Slackware freezing alot?
 

I helped a friend of mine install Slackware on his computer a few weeks ago. He did a full install onto his Pentium 3 800 mhz, Intel 810 graphics and sound, and 256 RAM.
I then helped him get networking going and he started out in KDE, went to Gnome, and finally found XFCE worked best for him. He hasn't configured it too much, added a line in fstab for his ipod and installed a couple apps, one of them was amarok so he could use his ipod. Anyway he said that it is crashing alot, just freezing. I can't think of anything that would make that happen, he wasn't running any heavy processes, just using epiphany, amarok, and gaim generally. Any ideas on why this is happening and how to fix it?

if it is crashing you should look in the syslogs, dmesg, messages and other logs in /var/log to see if you can find the cause.

Its probably just the window manager/GUI. I would check the logs as the previous post suggested, Run TOP, if possible to see what is using the most resources, update the video driver if possible or downgrade to the default vesa, get the latest version of KDE, Gnome or whatever is being used and try out several different managers or GUI`s, I had KDE on a 350 amd and it would crash all the time, I switched to fluxbox and it ran great. :)

fluxbox is prolly imho the best lightweight wm

He said that it froze up in KDE, Gnome, XFCE, and Fluxbox. I'll have him run top and send me the logs and I'll post them to see if we can diagnose this further.
Thanks alot!

Which WM to use is a matter of opinion. Personally, I like XFCE. There's no point in having a WM war over it, because I tried Fluxbox and I didn't like it. Presumably, you did the same for XFCE.


Linux doesn't freeze for me. I know that's not the most useful answer I can give, nor is it exactly what you were hoping/expecting to hear. The point, though, is that, as you're probably aware, Linux is generally a lot more stable than Windows, and that's got nothing to do with which distro you're using. It's because the kernel treats users and user-run applications differently than the Windows system does. You'll see the same sort of stability out of a BSD-based system, or even MacOS X to a certain extent.

Yay. Tell me something you didn't already know.

A few questions about his situation:
1. Has he tried recompiling the kernel to remove support for options that he doesn't need? You'll find that the distro kernel has a whole bunch of crap in it that you simply do not need. At all. You probably do not need support for a whole bunch of different types of network cards, but just one or maybe two different types. You probably don't need support for a whole bunch of different frame buffers. You probably don't need support for a whole bunch of different motherboard chipsets or IDE/SATA controllers. You're certainly not running a '486, which the distro kernel is optimized for. The first thing I'd suggest you do after an install, before you add anything, is to update the kernel and compile it optimized for your chip type and without support for hardware you don't have.

2. Is there any pattern to the crashing? Is it only when epiphany is running? Is it only when transferring files to/from the ipod? Is it only when surfing the net? Is it only when touching a walnut wrapped in tinfoil to his tongue while standing on one leg? (points if you get the reference)

3. Has he run anything like swaret to "update" the system?

4. Is it a crash crash, or only a sorta crash? Can he switch to CON (CTRL-ALT-F1) and see any debug output from X?

I used to get alot of crashes back in the old days of Slackware 9.0 !

I was mostly because of kernel issues. After downloading a new kernel and customizing it, everything went smoothly.

Another thing that may cause crashes are suggested in the previous posts: Window Manager (I prefer KDE -- USE THE LATEST) and Graphics Card Drivers.

If you're using a NVidia or ATI (which is mostly the case), then make sure you download the latest driver and READ ITS MANUAL, THEN, install it ... that would save you A LOT of time, believe me ;)

Ummm, you could ask him to switch to KDE or Gnome and see if those crashes presist.

Your buddy may also want to consider whether or not his RAM is stable - i.e. properly seated in the slots, undamaged, etc.

Certainly if your friend can establish some kind of repetitious pattern to the freezing that would be helpful for diagnostic purposes. As has already been mentioned, the other thing that can result in freezing is a buggy graphix card ... again it could be defective or it could be a little loose or out of the slot a bit. Also, did your friend partition the drive for swap space and if so, was it of sufficient size?

And just to add to that, does your friend run an overclocked CPU? Enev iuf he doesnt is has cooling system efficient enough? Just some thing to consider.

I also have some hard-freezing issues when running 100% CPU under Slack 10 (with KDE(3.3.2), XFce(4.2) or Fluxbox(0.9.11)) but I know that it is hardware related because I had the same problems in SuSE 8.2, 9.1 and WinXP

just a quick tip for a situation when X freezes and the computer wont take anymore input.. Sometimes its just the X taking down the keyboard with it.. If possible, log on from another machine via ssh, kill the X.. This usually wont help, but if you do DISPLAY=:0 and throw a startx over ssh, the new X will clean up for the frozen one, making the system usable again..
I have these freezes sometimes rarely, no idea what causes them, but now I know that they can be fixed without a hard reboot.. (:

Just wanted to share this with you if it happens to be the same kinda problem.. No one likes corrupt disks from too many hard reboots..

Thanks alot for all your help and detailed responses! I'll try and provide more detailed info as its made available so we can solve this.

Yep, mine has hardly ever crashed. All *NIX based systems are very stable, especially in comparison to windows. It really suprised me when he told me that linux is crashing alot more than windows ever did!

I've been helping him get started in linux, and I don't have any idea how to do that (it sounds very interesting though) so he wouldn't have done that.


He said there is no pattern or specific program that is running when it crashes. I'm going to have him run top and output it to text file (top > processes.txt should work I think) and I'll post it here. The crashing seems to be random.

he has swaret installed, he has used it to update to slackware current. I've used it alot and haven't had any troubles (I know Pat doesn't officially approve of it). What would you recommend as a good alternative for keeping up-to-date? I've tried both slapt-get and slack-get with mixed results.

I'll tell him to use that the next time it freezes and report back to you what happens. I wonder if he could start another X session ahead of time (its Alt-f7 isn't it) and then switch to it if the other one crashes?

He's running the default kernel... I could get him to update to the 2.6x if that would help.


I'll ask him what it is... all I know is its integrated.

He doesn't like Gnome because it is too slow for him. He had used KDE but it froze on him too.

I'll have him check that... I'm suprised windows hasn't had any issues with it though.

I'll try and get him to see if he can find a pattern, so far he just keeps telling me that its random.
I had him make a swap partition, 512 MB, twice the size of the RAM is pretty standard isn't it?

He doesn't have it overclocked I don't think. Since he doesn't have these issues in windows I don't think its a hardware issue.

Thanks... could you go into a little more detail on that? Hard reboots are fun, aren't they? I'm stuck with an EXT2 with journeling support fs for now but I had him install EXT3 so hopefully he'll be better off. With those hard reboots you get really comfortable with fsck.

Check out the link at the top of the forum: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=127095
It's a little dated, but the basic information is sound. The bottom line is that you should go to kernel.org and download the current (2.6.10 as of this writing) kernel in its entirety. Don't bother with a patch, because you don't have an existing 2.6 tree kernel source.
Unzip the kernel. It's probably a good idea to do that in /usr/src, and make a symlink from linux-2.6.10 to linux, and do all of your building out of the "linux" directory, though that's really more of form than a requirement.
It's probably not necessary, but I'd do it way: go to the linux directory and type "make clean"
When "make clean" has finished (shouldn't take too long), type "make xconfig". It *should* work without any problems, and has an easier-to-look-at interface than the alternative. If you get errors that prevent xconfig from working, though, type "make menuconfig" instead.
Here's where it gets fuzzy, and I can't tell you exactly what to choose. What you need to do is go through every menu in the system, and enable the modules for your hardware configuration. If you don't know for sure which one to compile in a certain category, it's better to be paranoid and enable them all. You'll notice, though, that there's a lot of categories that you will know for a fact you don't need. IrDA comes to mind. You probably won't need RAID support, either. etc.
When you're done with the menu-based configuration, exit, and if it asks, save the changes before quitting. Do not bother with choosing any of the options that specifically say "save", because those are to save the config with a non-standard name. The idiot-proofing will give you the option to save with the right file name if you just quit straight up.
After finishing up with the config, you're ready to build the kernel. In order: (it's probably a good idea to be running as root for this)
make
make modules
make modules_install

Now, there's an option "make install" that supposedly works, but I prefer to do the last few steps manually:
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.x.x (where 2.x.x is the kernel version, such as 2.6.10)
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.x.x (same as above)
cd /boot
ln -s System.map-2.x.x System.map


Edit /etc/lilo.conf to add a line for your new kernel. I'd suggest you use pico for this, if you're not used to command-line interface, but any editor will work, from ed to emacs in complexity. I haven't updated my system to 2.6.10 yet, but here's the lines from my lilo.conf that reference the 2.6.9 kernel:
I've got a naming convention in /boot that's entirely choice. Whatever makes sense for you is what matters. When I compile a kernel, I always copy the vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz-2.x.x, and make a symlink to /boot/vmlinuz. When I update lilo.conf, I also include a reference to the old (known-good) kernel. That's important, because if your new kernel is borked, you can go back and use the old one to figure out what you did wrong.

After updating lilo.conf, run lilo and reboot. You should be able to boot into the new kernel.


That'll work. As a general rule for troubleshooting, if it makes sense, it's software. If the crashes are completely and utterly unpredictable, with no rhyme or reason, then it's hardware.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It isn't necessary to be up-to-the-minute. In fact, it's generally bad, because you don't want to be running development versions of software unless you're trying to beta test it. You'll find that an awful lot of software updates don't actually do anything to your system. Most of them are bug and/or security fixes, and while it's a good idea to keep your system's security up-to-date, you also need to keep scope in mind. If your computer is operating behind a firewall, and you're the only person with physical access, then it isn't really that important to update a software package to fix a buffer-overrun glitch that can allow remote users root access. If you aren't affected by a bug, then the software fix to remedy that bug isn't that important, and may, in fact, introduce a new bug that does affect you.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-update. I'm anti-useless-update. There's a difference. Bottom line, if you aren't in a situation where you'll be affected by a fix included in an updated version of the software, then don't worry about installing the update. If you come across an update that you do want installed, then download the specific package from a mirror, and install it manually using kpackage in X or installpkg at command.



Ctrl-Alt-F7 will bring him to his main X terminal. Ctrl-Alt-F8 will bring him to a new one. He should experiment with switching between terminals while the system is not crashed before he worries about trying while the system is broken.

Intel 810 is neither NVidia nor ATI. It's Intel 810, which is a legitimate, albeit somewhat crappy, graphics chipset of its own right. There's an option for that chipset specifically at the kernel-level under Graphics Drivers.

To a certain extent, that's standard. What's important is having a big enough number between both physical and virtual memory. I'm using 512MB, which, in my case, is 1/4 the physical RAM.


If it comes to it, try him out on Reiser instead of EXT3. The mumblings I hear in the direction suggest that it's a better filesystem for home-type applications, though the specific reasons escape me at the moment.

Thanks for all this detailed information! I will have to modify this slightly since I'm running a slightly modified version of Slackware called Topologilinux (www.topologilinux.com) which installs to an nstf partition and keeps initrd.gz file in windows so I will have to modify my new kernel install. Here are some instructions I got from the topo creator:
Fortunately I have a complete backup of my system so if worse comes to worse I'll just revert to that. My friend shouldn't have any issues hopefully since he is running a stock version of Slackware.

That's a good policy. Generally what packages do you update on a regular basis? I do like to upgrade to the most recent version of KDE.. I believe Slackware 10.0 is only 3.3.1. Is there a command for swaret that will let me revert certian files to my original install if I want to?

I had tried this a couple times before... when I had done it F8 would give me a black screen with what looked like a cursor in the top-left corner but I couldn't type anything!?? I could drag my mouse which made other lines highlighted but it was basically useless. What am I doing wrong?

So a kernel upgrade would be a good idea.


I'll remember that, its good to know.

Once again thanks for all your help!

It's a bit odd, but my desktop is doing the same thing to me. I could have sworn that it worked before, though. CTRL-ALT-F6, in my case, is bringing up a text-only console, though, which works just as well. It doesn't matter if you're in X, it matters if you're even able to switch to a different terminal, login, do stuff while the system is "crashed".

If the mouse moves when frozen, try CTRL-ALT-ESC. In KDE, at least, it turns the mouse cursor to a skull and crossbones which you can use to kill an open window if it's not responding.

Honestly? Both my desktop and laptop are running stock Slack 10.0 builds, without having updated any applications. The desktop is running 2.6.9 kernel, and the laptop is running 2.6.10 (I installed that more recently after I did something stupid and it blew up in my face.... I had a warranty issue and listened to the tech. support guru -literally, considering his accent- and did a QuickRestore, despite knowing for a fact that it would not resolve my problem of a cracked LCD.) On both systems, the only apps that get run are OpenOffice.Org 1.1.4, Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird 1.0, and assorted games that came bundled with the system. (kreversi, klondike, gnome mines, same gnome, ksokoban, etc.)

I'm still running Windows on both systems, though I only ever go into Win on the weekends. I'm a student, and one of the explicit reasons that I'm running Linux is that I'm too lazy to worry about getting my games to work with Wine. The desktop goes into Win on the weekends, and during the week (M-F), only into Linux. The only exception being that my printer is a piece of junk that, despite there being mfg-supplied linux drivers for it, still doesn't work in Linux. When I want to print, I have to boot into Windows. Oh, and on my laptop, for some reason, DVD playback is still a lot cleaner and less choppy in Windows than in Linux, so it's dualbooting with 2K Pro.

You already know the answer to your question, though. You want to update KDE. So do it.

I think so. I've been wrong before, though. ;)

I tried the first step to updating my kernel, mounting initrd.gz in /root/imnt/ and then copying a bunch of files from a patch that the topo guy gave me. I couldn't copy all of them though because the mounted initrd file ran out of space (by 30 kb)!! Can I enlarge it somehow? Anyway after i get past this part hopefully it will go smoother.