I am somewhat of a newbie. I am running RedHat 7.2 and am getting a weird problem. Everything works fine (eventually!!) except that the machine freezes completely some time after I walk away from it. This always happens, but never while I am working on it. I have looked in log files and there are no error messages (maybe I am looking in the wrong place - I think I looked at the files in /var/log). Any help in where to start looking to solve this annoying problem would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hello!

I have a very strange problem. I log in to RedHat Linux 7.2, (using KDE as the environment), and very inconsistently, the machine freezes. ctrl+alt+F1 or anything else for that matter does not work, and I have to reboot. Sometimes I can work for about 4 hrs, and then as soon as I am away from the machine, it freezes.

Please help me..

I have a new Dell Dimension 4400 (256 MB RAM, P4 1.7GHz processor)..
As an aside, I have Win2k installed on the other partition..

Thanks!!!

Did you try "cntrl-alt-backspace" to kill XFree86?

Maybe this has something to do with the screensaver, since it only happens when you walk away.

landsman,

Try to narrow things down a bit:

-does it happen only within the GUI (XFree86), or does it happen even if you boot to the CLI (shell)?
-does it only happen when you're connected to the Net, or running certain programs?
-did you add any software or hardware just prior to the problem beginning?
-have you physically checked your hardware? Make sure your cable connections are good, your fans are running, and that all cards and chips are firmly seated.

i've been having xscreensaver problems that lead to a major X lockup. I think there's a good-sized memory leak in htere somewhere. Use xlock instead, and pay more attention to what and how things crash. sit away from your computer but in view and monitor it.
Josh

Whats the kernel version.

The default kernel that comes with the RH 7.2 has some leeks

The Kernel version is 2.4.7-10

No help, just a "me too." Same thing happens here. Redhat 7.2 with KDE, Kernel 2.4.9-31. I upgraded to KDE 3 from 2.x in the hopes that would fix it: nope. Turned off screensaver: nope. It locks up so hard that even the magic sysrq key does not work -- so something is completely killing the kernel. Checked all hardware -- it's fine. This is a dual-boot system, and it does NOT lock up under Win 98. Seems to have something to do with disk access, but I can't seem to narrow it down. No messages, log entries, nada. Just a lockup.

Although I do have to say that for once in my life, my Win partition is more stable than my Linux partition! Scary! :-) Unfortunately, I only go into Windows rarely, so this is a major hassle.

Anyone have any ideas on this? Or where else to look or what else to try? When magic sysrq fails, I'm a bit at a loss at that point on what to do next. :-)

Alrighty guys. This is a fact cause of a particular reason of why RH 7.2 may freeze.
I had this problem and fixed it.
In my case, the problem laid with the video card. If you have a video card that is related to nVidia cards, you got the same problem I did. For some reason RH 7.2 doesn't like something to do with the alocation of memory in AGP cards, and what we have to do in go into our BIOS and change this.
eckkk, I cannot find it in google anymore, but what you need to do is disable AGP support in your bios, and this will fix the freezing problem. Also guys...upgrade your kernels, :P

zLinuxz

Oh, by the way, same thing applies to Mandrake 8.0+

I've had a GeForce GTS system run fine. Currently i'm using a cirrus logic video chipset, which is in no way nvidia. I still get the crashes. now what?

Ok, did you still change the setting in the bios however?, try that and see if it works...also what's your kernel version?

zLinuxz

Turn AGP off? but that'll slow video down quite a bit, w/ my GeForce2. and my cirrus chip is pci. so AGP is definately not even being used, unless the system is trying to work with it even though there's no card plugged in.

I'm using kernel 2.4.18-6 mandrake. using icewm (it's bea-utiful btw, i love it), both xlock and xscreensaver seem to cause this problem. I can get you more info if you need it. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

Yes, those two things used to cause my pc to freeze. Still, insist go into bios and change where ever you see agp, get rid of it...and I'm sure that it'll fix the problem.

zLinuxz