Gnome freezes when using BitTorrent or Azureus!?!
 

Hello all, first post so I hope I give enough info:

Kernel: Linux 2.6.5-SMP
OS: Debian
GUI: Gnome 2.4
CPU: P4 3.2
HD: ATA Digital Western 20G
JRE: Both Blackdown 1.4 and JSDK1.4.2

Description:
After 10mins or so starting a download with BitTorrent or Azureus, GUI freezes. I cannot reboot out of Gnome (ctl+alt+backspace) or out of Linux (ctl+alt+del). I am forced to do a hard reboot. I thought maybe it was the screensaver or ACPI or something. So I turned it off, but it still crashes.

Any suggestion on what files I should look at? Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

Thanks in advance.

/var/log/ has at least some system logfiles...check /var/log/errors, /var/log/messages and /var/log/XFree86.0.log, especially the bottom lines, if they have something for you...don't know, though. and any logfile you think has some nice info, of course...I don't know if Gnome has it's own logfile or where it is.

Will check log files
 

Thx for the info b0uncer, I will post any relevant info here.

Kernel issues in syslog
 

Here is the error I found is /var/log/syslog:

May 31 09:39:59 localhost kernel: PnPBIOS: Warning! Your PnP BIOS caused a fatal error. Attempting to continue
May 31 09:39:59 localhost kernel: PnPBIOS: You may need to reboot with the "nobiospnp" option to operate stably

How do I set the nobiospnp option? I am using grub as my OS loader which looks like the following:
title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.5-1-686-smp
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1-686-smp root=/dev/hdc1 nobiospnp ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.5-1-686-smp
savedefault
boot

but placing it there does not stop it from loading BiosPNP... Anyway, I think this maybe causing the problem with BitTorrent. I did not have this problem before until i installed Kernel 2.6.5-SMP.

Ron

PS I already updated my bios to the most recent ROM.

>>CPU: P4 3.2

You've got 2 of these right?

Actually I have one but my motherboard is Hyperthread enabled so the kernel does see 2 CPUs:

ronin@Cerebro:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 3193.405
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid
bogomips : 6324.22

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 3193.405
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid
bogomips : 6373.37

So how do I set the kernel options?

In case anyone is looking at this post, which I doubt. The solutions is a simple one:

Upgrade to the latest Kernel release. I am currently using kernel-2.6.7-SMB