random crashes
 

hey guys,
hope someone can help me here. Been having these crashes for awhile now, dunno why. computer will just lock right up, no getting out except yee old reset, keyboards froze etc..
i suspect it may be the vid card, but it happens so randomly its hard to pin point. happens whether i;m surfign playing games, sitting ide whatever. If i can finish posting this without a lockup i will be happy as this is my third attemp at it...

Here is my setup
p4 2.4 533 fsb
2X 512 kingstom value ram, tested with memtest86, no errors :/
ati 9500 pr 128 meg
2X hd's 1 wetserdigital 1 seagate 60 gb
lg cdrom, lg dvd rw
asus p4p-800 e deluxe mobo


debian 3.1. testing, 2.6.8-2-i686
icewm and roxfiler,
ati drivers with 3d acceleration working

sorry if thats a bit sparce, just tryign to get this posted.

is there any video card dignostic i could run to maybe help narrow this dow?
its happened for awhile, thought it was the mobo, bought a new on.... seeeemed to be better
then the same thing started happening, random crashs, random times

old mobo was an abit, that strangely shorted out, no burnmarks but, wont post either, with gf4 4200 (that still works in my wifes pc) and nothing else but moniter, spins, no post. my other thought was maybe powersupply shorting components... i dont what it is really, i just hate buyinh new components for seemingly old working-could-possiblly-be-broken ones.

any suggestions?

Thanks

Any possibility of swapping parts from your wifes rig?

i could swap parts, its the mucking of drivers that bugs me. I would have to swap a part, leave it for at least a week
to see if anything helped. it's just so random, sometimes it happens 5 times in five minutes other times, it takes a week or two before anything happens. Thats why i was hopeing some diagnostic software may help pintpoint something. if i ran memtest86 and there was some errors reported at least it "might" be a ram issue... but alas, ram shows up clean. i know it sounds odd to say that but what a pain this has become. If something would just break i could figure it out, but its almost like theres a tiny short somewhere. Just got a new moniter last month and issue stlll has not gone away. at least thats one part i can safely disregard... one down and 100 to go :D

ah, the fun of computers



UPDATE:

ok it just happened agin, this time i noticed when it happened...
For some reaosn (must be tired) i help down the left mouse button apparently to long !?!
and keyboard froze mouse still worked however, nothing i clicked on responded..( i dunno if X crashed or kernel crash or what) had to use that oh so wonderful button that should only be used for hardware upgrades... yup... the power button :cry:


have swapped keyboard and mouse with older but still ps2 components..

hey byte.chaser it seems that your rig is fine. I suspect that is your blazingly fast ATI graphics card. The fastness has nothing to do with the crashing, unless you are dangerously overclocked.


ATI DRIVERS for graphics cards in Linux are WELL KNOWN for crashing a rig or two dude, in contrast to Nvidia drivers for Linux-that's word of mouth and all over google. I'm not bating here. It's just an observation, besides I don't play games and thus do not have a preference for a graphics-card.


I haven't had a computer with a real graphics card yet 8(.



I recommend that you uninstall your card TEMPORARILY, and use the integrated video adapter that's on your ASUS mobo to test/verify that your graphics-card is at fault for lockups by using your computer with XFree86 for a long time use, about a week, without the ATI card installed.

After removing the game killing ATI thingy, in your XFree86Config/xorg.conf/XF86Config-4 file use the 'vesa' driver instead of what's there now in the "Device" section for the "Driver" field. 'vesa' works with any display adapter that is vga compatible-as with the ones built into mobos. Standard hardware doesn't cause problems under ideal conditions.

Like this, case sensitive:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI-main"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "My favorite"
EndSection

#and make sure that at least one of your "Screen" sections have
#the corresponding device in the "Screen" section like this;
#note that the sections in your "Screen" section must match up or else
#you will get the famous "No screens found." error message

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "ATI-main"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultColorDepth 16 #the 16 is required here
SubSection "Display"
Depth
Modes "1024x728" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection

#also change your "Sever Layout" section to reflect the "Screen0" screen
#you can have more than one screen :cool: though, XFree86 #uses the first one it find that's useable

If you haven't crashed since the uninstall, then you may conclude it's a buggy driver that was trashing your rig. You can get a fresh driver that fixes the problem from ati.com, usually. Happy gaming.

are you running an SMP system or something?


SMP systems sometimes require a bit more tinkering.

I had experience with a usb-jump drive (standard hardware) that crashed my system when I plugged it in. That was on DamnSmallLinux in it's early days. DamnSmallLinux is built from Knoppix, and Knoppix is built from Debian! Those distros take the good lineage from debian though.

Other things that I know that can crash your system are-from my experience:
loading certain modules, removing certain modules, and inserting or removing ps/2 mice when the computer is on. PS/2 mice are not hot-pluggable. That's Ironic. LOL. I don't know if you'll have the same effect with unpluging and repluging a keyboard though.
With that, check to make sure that your not accidentaly loosening the mouse connector causing a crash.

Good Luck man.

programs can cause problems
 

unloading certain modules at certain time can cause crashes, e.g. ndiswrapper

@ tmantist

thanks for the suggestion, can i just change the XF86Config-4 without removing any files?
just change the driver field to vesa?

my wife has a nvidia GF3 ti 4200 i may use instead and swap for the ati
i wonder if the 5V pwr adapter on the ati card has anything to do with it..


no i dont have or use SMP

thanks for the suggestions.

if i just remove my ati card and put in the nvidia card, how "easy" is it to install the nvidia drivers even though ati's drivers are currently in there as well (dont wanna cause more issues :rolleyes: :/
heheh i know there not hot swapable been arguing that with freinds for a LOOOOOOONNNG time... they found out the hard way lol.. and the STILL dont believe me :p

I recommend to you that you should troubleshoot if its your drivers for the ATI graphics card first before going on any further so you can choose what to assess in a linear way using the process of elimination. Less problems.

you do not have to remove anything, so yes you can just change the field to 'vesa' and the module 'ati' that plugs into xserver right now will always be in '/usr/X11R6/lib/modules', according to to 'man XFree86'.

all drivers and extensions in the xserver are modules. Nothing gets loaded into memory for Xserver to work unless you tell the xserver to load it in the xserver config file, xorg.conf/XF86Config-4/etc. That wasn't the case in XFree86 version 3 where everything is loaded.

your might have to get real close to the xserver because your using advanced proprietary technology provided by the ATI and Nvidia graphics-cards. once you read a doc or two and spend some time with your computer you'll know how your computer will react under certain conditions and you will know it like your own personality and how everything is from a certain. that was creepy. i was only trying to make an analogy.

ATI and Nvidia are always hard at work supporting their products.

your using a Great Distro

no I'm not a adbot for ATI or Nvidia. I haven't even bought a graphics card from any company as a matter of fact. I always use the integrated stuff 8(

Great thanks again

ok so i change the line to Driver "vesa"

thats all i need to do ?

i'm not to sure what you meant by

unfortuneatly the is no integrated video either to test

i'm not to sure what exactly to check in


'/usr/X11R6/lib/modules' either .,.. not at home right now so it may jump out at me when i get home. i dont know if its just a editable file or i just rename an "ati" module ...


thanks again this distro and forum is AWESOME!

here is how you change it
 

'/usr/X11R6/lib/modules' is a directory that has the modules that you xserver is enabled to load. Your weren't suppose to check anything I was just telling you that you could look at the modules to see whats there.

Now getting you to USE your integrated-graphics card that I insist is on your board-


first you find add this section to you xserver config file;


Section "Device"
Identifier "Integrated-Graphics-Card"
Driver "your original module/driver name here" # in a Driver field change "your original module/driver name here" to "vesa"
VendorName "SiS"
BoardName "Generic"
EndSection

then in a screen section make sure the DefaultColorDepth is 16 like this

#your XFree86Config-4 file may have multiple "Screen", "Monitor" and "Device" sections see 'man XFree86'
#for all this to make sense

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Integrated-Graphics-Card"
Monitor "Monitor"
DefaultColorDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection

and lastly find the "ServerLayout" section it may be at the beginning or end of the config file:

#make the "ServerLayout" section reflect the "Screen0" to the server

Section "Serverlayout"
Identifier "Testing-configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 #this is the ONLY THING THAT YOU MUST CHANGE IN this section
#rest of server layout goes here unchanged!

I don't think I can make it any simpler than that. You might want to read the XFree86 man page to see how it is formatted to understand all the gibberish.

trust me, if a vga plug was sticking out out the mobo i would know...

asus p4p800-e

Your right, it does not have a vga plug.

In the specifications on the page in the accessories row, what is "InterVideo Win Cinema"?

I suggest that you try the drivers in the '/usr/X11R6/lib/modules' directory. you would approach using them as where I said with the 'vesa' procedure. Try them all with conservative settings first. (If you get board, try the 'vesa' with your ATI card.) Your card has been around for some time now, so maybe XFree86 ver. 4 can support it. Xorg has support for 'ati 9500'. you have the 'ati 9500 pro' righ?

You bought a nice mobo. I would hate to see it go.
fiddling, trying bruteforce, to find a workable driver is potentially dangerous. I did some tinkering in FreeBSD back in the day like that, it gave my LCD panel on my laptop 2 dead pixels. Thank goodness it was only 2 pixels!


and if that doesn't workout you can go to ATI or Nvidia to get any drivers for your hardware. There are tons of guys out there with your same problem. I also seen tutorials on installing the proprietary drivers from ATI. Maybe some Problems have been solved. 21,200 results showup on google with "ati 9500 pro". I hate the thought of a linuxer going through all that.

There is even talk about "softmodding" the ati 9500 pro into a ati 9700 pro- http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofivers...p/t325028.html

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthre...t=53741&page=3

How about you turn off video acceleration in the server config file?

are you sure that you have not overclocked to the point where your system will behave badly?

You got any new ideas?

hehe the big bright light just dawned on me lol... i will look in '/usr/X11R6/lib/modules' to check names that i can use in my XF86Congi-4 file when i get home



not sure if how to do this, is it just a line in XF86Congi-4 ? 3d acceleration seems good, fgl_glxgears gives approx 500 fps glx approx 1500'ish (cant remember exactly) thats not to say its not having an issue though...



never been overclocked that i am sure off, i thoguht about it, but flashing a cards chip always gave me the shivers :Dthanks me to!! :D

READ the xserver man page
to see how to CHANGE settings for the xserver and graphics card, 'man XFree86'


it would be nice to have some log files and error files being posted on here.
It's getting boring guessing solutions, and anyone will interpret info less accurately with little/no debug info

I suspect that you might be using the agpgart driver (in the kernel) and the glx(module in the xserver)
I don't know if your using those two things but it's something to look at

can a guy get some debug info around here?

use google, man pages