Hi,

Just another suggestion to add - it might be worth your while looking up a Linux User Group in your area. You might find it much easier to track down what could be a tricky problem with the help of a more experienced user.

I'd certainly agree with other comments here - 5 crashes per day is absolutely not 'normal' - I haven't had a single crash requiring a reboot in as long as I can remember, no matter which distro I've used....

Some additional possible hardware tests:

If you've run memtest86 recently and that passed... You could also check to find the brand name of your harddrive. Some of the manufacturers have diagnostics tools available on their website. If you can find the manufacturer and model number of your harddrive, I can try to find a diagnostic tool for you. The only blue screens of death I've ever gotten in Win XP on my computer were due to a faulty harddrive.

Im not sure what the make of my HD is, it doesnt seem to tell you in YAST.

I am begining to think the only thing to do is switch to another distro, I am getting so sick of my computer being unstable, I wouldnt doing that if it solves the problem, I just hope that it doesnt make it worse!

Do you think for the hardware Im running, it should be running stable enough? I mean I am not low on memory or anything?

No, what you have is great. The only thing would be if something is actually wrong with one of your components. If that is the case then it won't matter which distro or even if you're using Windows. If something is wrong with your hardware, you'll always have issues. That's why trying another distro or two is a good idea. I still think that you should try a Live CD first. I'm not sure if you know what that is. It's an entire operating system that runs directly off of a CD. That means you don't have to install anything, and it won't damage what is on your harddrive. That way you can try a couple distros very simply and easily and you don't have to wait for it to install. You just put it in the CD tray and restart you computer.

Cool That is a little worrying, because then that must mean there is something up my hardware, unless of course Suse isnt re-acting well with it for some reason?

I wouldnt mind trying out a live one, but theres no way I can get one right now, however my friend says he has a copy of fedora 4 and debian 3.1, you think either of them would the job?

Do you think it is likely that these freezes and reboots would be caused by an issue with suse reacting with my hardware or does it seem more like it is my hardware?

I wouldnt mind switching to another distro, but it will be a major upheaval to do that if it doesnt solve the problem, you reckon the only way is to try it?

it does sound like hardware to me, and it can sometimes be the most peculiar of reasons - eg, a while back, i had a decent Pioneer DVD-ROM, yet it refused point blank to play well with any of the latest distros using the new Hardware Abstraction Layer - it would just randomly lock up. The system didn't crash, but I did lose the use of the DVD ROM; I ended up buying a new drive, and all has been well ever since.

A live CD makes a lot of sense if you can get hold of one (or a few!). It's worth keeping an eye on the Linux magazines and seeing what's on the coverdisks - Live CD's feature quite regularly. Also, go over to Ubuntu's website and get the Live version of their distro on order - it's free and won't cost you a penny. Only thing is, it might take a few weeks to arrive...obviously not much help now, but useful for the future.

If it is a hardware issue you know of any way I can find out what piece of hardware may be at fault? I have a few times noticed that the system has locked up when using sound orientated programs but I am not sure how to check problems with that.

Yeah the live cd thing is a good idea, can you run debian packages with ubuntu? How do you find it generally?

It sounds like hardware particularly because it started out fine, and then had issues. It still COULD be a problem with Suse due to some bug fix or something which is why trying a different distro is a good idea. The problem is that often times it's hard to tell the difference between a hardware issue and a driver issue. The driver is basically telling the hardware what to do, so if the driver is broken, then the hardware acts like it's broken. Trying a different distro might be able to tell you if that's the problem.

As far as narrowing in on the specific piece of hardware, it's rather difficult. Based on the symptoms it seems like the Ram, motherboard, or harddrive are the most likely culprits, but it could be anything. That's why I wanted to make sure you had done the diagnostic tests and done them recently because whatever has happened to your computer is recent. After that, you can test things by basically disconnecting them one by one (like a cd drive or floppy drive) and letting your computer run for awhile after each time. If the problem goes away when you remove something, then you can be pretty sure that was the culprit. This requires unplugging things inside your case, but it's not too difficult.

We still haven't heard back on whether you've checked for overheating or anything like that. That's still a good idea.

hi,

the only way to check out hardware problems is to keep an eye on the system logs, generally found in the /var/log directory (YaST has a system log viewer, or alternatively you can navigate to the directory and use something like kedit to view the files - and you'll probably need to be root). it's worth looking at the 'syslog' file - check it when the system is working OK, then immediately after a crash - use the timestamps in the log to narrow down areas of interest. really that's the only way to trace problems - long-winded, but with a bit of practice, you should get a 'feel' for anything that doesn't look right.

as for ubuntu - it's lovely, and could perhaps best be described as an 'up-to-date' debian.. installation was straightforward enough, and all my hardware was correctly detected and set up (this seems to be one area where Ubuntu really shines). the installer isn't pretty, but it works well. however, the one area where ubuntu is lacking at the moment is the selection of software - it just isn't wide enough to cover all of the things many people want to do with a desktop PC. You can use Debian packages (which is what I have done to 'fill in the gaps'), but getting some of them to play well with the Ubuntu base system can be tortuous, to say the least.

Ubuntu does seem nice and stable, but then so was Mandrake on my system. Apt package management is good, but frankly I found Mandrake's urpmi to be its equal (perhaps I haven't yet got into the nuances of Apt, but I really did find urpmi very good indeed, and with a bigger pool of software)..

I'm rather puzzled that you folks have immediately zeroed-in on hardware as the root cause of the problem and have stayed there ever since. Just my opinion of course, but this does not sound like a hardware problem to me. A computer with a hardware-problem is usually "stone-cold dead," and the machine is likely-as-not unable to reboot thereafter. It's just a cold hunk o' silicon until you replace the part that frotzed.

little_penguin, what I want you to do ... next time it (as you say) "crashes," is to leave the computer completely alone for half an hour. Don't do anything. (Obviously, if you got a kernel-panic and the system halts, this admonition would not apply.)

If the computer is still unresponsive, I want you to try Ctrl+Alt+F2. This might bring you to a mysterious-looking character-mode screen that says "login." If so, log in as root and enter the command: shutdown -F now. (The "F" must be capitalized.) The computer should now shut down and then restart, doing a complete file-system check when it reboots.

Later, when you have a regular graphic screen, I want you to log on as root and look at the file: /var/log/messages. This is the main system log file which will tell you about any unusual conditions. (There are several files, such as messages.1, messages.2 and so-on. Look at them all.)

References to devices like /dev/fd0 are non-interesting; they're basically the floppy-disk drive that you may or may not have. If you see something that's leading to a lock-up, it should be noticeable here.

If the system "locks up," there's also a very good chance that it will be something relating to the "X-windows" display system, and it will be something like a frozen-cursor. And it might well be just the display. (On a Linux system, unlike Windows, the graphic display system is not tightly-linked to the rest of the system.)

On some systems, Ctrl+Alt+Bksp will restart X-windows only; you will be logged-off but the system will not restart. It has also become fairly conventional for Ctrl+Alt+Delete to signal a shutdown... which it probably will do without asking for confirmation.

Well, little_penguin has already reformatted and reinstalled his OS, and he is STILL having issues. That's a pretty good reason to look at hardware (though the suggestions to try out a Live CD are to eliminate the possibility that it is an issue that his computer is having with the Suse software). Also, it is VERY possible that hardware problems can lead to random lockups. Not all hardware problems necessarily lead to the immediate death of the computer.

In many instances, RAM goes bad over time and individual addresses have issues. Unless these bad address are in the reserved kernel space, then the computer should boot just fine. However, when the OS tries to use one of those bad areas, there is a good chance of something messing up... lockups or random reboots can occur.

Hard drives can either go all at once or they can slowly begin causing corruptions in the file system. Either is very possible. Unless an extremely important file is corrupted, the computer will boot just fine. However, this can also lead to lockups. It will usually leave symptoms behind though when there are tons of errors in the file system. RAM doesnt necessarily leave any signs behind.

Also, issues with motherboards, particularly the chipsets, are rather famous for causing lockups and freezes on some systems years ago. Several specific via chipsets had known issues that caused lockups on some people's systems.

In Windows, I had a CD drive that died and started causing lockups every once in awhile (though nowhere near as often as little_penguin is having them). I'm pretty sure it could cause the same issues in Linux. Hardware problems can have very strange symptoms.