Ubuntu 10.10 total freeze; no pattern as to when

It will be hard to debug this without more info; a full freeze like that sounds like a kernel panic, but it might not be.

Some more info might help, but again might not... so:

* Do you have a keyboard with num lock/caps lock/scroll lock? If so, you might want to plug that in, and see if you get flashing lights on the keys during the next freeze.

* Can you provide the output of these commands entered into a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T)? Please paste this to the ubuntu pastebin website, http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/ , as it can be a little long. Then post the link here.

lsmod
lspci
lsusb
uname -a
lsb_release -a

If you are using a proprietary driver for your video card, try switching it out for the open-source driver, or vice versa. you can usually achieve this with blacklisting the appropriate driver modules. I can't tell you which module until you provide the lsmod and lspci output.

In addition unplug for example external usb hd, plugin ethernet cable instead going wireless.
Note date and time of freeze, then review logfiles if they reveal anything at time of freeze. e.g. syslog, kern.log, dmesg, Xorg.0.log.
System administration -> log viewer

> 512MB RAM

Rather less for 10.10, minimum require these days is 1GB.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Run Mem test, available on boot menu. Note, this may take a while, in case over night.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MemoryTest

Please also show us output from
sudo fdisk -l

maybe disk is running out of space.

mycae and Sam_

Thank you both for the replies. I've pasted outputs from lsmod, lspci, lsusb, uname -a, lsb_release -a and sudo fdisk -l at http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/592305/ I should be grand for disk space though.

I've been running with an ethernet cable anyway, and initially thought it might have something to do with the usb devices attached (a mouse and an external HD) so unplugged one, then the other, then both, but the freezes continued. Have checked syslog after freezes but there wasn't anything at all on there which coincided with freezes. Will check the others though.

Regarding the drivers I thought I may have done something wrong at initial install by updating the nvidia drivers, so did a complete format and reinstall and tried running without the proprietary drivers offered, but it still froze. So I installed them to see if it would fix it, and it still froze.

Also yup, the keyboard has lights for caps lock, num lock and so on, which become inactive on freezing - i.e. if they're lit, they stay lit, if they're not, they don't come on.

Again, thank you very much for your efforts to help.

You are currently running the Noveau drivers, which are the open source 3D accelerated drivers;
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nouveau_%28graphics%29

It's possible (but so are many other things, such as bad ram like Sam says) that it is the driver + card combo so try switching this for the nvidia driver
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/nvidia

The problem with sys freezes and logs are that often the system can freeze before it gets a chance to log; which is kinda annoying!

Its noteworthy that you are not getting a slow on-off blink for your keyboard lights though. Flashing lights would indicate that the kernel has detected the panic, whereas the absence of this would indicate an in-kernel "spin" lockup (possible) or a physical hardware problem (also possible).

Ok, have followed the instructions and we'll see how it goes.

Would it be worth reinstalling with a minimal install as described on the page Sam provided here? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Although I guess I'll only worry about that if swapping the drivers doesn't work - fingers crossed and thanks again.

C

Also try rebooting and hold SHIFT and select the memtest, make sure the ram is healthy.

have you installed the latest updates?

have had a similar problem with 10.04 the last couple of months, in addition, the system would intermittently reboot itself. after the updates a few weeks ago, the freezing stopped, however, it's still rebooting by itself. another person posted the same problem a couple of weeks ago. i suspect there's a problem with the kernel, which hasn't been updated in awhile.

if you don't have intermittent rebooting, you can try installing the updates if you haven't done so already.

also, try disabling compiz if you have it enabled. compiz causes havoc on some computers.

Hi marcus aurelius,

Yeah, I've tried to be good about keeping it updated, if nothing else because I thought if it was a known thing then an update might fix. In fact, it's frozen mid-update more than once!

Hi actionparsnip,

Will run the memtest. Is there anything in particular I should look for when I do it? I'll probably go ahead anyway in the hope that it will be apparent...

Thanks again for your help, you're a lovely bunch of people!

If it's good it will stay like this:
http://www.memtest.org/pics/i875-big.gif

If it's bad you will see this sort of thing (andwould explain your issue):
http://tugagames.com/victor/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/memtest86.jpg

in the old days, when memory goes bad, the computer halts and displays the message: parity error.

i'm convinced it's more a kernel problem than anything else, as several people in the last couple of weeks have reported this problem. i ran memtest several times, the last time for more than 12 hours and no memory problem was reported.

memtest ran ok, ran for 4 hours then the computer shut itself down...should this have happened? In any case over a number of passes everything was still grand.

So if it's the kernel is there anything I can do about it?

What does:

lsmod
lspci
lsusb
uname -a
lsb_release -a

output as mycae requested?

That's all at http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/592305/

Oh, and looks like I was wrong about the RAM - when I check the system monitor it says 874 MB RAM, which ties up with what the memtest showed.

Have also checked the syslog, kern.log and auth.log after a freeze, having made a note of the time of the freeze. There was nothing happening any time around the freeze; the most recent event in the syslog was

CRON[2174]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)

but that was 36 minutes before the freeze...

I have the same problem...any solution for this ?

This is what I have in the syslog just 1-2 seconds before crashing

Apr 30 03:24:08 HP-Pavilion-TX2500-Notebook gdm-simple-greeter[1272]: Gtk-WARNING: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.24.4/gtk/gtkwidget.c:5687: widget not w$
Apr 30 03:24:08 HP-Pavilion-TX2500-Notebook kernel: [ 26.008226] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0
Apr 30 03:24:09 HP-Pavilion-TX2500-Notebook kernel: [ 26.568043] eth1: no IPv6 routers present
Apr 30 03:24:09 HP-Pavilion-TX2500-Notebook gdm-simple-greeter[1272]: WARNING: Unable to load CK history: no seat-id found
Apr 30 03:24:10 HP-Pavilion-TX2500-Notebook gdm-session-worker[1276]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_value_get_boolean: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_BOOLEAN$

Regards.

I forgot to specify that the problem is in Ubuntu 11.04. I will create another link

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1589135

Can I suggest you have a look at this page? My problem was exactly the same and it worked for me:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1589135