laptop freezes in debian, ubuntu
 

Hi -

I have had problems for some time with my laptop suddenly freezing up when I am running Debian. There does not seem to be any pattern to it, it will just suddenly freeze. Nothing will work except powering down and back up. I thought that it might be something with Debian itself so I tried installing Ubuntu today, but it happened again!

Any ideas as to why this could be happening, and what I can do about it? I know that Ubuntu is Debian-based so I may not have changed my situation any in that respect, but I thought maybe...

Thanks

I don't think there's enough information here.

When does it freeze? During bootup? Are you in a windowed environment? Are you doing anything in particular? Printing? Browsing the web?

Care to futz around with the Ubuntu live CD and see if the same happens?

Sorry about the lack of info.

It generally freezes up during operation, in graphical user mode. I'll be working on something and then it suddenly stops and nothing will revive it save powering off and back on.

Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. I haven't been able to figure out any rhyme or reason to it. Is there some sort of log I can examine, perhaps have a running log on my desktop to see if it can be detected from that?

Due to the random nature of the freeze-ups, I don't know how much the live CD would help. I did try running the Kubuntu (don't know if there's much differencs aside from the name and default DE) live CD yesterday and didn't have any problems there. But there have been days that I have been working on my laptop all day with no freeze-ups. Other times, it won't even finish loading everything.

Hope this helps. I'm not too strong at Linux but am willing to get my hands dirty as long as soap and water are available.

Alright. Here's another question:

When it freezes, does it hard-freeze? Are you able to move the mouse pointer?

To anyone else: Is there a way to kill X when it has crashed?

I thought ubuntu was Gnome and kubuntu was KDE? Is that a big difference? Can it be?

When it freezes, I can't do ANYTHING.
Move the mouse, nothing.
Press a key, nothing.
Press a combination of keys, nothing.
Press and hold power button, laptop shuts off, I can restart it and proceed until the next time it freezes.

Like I said, there is no pattern that I can see to when it freezes. I was trying to respond to this post earlier today and it froze up on me.

As far as Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu, the only difference I can tell is Gnome vs. KDE. I installed from a Ubuntu CD but added KDE and when I logged in using KDE, everything said Kubuntu. But my machine freezes in both of these and other desktops such as XFCE.

Same here!
 

I have discovered today that I am indeed having the exact same problem. The system will completely lock up while in the graphical interface. The mouse doesn't move, the keyboard is locked up, etc.

I'm running Ubuntu kernel 2.6.12-10.386 with Nvidia drivers modules installed. Perhaps this may be the problem, are you running the same?

Would be interested in any additional help!

Thanks

I had problem with my laptop as well with freezing matters. The processor was getting extremely hot! That much that I could frie an egg :p I just cleaned it and now the fan is working much less and not any freezes so far.

You may have a hardware problem. Laptops manufactures still upto this day have what is known as bad caps, the wrong mixture was used in the capacitors due to an industrial espionage, more info at www.badcaps.net from random crashes to complete failure, its a problem to be aware of and its very common in laptops and PCs made around 1998 - 2000 I think. You probably don't have this problem tho and should take the advise of other posters here first before suspecting this problem!!

I have this same problem. I installed Ubuntu a few days ago on my Thinkpad T30. Things work fine, but at some unpredictable point the entire computer freezes. Nothing moves. I can't find anyway to open a terminal. The only thing to do is to reboot.

I can't identify any particular pattern. The freeze may result from clicking on a link, or even navigating the cursor over an application shown in the panel.

I've run Fedora and Suse for two years on the same laptap. There was no similar problem.

If anyone has thoughts or suggestions, I'd be interested. I'm inclined to reinstall the O/S sooner rather than later.

I have the same, apparently random, freezing problem on my IBM Thinkpad T30. I did not have any problem when running Fedora core 3. I upgraded to Ubuntu 6.06 and this problem showed up. It occurs after bootup and login. I may sometimes be able to run for 5 minutes, sometimes perhaps a couple of hours. I can shut the machine down ONLY by holding the power off button down for about 10 seconds. None of the following have any effect: ctl-alt-F2, ctl-alt-backspace, ctl-alt-delete.

Dapper freezes
 

Sounds like my condition exactly. There's no telling when I'll get a freeze. This is my home laptop. It's not on except in the evening. Sometimes I can work on it for hours, without a freeze. Sometimes, I'll have a freeze within 15 minutes. When that happens, there's nothing I can do except power off.

I seem to find some connection between the freezing and using Firefox or Flock.

Over the past 2+ years, I've run Fedora and Suse with no similar problem. This is definitely a dapper-related bug.

similar issue
 

I have the same problem. My T30 laptop suddenly freezes from time to time and I cannot do anything except turn it off. It doesn't matter if I use Ubuntu, a linux rescue CD or (shock horror) windows.

Did anyone find a solution? I think my problem is a hardware issue - it has only just started to happen (worked fine for a month). Does anyone know how to open up the T30 to look at fans etc? I tried undoing all the screws I could find, but still couldn't get in :(

Thanks!

Might be a good idea to run system monitor or something to see if there's ever a point at which some process is taking more than a reasonable amount of system resources. Seems like it might be too many of you to have a hardware problem with similar symptoms.

Does your screen turn black? or you keep the same image?
I had quite a few problems with my laptop (P M730, Graphics i915GM)...
I have had quite a few bad lockups, some where the system was blocked and the screen stayed the same, sometimes it turned black and i couldn't anything, sometimes the screen turned black but i could move the pointer...
Lockups aren't so frequent anymore on my PC...

i use debian "etch"/testing, so i have X.org 7.0 or 7.1 now...

T30 freezing in Dapper
 

If you are having trouble with a Thinkpad T30 or other model, try the Option RenderAccl 0 fix in this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=244308

I edited the config file a few days ago, and have had no freezes since. I'm told there is something about this dapper feature, which is enabled by default, that does not play nicely with the ATI graphics card.