Mandriva 2008 Spring freezes after logging in
 

Hi,
I have just installed Mandriva 2008 Spring Free Edition / GNOME desktop on my computer. The installation went smoothly and I had all my hardware detected and set up in less than 1 hour.
Just after logging in as a normal user Mandriva freezes randomly and I have to press the Reset button of my computer to reboot.
I have disabled ACPI & APIC but the problem still remains (it takes from 1 to 5 minutes to get the system freeze). My /var/log/messages doesn't show anything unusual.
What do you guys think I should do?
Thank you for any suggestion.

Please define freezing.
Ctrl-alt-F1 does nothing? The keyboard stops responding? The system shut down sequence does nothing? (ctrl-alt-sysreq-r; ctrl-alt-sysreq-s; ctrl-alt-sysreq-e; ctrl-alt-sysreq-u; ctrl-alt-sysreq-b)(also known as Raising Skinny Elephants is Utterly Boring.)

The mouse cursor freezes on the screen and yes, the keyboard stops responding. Ctrl-alt-F1 doesn't work. Ctrl-alt-BackSpace doesn't work neither.
First I thought it was a X server problem or something to do with my graphic card (a pretty old one -- nVidia TNT2 32 MB PCI bus).
The only way out is to press The Reset button of the computer.

I suggest running some diagnostics on the hardware, testing the RAM, chip set and processor. The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) is a great tool. It is freely available.
A simple problem would be heat, so check that your fans are all working properly, including the power supply fan.

When you reach the login screen can you switch to console (CTRL+ALT+F1-6)? If you can, log in as root, telinit 3 to shut down Xorg, and run mcc. Configure the Display. When asked, choose to use the proprietary driver for your nVidia card. If you are not asked, you may need to set up the Internet Software Media Sources as directed at Easy URPMI. Failing this, use the open source driver at a conservative resolution until you can get the Media Sources configured. If your issue is related to the video adapter, reconfiguring it should make a difference (unless there is a hardware issue).

HTH,

While it is possible that the video driver is wrong, the keyboard not responding is a big clue. Linux works whether X is configured correctly or not. If X fails, the keyboard still gets one to a different virtual console from which work can be done. But if th keyboard stops responding, it is likely the system has stopped and almost certainly another issue is causing the problem. Unlike Windows, the keyboard and the video are separate things in Linux.

Mandriva Freezes
 

Login to rescue / failsafe mode. Delete etc/X11/xorg.conf file or backup the file. Reboot. Machine boots in graphical mode.Reconfigure display. Use the built in nv driver. Do not load the downloaded driver.

That makes sense, if your locked out by a bad xorg.conf then you can't do anything to change it.

A live cd would help here.

you could mount your drive, check the xsessions log file in the home directory for home and root.

And edit the conf as required. Keep manual backups (copies) cp is an easier command than vi.

cheers,

Solved (thank you). It was a graphics card driver issue.
I have reconfigured my display using the nv driver. And the system looks pretty stable so far.
Thank you again (special thanks goes to gundya; you guys are the best)! ;)

I am having the same issue. The system just freezes up, whether it's one minute or twenty minutes after booting up. Keyboard and mouse are totally unresponsive, only way out is hitting the reset button.

I tried switching to the nv driver as worked for johnny2 without any luck, still freezing. It happens in KDE and enlightenment.

I have a GeForce 6600LE. Mandriva 2007.1 was previously on this system and running fine using the NVIDIA proprietary drivers.

Like Ixthusdan suggested, I really don't think it's a graphics issue since the keyboard and everything is totally frozen.

My problem is similar to this bug report http://www.nabble.com/-Bug-41308--NE...d17703328.html

Hi, as the computer is booting up, press Esc so you can see the text scroll up the page as the kernel is loading, see any errors?

Next, I would press i where the blue mandriva text comes up. (interactive mode) just keep pressing it till it stops and asks you if you want to load the service or not.

When you get to the dm service (display manager) question. say NO.(press n)

this will leave you in cli mode, no gui, IF your keys still work, you may be able to reconfigure X by typing xconfig.

If that dosen't work, then backtrack a bit. reboot to safe mode, this won't try to load /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

And try to reconfigure xconfig again.

As a side note, I have had trouble with the screen greying while browsing my local files with konqueror (kde), this morning I have installed a new kernel and so far (touch wood) It has not happened today.kernel: 2.6.24.5-desktop-1mnb.

see how you go, regards, Glenn

The problem seems to be with X configuration. How ever please provide the entire hardware configuration - CPU,Mother Board, no of RAM DIMM/SIMM, sound card etc. On some older ASUS boards the dual channel memory has some issues. As also USB devices. If you have a seperate partitions (for example home folder) that you have retained from previous installation try deleting the .configuration and .profile files from your home folder. I am no expert just a guess.

This box that I'm having trouble with I'm using as a server & mythtv setup and, like I said, it was running Mandriva 2007 and then 2007.1 before this fine. I have Mandriva on my laptop upgraded perfectly and have been using Mandrake/Mandriva distros very happily for 6+ years now.

I haven't had a chance to try anything else out on the system, but I know there are no errors when the kernel loads and there are no errors in the logs. I was able to boot into failsafe and then telinit 3 into an X-free mode fine without anything freezing up, so I guess that does implicate the graphics config.

I guess I'm kind of at a loss as to what in the xorg.conf file I need to fix. Like I said, I get no errors so I'm not sure what I should change. What driver should I even use?

Anyway, here's all the hardware listed below. With the distro upgrade I also made a hardware upgrade, swapping out a 160GB PATA drive (where the system files were installed) for a new 1 TB SATA drive, so there's nothing from any previous installations. The 2 500GB Maxtor drives are LVM'd together into a couple of volumes holding music, movies, and recorded programs from mythtv and are recognized perfectly during installation.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250
SONY 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE
KWORLD Digital / Analog HDTV Tuner ATSC-110
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz LGA 775
430W power supply
1 GB RAM
GIGABYTE GV-NX66L128DP GeForce 6600LE 128MB 128-bit DDR PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card
MSI 945P Neo3-F LGA 775 Intel 945P ATX Intel Motherboard
DIAMOND XtremeSound XS71 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
1 1TB Western Digital HD
2 500GB Maxtor SATA HDs
Using a Belkin USB ethernet because the built-in ethernet on the motherboard wasn't being recognized when I originally installed Mandriva 2007

The BIOS version on my motherboard has gone through many revisions, so I might flash the new version as well and see if that helps anything.

Hi GoBillsBN, definitly do the bios upgrades first.

The bios is the foundation of all else, everything comes after the bios, if it is not configured/complete the kernel still looks to the bios for the info it needs to configure itself.

Start there then see what occurrs next.

Cheers, Glenn

Thanks for the help. The problem has been solved!

I flashed the BIOS, no changes, still random freezing.

I went ahead and booted into safe mode without X and started installing packages, setting up the server, mythtv, lirc, etc under the console thinking that I could almost everything setup this way, really no need for a GUI. Anyway, after more than an hour of this it froze up and I got this output:

I didn't really know what to make of this but I saw all of the USB references and realized the only thing plugged into a USB port at this point was the Belkin USB ethernet adapter. I took this out, booted up and no freezing. I went and enable the built-in ethernet on the motherboard and found that it was easily recognized and setup in this version of Mandriva, so that problem is fixed.

It's been very stable and has been running for 12+ hours now with no freezing so I'm certain that was the issue.