desktop locking up / crashing?

and here i am yet again, with yet another problem.

though about this one i can not give much detail,
since i am not sure what is happening.

here's my problem:

every once in a while, when working with seemingly
random programs on my gnome desktop, the whole
desktop freezes. except for the mouse. the mouse
moves properly; no stuttering indicating heavy cpu
usage. but i can click nothing. ctrl+alt+f[x] does not
work; i can not go to a command prompt and end
x for instance. the only thing i have found so far i
can do is press the power button on my case and
reset the computer.

needless to say, this is very annoying when it happens.

i would not know where to look or which info to
provide in order to find out what is happening.

if anyone has any suggestions and/or ideas, please
do not hesitate to ask. i will try almost anything to
solve this.

kind regards.

Run Gkrellm so you can see if there is a sudden spike in processing activity, and coz it's cool

Could it be sheduled actions/cronjobs?

Oh and I thing cutting the power to linux while it's running is a Very Bad Thing (tm) and can mess up your system.

i will try gkrellm; thank you for the suggestion. perhaps a certain
app is the culprit. as for scheduled actions / cronjobs; i have not
a clue if i have any running... hmm.. i will check into that at once;
perhaps i should clean out my services, since i have not done that
yet; i have tinkered with too many other things to have had time
to check how to tune some of the more basic things.

as for cutting power; i can't help it. it's the only thing i can do
when my desktop locks up like that.. well.. i can wiggle the mouse
cursor in various cool patterns, but that doesn't help either.

thank you for your time; i will try to see what i can do.

If you can wiggle the mouse, try Ctrl + Alt + Backspace or F1 to get to a text login screen (an X server client or TTY???), then login as root and try a shutdown/halt command, or maybe try to kill some active processes?
Don't forget to man command if you are unsure of it's actions, especially while as root!

as mentioned in the thread-starting post, i tried ctrl+alt+f[x];
unfortunately this did not work. leaving for bed in a moment,
but i wanted to say what i did so far:

chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.apache
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.serial
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.gpm
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.samba
chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.cups

i disabled apm support and disabled lpd

in /usr/X11R6/bin/startx i set X to no-listen

and i think that's all i did so far. i hope
that one of these services was the culprit :)

crond is running and i will try to find out how
to check if and which processes it runs at
scheduled intervals and disable as many as
possible.

nite.

I used to have the same lockups but i tracked them down to gaim i think....ever since the gtk2 gaims came out has been fine. If you are using the gaim that came with slack 9 get rid of it. Just get the newest .60.1

EDIT: really meant 0.61....don't even think there is a .60.1

v0.61 is out

What video adapter / drivers are you using for the X server? You mentioned Gnome desktop, have you tried with any other wm's? Also, what CPU is your system based on?

by chance i yesterday updated gaim to 0.61 (0.60 was part
of the wonderful dropline installation). i have an asus geforce
2pro, and use the nvidia 4193 drivers for 3D acceleration in
games. i have tried other wms when i was on mandrake, but
now i am really hooked to dropline gnome, and will not
consider leaving it. oh, and my cpu is an athlon (non-xp) 1400.

Here is a thread you might want to review. It was nVidia based video and Athlon CPU system with X not even wanting to startup.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...em%3Dnopentium

Perhaps something there may be of some help.

thank you kindly. i will read through it at the soonest
possible oppurtunity.

after reading the above mentioned thread, i added "mem=nopentium"
to the append line in my lilo.conf. i ran nv_check.sh; my setup passed
all the tests is performed. after the thread, i searched around a bit,
and added "no-hlt" and "noapic" to my append line too. i hope it will
keep my desktop from halting. thanks again :)

almost five hours later, no crashes as of yet.

nite all and have a great weekend.

If you have access to another machine in the same net or know hot to plug against another pc via an eth "cross cable", can you ping your desktop or telnet it ? what response do you get?
If you could telnet to the box, you could have a look at processes or whatever.

um. i am not sure what you mean.