Make a brief note of the files that have been updated since and tell me what they are.

Likewise tell me what files were written to just before the freeze.

I'm guessing you have some quirky piece of hardware that it doesn't like

Again in a terminal type

lspci
lsusb

And post the output in this thread. ( YOu can do this anytime, but make sure all hardware is plugged in particularly usb stuff that you don't always have in.)

[mr_flibble]

As entwisi says it probably is some odd hardware configuration you have that it doesnt quite like. I've had problems myself in the past normally with AMD processor based systems and used to have loads of problems on IBM thinkpads.

[SamF]

Originally Posted by cd /var/log /// ls -lrt

-rw-r----- 1 root adm 25014 2008-01-30 14:16 dmesg.0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 768 2008-01-30 14:18 btmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-30 14:22 cups
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 111204 2008-01-30 14:22 syslog.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27164 2008-01-30 15:20 Xorg.0.log.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 334372 2008-01-30 17:23 udev
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 25157 2008-01-30 17:23 dmesg
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-30 17:23 gdm
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 1014 2008-01-30 17:23 acpid
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 2931 2008-01-30 17:23 user.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 7210 2008-01-30 17:23 auth.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27109 2008-01-30 17:23 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 97005 2008-01-30 17:24 debug
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 183865 2008-01-30 17:24 daemon.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 114294 2008-01-30 17:25 syslog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 252017 2008-01-30 17:25 messages
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 266750 2008-01-30 17:25 kern.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 71040 2008-01-30 17:26 wtmp

All the things that have been done on the date of the latest crash, was afk at the time of crash so not sure what time it happened, looks to be around 3.30 though.

And other one - crashed whilst making this post XD

Crash time 5.31pm 30/1/08

-rw-r----- 1 root adm 7809 2008-01-30 14:16 dmesg.1.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 768 2008-01-30 14:18 btmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-30 14:22 cups
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 111204 2008-01-30 14:22 syslog.0
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 25157 2008-01-30 17:23 dmesg.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27109 2008-01-30 17:23 Xorg.0.log.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 334779 2008-01-30 17:32 udev
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 26007 2008-01-30 17:32 dmesg
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-30 17:32 gdm
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 1314 2008-01-30 17:32 acpid
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 3555 2008-01-30 17:33 user.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 7708 2008-01-30 17:33 auth.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27109 2008-01-30 17:33 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 121427 2008-01-30 17:33 debug
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 241391 2008-01-30 17:33 daemon.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 74880 2008-01-30 17:34 wtmp
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 219141 2008-01-30 17:35 syslog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 294053 2008-01-30 17:35 messages
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 313001 2008-01-30 17:35 kern.log

The lspci and lsusb returned this:

sam@sam-desktop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Xpress 200 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI-X Root Port
00:11.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc 437A Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc 4379 Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 81)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller (rev 80)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7500 LE] (rev a1)
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev c0)
sam@sam-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 0bda:0111 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5543:0005 UC-Logic Technology Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 093a:010e Pixart Imaging, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Also, when crashed the num lock light does not switch on and off, and none of the other things you suggested got a response.

Thanks for the help

[andrewb]

Is your video card actually an nvidia gforce 7500?

Perhaps it's me being stupid as I don't particularly know about new hardware setups but it strikes me as odd that the motherboard stuff is ati yet your graphics card is nvidia

[entwisi]

no issue with that Andrew,

Can I ask what type of driver you are using for the Gfx card. There is a standard one in the kernel called nv or there is a proprietry driver from Nvidia themselves that is called nvidia. The latter is usually installed using the restricted driver package .

It looks like your X server is whats dying. As X manages the screen and the HID's it doesn't surprise me that you get no response from the keyboard.

If you have another PC in the network you could try enabling ssh on your ubuntu and when it 'crashes' try to log on from the other PC using Putty if its windows or ssh CLI if its another *nix based machine. That will tell you if the kernel itself is dead or if its just X.( this is one of the beauty's of Linux over Windows. A crashed X system won;t kill teh kernel as its totally seperate. If you do log on you can even kill X from the other machine and restart it (use /etc/init.d/gdm stop and /etc/init.d/gdm start )

If your using teh nvidia package try dropping back to nv to test. If its fine on that then let us have more details of what driver version you are using.

Also, Have you enabld compiz Fusion?