Ubuntu Gutsy freezes constantly, uptime < 60 minutes
 

Alright, I've run memtest for hours and it's just fine. My laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000) dual boots and runs just fine in WinXP. I can't get it to crash Ubuntu Live CD either.

However when I boot into Ubuntu with just Nautilus, Compiz, and Pidgin running the system will freeze (typically within 60 minutes) and I'm not sure why. The system has also segfaulted once among bootup.

I've checked dmesg and syslog around the time of freezes but nothing abnormal shows up.

Hi,
I've got exactly the same problem on my Inspiron 6000 with ATI x300. It seems that there is a bug in the open source video card drivers or compiz, because switching to the proprietary drivers solves the problem. But then...
1. You cannot have desktop effects out of box (possible though with xgl)
2. Suspend does not work :(

So, I have decided to continue with feisty until the next release.

Thanks for replying. Just curious, how did you determine that it was the open source ATI drivers causing the problem?

BTW do you know how to downgrade to Feisty off the top of your head?

When linux freezes, always try to turn off as much of the *bling* as possible and see at what point your system stops crashing. Things like video drivers are known to cause problems, wireless drivers can cause the same trouble.

Downgrading was possible and +/- easy back in the debian days, with ubuntu I would not recommend it. Just keep you /home and reinstall feisty, it will take much less time and you'll have a clean system.

good luck,
elluva

Hello,

Kubuntu Gutsy freezes on my old
ASUS A7V-E
0.908GHz AMD cpu
757MB physical memory
ATI Radeon HIS 9250 128MB

desktop pc aswell.

However, I have no compiz installed and gutsy hangs even in Ubuntu graphical failsafe mode.

I just did a dist-upgrade on a working feisty.

It seems that when it crashes, mouse moves, music continues playing and harddrive is being read, but the screen (except mouse pointer) is freezed.

I have sometimes managed to keep kubuntu alive for more than 60 minutes, but sometimes it crashes within the first 5 minutes..

Holding down Ctrl + Alt + Print Scrn and typing REISUB slowly seems the only way to safely reboot gutsy when it has hanged.

Oh, and almost every time it crashes, after reboot the resolution and refresh rate change for some reason. And I can't set resolution without a logoff (it just doesn't have any effect as it did in feisty).

All suggestions are welcome,
Thank You
Indrek Sünter

You should always examine your logs when something like that happens. It has saved me many, many hours. Having the error reported by the system is a lot more efficient than just guessing and trying. If the crash is bad enough, nothing may be recorded in the logs, though.