Fluxbox hanging in Absolute Linux

FurAnt · 09-28-2007, 08:36 AM

Hi all. I just installed Absolute Linux 12.0.5 on an IBM Aptiva and am modestly impressed so far. I like that it's built on Slackware.

I'm having two main issues:
1. When starting X (icewm), a dialog pops up immediately saying "Applet quit without ever creating a widget". How can I tell what applet it's talking about? It's using Rox, and some googling says that the desktop is locked. Not sure what that means or how to fix it. Ideas?
2. After a while of clicking, dragging and playing around, the whole system freezes and won't recover without a hard reboot. This is fairly consistent. I probably haven't gone more than 15 minutes in icewm before the system hangs.

I tend to think that it's an issue with the mouse, because it freezes only when I'm actively clicking away. It's a Kensington USB mouse using the default USB drivers configured during setup. I've been trying different things in xorgconfig, but it's more guesswork than science.

I don't mind trying things to stabilize the system, I'm just not sure where to start. Any advice is appreciated.

Joey

FurAnt · 09-28-2007, 08:55 AM

Actually, when I try fluxbox, there's no "Applet quit..." warning, but the system still hangs after a while of messing around. Hmmmm.

dracolich · 09-28-2007, 09:18 AM

What kind of video card does your computer have and what driver are you using with it? And what kind of network connection and drivers are you using? What apps are you using when "actively clicking away"?

FurAnt · 09-28-2007, 10:03 AM

Thanks for the quick response. The system seems to be using a mobo video chip (no Video PCI card). xorg.conf section "Device" shows:
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "intel"
VendorName "Intel Corporation"
BoardName "82810 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
BusID "PCI:0:1:0"

Right now, it's networkless. I need to pick up a NIC this weekend.

I've had various lockups. From using Firefox, to logging out. But I get a consistent lockups whenever I try to resize a window by clicking and dragging on a corner.

BTW, sorry about the confusing subject line. I thought I was using fluxbox initially but it was icewm. I then edited .xinitrc to try fluxbox and the system froze shortly thereafter as well. Most of my past experience (extremely limited) has been with KDE and gnome.

Thanks again for any help.

dracolich · 09-28-2007, 10:40 AM

I'm assuming you didn't have such problems in KDE or Gnome. I've had similar experiences - little things that work flawlessly in KDE cause problems when I switch to Fluxbox. Often it has to do with my network driver, but that's obviously not your case.

Which version of Firefox are you using? 2.0.0.0 had some memory issues that led to system hangs. Do you know what background programs are running? Is there anything in .xinitrc besides starting the wm? And can you post the output of the top command?

Crashing when resizing a window sounds like a graphics problem. Have you tried using a different video driver? In Xorg.conf change Driver "intel" to Driver "vesa" and see what happens.

Quote:

Right now, it's networkless. I need to pick up a NIC this weekend.

A piece of advice: When you see one you're interested in check online first to see what chipset it uses (Broadcom, Realtek, Atheros, etc) and then look for how well it works in Linux. Pay attention to version and revision numbers as vendors tend to change the chipset without changing the model number.

FurAnt · 09-28-2007, 01:31 PM

My past experience with KDE and Gnome was back on Slackware 10, I haven't tried them on this box. The firefox in use is 2.0.0.4.

Sorry about this lengthy post, but I'll try to give you as much information as possible. I did try changing "intel" to "vesa", but X windows just flickered and jumped around. BTW, is there any keystroke or something that could let me kill an X session if it locks up or is unviewable and return to a terminal (I have tried Ctrl+Alt+Bkspc, and Ctrl+Alt+Fn?

.xinitrc:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# $Xorg: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.3 2000/08/17 19:54:30 cpqbld Exp $

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

play /usr/share/sounds/bb.wav &
exec icewm-session || exec xterm -fg red

top command (from within a console inside of icewm, obviously before the system freezes):

Code:

top - 14:21:18 up 58 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.01
Tasks:  47 total,   1 running,  46 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.7%us,  0.4%sy,  0.0%ni, 97.8%id,  1.1%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:    188136k total,   169024k used,    19112k free,    11716k buffers
Swap:   979924k total,        0k used,   979924k free,   110228k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            
    1 root      15   0   768  296  252 S  0.0  0.2   0:01.16 init               
    2 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0        
    3 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0        
    4 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 events/0           
    5 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 khelper            
    6 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread            
   47 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd/0          
   48 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid             
  114 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata/0              
  115 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata_aux            
  116 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd      
  119 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khubd              
  121 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod            
  137 root      25   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush            
  138 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush            
  139 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd0            
  140 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0              
  805 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_tgtd/0        
  867 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kcryptd/0          
  868 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kmmcd              
  873 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kjournald          
  941 root      12  -4  2280  984  380 S  0.0  0.5   0:01.77 udevd              
 2245 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kpsmoused          
 2329 root      18   0  1704  612  516 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.03 syslogd            
 2333 root      21   0  1664  408  340 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 klogd              
 2660 root      23   0  1696  532  464 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 inetd              
 2667 root      20   0  3816 1076  788 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.14 sshd               
 2672 root      18   0  1652  512  436 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 acpid              
 2676 messageb  17   0  2260  808  660 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 dbus-daemon        
 2684 root      18   0  1880  468  392 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.02 gpm                
 2707 haldaemo  18   0  5172 3556 2304 S  0.0  1.9   0:00.72 hald               
 2708 root      17   0  2872 1000  860 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.02 hald-runner        
 2713 haldaemo  18   0  2108  904  788 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.01 hald-addon-acpi    
 2714 haldaemo  15   0  2108  908  788 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.02 hald-addon-keyb    
 2721 root      16   0  2916  968  856 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.00 hald-addon-stor    
 2737 root      15   0  3068 1776 1248 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.22 bash               
 2738 root      15   0  3016 1692 1220 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.05 bash               
 2965 root      18   0  2676 1336 1020 S  0.0  0.7   0:00.02 startx             
 2981 root      18   0  2724  784  656 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 xinit              
 2982 root      14  -1 92832 9316 3992 S  0.0  5.0   0:02.44 X                  
 2988 root      18   0  6000 1520 1248 S  0.0  0.8   0:00.04 icewm-session      
 2999 root      15   0  7448 3864 3168 S  0.0  2.1   0:00.31 icewm              
 3000 root      15   0  6652 2460 1936 S  0.0  1.3   0:00.04 icewmtray          
 3007 root      18   0 14220 7316 5764 S  0.0  3.9   0:00.68 ROX-Filer          
 3037 root      15   0  5920 2760 2108 S  0.0  1.5   0:00.09 xterm              
 3039 root      15   0  2972 1620 1172 S  0.0  0.9   0:00.03 bash               
 3042 root      15   0  2304 1012  796 R  0.0  0.5   0:00.00 top

And, for your reading pleasure, xorg.conf:

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Default Screen" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "xtrap"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "record"
	Load  "GLcore"
	Load  "type1"
	Load  "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
	Option       "XkbModel"  "pc101"
	Option       "XkbLayout"  "us,us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	#DisplaySize	  330   240	# mm
	Identifier   "Dell Ultrascan P780"
	VendorName   "DEL"
	ModelName    "DELL P780"
 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertRefresh values to use DDC:
	HorizSync    30.0 - 85.0
	VertRefresh  48.0 - 120.0
	Option	    "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "CacheLines"         	# <i>
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DRI"                	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoDDC"              	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ShowCache"          	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"       	# <i>
        #Option     "PageFlip"           	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "intel"
	VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
	BoardName   "82810 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
	BusID       "PCI:0:1:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Default Screen"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Dell Ultrascan P780"
	DefaultDepth 16 
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     1
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     4
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection