Hi

I have had my Dell Inspiron 6000 for a month and have from the beginning had a XP pro/Mandriva 2006 multiboot. Occasionally the computer freezes... I have convinced myself that as long as I have firefox open this happens very seldom. But it does happen and usually a few times with in 10-15 minutes. I have tried to save parts of /var/log/messages every time this happens and three lines are very often the last printed before the system hangs:

Apr 13 10:30:38 betonarbejder net_applet[5081]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r eth2
Apr 13 10:30:38 betonarbejder net_applet[5081]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r -a eth2
Apr 13 10:30:38 betonarbejder net_applet[5081]: running: /sbin/iwlist eth2 scanning

This is almost always what I find but sometimes it is different: This freeze is right after booting the computer:

Apr 8 17:02:00 betonarbejder net_applet[4763]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r eth2
Apr 8 17:02:00 betonarbejder net_applet[4763]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r -a eth2
Apr 8 17:02:00 betonarbejder net_applet[4763]: running: /sbin/iwlist eth2 scanning
Apr 8 17:02:01 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
Apr 8 17:02:05 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
Apr 8 17:02:12 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13

And this is one time I couldn't connect to the WLAN:

ar 29 10:04:06 betonarbejder net_applet[5085]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r eth2
Mar 29 10:04:06 betonarbejder net_applet[5085]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r -a eth2
Mar 29 10:04:06 betonarbejder net_applet[5085]: running: /sbin/iwlist eth2 scanning
Mar 29 10:04:07 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
Mar 29 10:04:12 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
Mar 29 10:04:15 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
Mar 29 10:04:18 betonarbejder net_monitor[5547]: launched command: /usr/sbin/usernetctl eth2 report
Mar 29 10:04:18 betonarbejder net_monitor[5547]: running: /sbin/ifup eth2 daemon
Mar 29 10:04:18 betonarbejder dhclient: eth0: unknown hardware address type 24
Mar 29 10:04:19 betonarbejder dhclient: eth0: unknown hardware address type 24
Mar 29 10:04:20 betonarbejder nmbd[4828]: [2006/03/29 10:04:20, 0] libsmb/nmblib.c:send_udp(791)
Mar 29 10:04:20 betonarbejder nmbd[4828]: Packet send failed to 192.168.2.255(138) ERRNO=Invalid argument
Mar 29 10:04:23 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Mar 29 10:04:26 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 21
Mar 29 10:04:27 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
Mar 29 10:04:31 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Mar 29 10:04:42 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
Mar 29 10:04:46 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
Mar 29 10:04:47 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 20
Mar 29 10:04:54 betonarbejder dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9

I don't know where to start and though I've been running Mandriva for a couple of years now, Im still quite newbie / user. I have suspected my WLAN card (Intel 2200 BG) for all this due to what I find in /var/log/messages but one thing that really makes the system unstable is my external harddrive. Its the same whether it's plugged in by the firewire port or USB and therefore I have avoided using the disk in Linux.

This could all be two differnet problems or just one thing.. I can't figure it out. I hope that someone can help me. I have not 'spammed' this thread with /var/log/messages yet... Please tell me what details I should post - I need a push in the right direction.

Finally some details on my system:
Dell Inspiron 6000
Intel Pro Wireless 2200 BG
3 partitions:
20Gb Primary FAT32 WinXPPro
20Gb Ext3 Mandriva 2006
1.1Gb Swap Partition
60Gb Fat32 Data partition

I suspect it's your wireless card. I have the Intel Pro 2915 in my laptop and if I try and use the drivers built into the kernel, I get random freezes as well. I ended up having to rebuild the kernel without the drivers and then use a third party wireless NIC card (an old Linksys 802.11b card) and now my laptop never hangs (well, at least not because of the NIC card).

I did manage to have some success with the Intel 2915 drivers that were available outside the kernel sources, but just found it easier in the end to use my old Linksys card.

Thanks for your reply. I would prefer not to use another wlan card, so do you think updating the driver would do any good? I have found this driver site: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ and think it looks like what I need. Some day soon I will try to update my driver - it seems to be well described.

I also havw a Dell Insp6000..

Does the same thing but don't know why..

I originally had success getting my wireless card to work using that site ... for a while. It reached a certain version (1.0.6 maybe) and then it just stopped working. When it finally showed up in the kernel source, I compiled it successfully there, but like I mentioned earlier, I kept having the same hang-ups that you were describing. Since I already had an old Linksys card laying around from a previous laptop, the solution (hopefully temporary) was obvious.

Try your luck at the latest drivers on http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net. Maybe they'll work for you.

Hi Again

A couple of weeks ago I updated the drivers to ipw2200BG v1.1 and to start with the computer did well. A few crashes but this weekend the computer has been crashing more than usual.
It still seems to be related to the accessing hard drives, but I don't know where to look for things relating to the crashes (log files etc.). Any ideas?

Johannes

I have now been using Kubuntu 6.06 for more than three month, and the problem doesnt occurs any more. I still dont know what caused the problem, but it isnt there anymore...