I have had slack 12 on this computer for quite a while with never a problem. Slack 13.1 was installed a few weeks ago without a problem, it seems to run forever as long as it is root. When I go to user it will crash 2 or 3 times a day. When it crashes it is a total lockup that only the off/on switch will reset it. There is no certain time or thing that causes it, it will just lockup while surfing using the command line switching or opening a new file. Any suggestions will be appreciated! I have googled and searched with no info found.
I do have 13.1 on another computer that works fine, it has an nvidea video card in it and it is 64 bit.

Computer Dell gx280 pentium m with hyper threading turned on
Video card ATI Radeon x300 using the ATI driver
80 gig sata hard drive
32 bit

Something is completely wrong.

Are there some kind of information in /var/log/messages at the time of lock-up?
Have you tried using a new, clean user?

I suspect that it is a hardware problem. I had a similar problem a while ago. The problem seemed to me to be extra frequent when I used graphics-heavy things, like games and compiz-fusion etc. I can't remember if there were any difference in root/user behavior though, since I rarely/never start x as root. Anyway, it turned out that my problem was the power supply not being able to deliver a large amount of power over time, and some how froze the computer.

Anyway, did this happen with an earlier version of slackware or other operating systems? Are you running slackware current? Are you using the huge-smp kernel shipped with slackware or a custom kernel?

Are there some kind of information in /var/log/messages at the time of lock-up?

I checked the /var/log/messages with nothing irregular showing up!

Anyway, did this happen with an earlier version of slackware or other operating systems? Are you running slackware current? Are you using the huge-smp kernel shipped with slackware or a custom kernel?[/QUOTE]

I had slack 12 on this computer with never a problem for couple of years!

I am using the huge-smp kernel shipped with slackware!

Have not tried it as another user, but I will and report back later.
I have done the memory test with ok results!

So by ATI driver you mean fglrx ? If so, try without it for a while, does it still crash ?

I take it this happens in X? If so what happens in runlevel 3?

Posted in wrong thread - sorry!

Thanks for the rapid reply's!
I do not not know for sure which driver it is using here is from lsmod.

Module Size Used by
radeon 650763
ttm 39060 1 radeon
drm_kms_helper 23751 1 radeon
drm 133002 5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit 4355 1 radeon
snd_seq_dummy 1107 0
snd_seq_oss 25580 0

This is from x & have not tried runlevel 3!

Another user was added and that seems to have solved the problem on that user. It has only been used for about three hours total as the second user so maybe it is good to go, will report back tomorrow evening. Thanks to all!

I have used this computer for quiet a number of hours and as of this evening there has been no problems logging in as 2nd user. I guess at some point I will try to find what is the problem with 1st user. thanks for all the help.

This is just a step on a longer way. I would say something is seriously wrong. When a user is able to freeze/crash a linux computer, something tend to be way out of place. But this sort of debugging is quite difficult and time consuming unfortunately.

If there is no hints what so ever in any logfiles, one way to debug this is to copy the homefolder to your primary user to the debuguser, and delete one thing at a time. Perhaps there is a better way?

Hardware. Hardware.

I agree w/Dinithion that you've just unfurled the tether for your space walk, you haven't even gone into the air lock yet.

Me? I would start in Run Level 3 (I typically do that anyway). Log into your console as you normally would as root. Then log in as the offending user in the next virtual console.

Create a new user w/useradd or adduser, whichever you prefer, the second is the script which is typically used on Slack. login as this new user in your third virtual console.

Now proceed as the offending user... lalalalalalala.

If nothing happens, then startx as the offending user in that virtual console and try to locate the sequence of tasks that will reliably recreate the crash.

At this point, see if you can't switch back to the first virtual console and kill the login for the offending user.

It could be many things, yet one thing that stands out, other than bleeding edge hardware drivers, which should only crash X anyway and return you to a cli when the X Server crashes, is a hard drive failure....

Okay, If you've partitioned your HDD and /home is mounted on, say, /dev/hda4 and / is mounted on /dev/hda3, and portions of your hard drive are whacked in the general neighborhood of /dev/hda4, then this will coz a lockup such as you describe.

As root, your home directory is /root and as a non-privileged user your home directory is /home. If those are on separate partitions then the system is locking up during a seek (Listen carefully for that old WD clicking sound, or an HDD LED that stays lit, etc.).

Check to see whether data is disappearing from the offending users home dir tree, or if, as root, you get *not found* errors when doing dir's, ls's cp's, etc. run disk diags, depending on the file systems you're running now.

It's possible that your previous Linux install didn't touch the bad blocks on your disk (If this is indeed anything to do with the issue).

A non-privileged user should not be able to lock a whole system, unless it is merely incidental that such a user is logged in when something clustermucks in the system.

Hardware. Hardware.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the help and suggestions, Here is my situation now, user #1 is still crashing, user #2 crashes every once in a while, root is still stable as a rock with never a problem. I have followed many of the suggestions in the above and may have found the problem. I ran "smartctl and did the long test "about 47 minutes" It did show up a problem at 40% on my /home partician, now if I can just figure out a way to move the data and block the badblocks Maybe it will cure the problem. I do have another hdd that I can replace it with and it does not have a lot of valuable data. The point of all this was not to just get it going but to learn in the process.


SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 22489
# 2 Extended offline Completed: read failure 40% 22488 113012204
# 3 Short captive Completed without error 00% 19334 -
# 4 Short captive Completed without error 00% 19133 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1 -

sorry for the jumbled format, but if you will notice this drive has 22489 hours of use on it with 1600 reboots.

Just an update on this problem, it for sure is a hard disk problem! I ran the seagate disk utility and it found bad sectors and locked them out. I then ran spinrite with no errors found. The next thing I did was run smartctl again, it did find some errors but it seems to be working much better for now. There has only been 2 lockups in the 1st user since the tests.

you can mark this thread solved.