Ubuntu

Random Crash on Ubuntu but can't recover log

Asked by idyllic

Greeting, I have a few nasty system freezes the past week on my laptop (Toshiba Tecra M5) running Ubuntu 7.10. While i was doing work on, the machine just freeze, and the fan run at maximum speed and produce lots of noise. I can't Alt+SysReq+L (as per Ubuntu DebuggingSystemCrash Guide suggest) to get the log, cos the machine just hang there. So i have to forced-shutdown (partly I was afraid of breaking the fan hardware). After reboot I check gnome-log but there was only a restart log. It seems that force reboot can't produce any log?? (pardon my inexperience in linux, I am quite new and still learning). Is there anyway for me to get the log for this kind of crash?

Programmes that were notably present during the crashes: amsn, firefox+flashVideo, exaile/banshee, vpnc, compiz-fusion.

PS: apparently, when I ask around in Ubuntu channel, another user also experience the same problem but on Desktop.

Thank you very much for your kind assistance,

Regards,

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Expired
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Kunin (valsacar) said : 		#1

Having basically the same issue here. Here are my specs:

GeForce 6200 w/ two monitors connected.
Quadro 280 NVS w/ two monitors connected(total of 4). GLX only works on the 6200 atm, but that's fine for my purposes. Setup is two twinviews in xinerama.
4G RAM, 3 HD (1 for /, 1 for /home and 1 for movies).
Opteron dual core 1.8Ghz, normally OC to 2.35Ghz but currently not as part of testing.
Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit , only unofficial are the nvidia drivers(169.07 from nvidia's site), adobe flash plugin(due to broken repositories) and Firefox(installed via ubuntuzilla as I need Javascript 1.5 that the official doesn't have).
Kernel: 2.6.22-14-generic
Brand new 500W PSU.

The restricted Nvidia drivers from the repos do not work for my set up, nor do the free versions. Only ones that work for how I have things set up are the official ones from Nvidia's site.

I've stress tested the CPU, tested the RAM for over 30 hours with MemTest86+, checked all HDs. Nvidia drivers are the correct for the cards I have, and this box had no video problems when it was an XP box.

I will replace the PSU with a 750W or 1KW soon to test if that has anyhting to do with it, but in my tests I have found that the freezes seem to ONLY happen with a browser is running. I installed the Epiphany browser to see if it was Firefox but I had the same problems. I tried removing the adobe plugin but also with no luck.

The lock ups are complete, cannot move the mouse, screen freezes, no keyboard and can't ping or ssh in from my other box. The only thing I can do is to hard reboot, which twice now has led to my system coming back up with a major GLX error that would crash X any time I tried to use something that needs GLX. That was fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the Nvidia drivers(this is a new thing.. .within the last two days, the freezes have been since I installed Ubuntu 2 weeks ago).

Xorg.0.log shows nothing glaring, says the GPU running screen 1 is incompatible and can't use OpenGL on it... but that's fine by me. syslog/kernlog/dmesg/etc all show nothing out of the ordinary.

I'm no Linux expert, but I've been running some flavour for years as a secondary system(mainly FC and Ubuntu) and now have decided to go 100% Linux... minus this small stability issue.

Revision history for this message
Kunin (valsacar) said : 		#2

An update, I just had another freeze without any browsers open. I had VLC running on Screen 1(where GLX doesn't work) for about 30 minutes before the freeze happened... I'm pretty much at a loss for what could be causing this.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Needs information' state without activity for the last 15 days.