Can somebody help me figure out why Mandrake keeps on freezing. this even happens in the console so its not an X11 problem. the computer just freezes every now and again no matter what i'm doing. sometimes even on start-up.


I've got a PII 400MHz
SiS S600 motherboard (i think this is correct might be wrong though)
on board SiSAGP
on board CMedia Sound Card (SB compatable)
hda 10GB WinME
hdb 3.5' Optical Stiffy Drive
hdc 1.5GB Win98, 7GB Mandrake 9.1
hdd CDRW

USB ports
PS2 mouse ,keyboard

if anyone can help me thanks in advance.

here is the output of my dmesg

Linux version 2.4.21-0.13mdk (flepied@bi.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 (Mandrake Linux 9.1 3.2.2-3mdk)) #1 Fri Mar 14 15:08:06 EST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000003ff0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000003ff0000 - 0000000003ff8000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 0000000003ff8000 - 0000000004000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffef0000 - 00000000fff00000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
63MB LOWMEM available.
ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000
On node 0 totalpages: 16368
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 12272 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=1605 devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off
ide_setup: hdd=ide-scsi
Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
Found and enabled local APIC!
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 400.908 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 799.53 BogoMIPS
Memory: 61288k/65472k available (1410k kernel code, 3796k reserved, 1118k data, 136k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: 0183fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0183fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Pentium II (Deschutes) stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 400.9364 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 100.2339 MHz.
cpu: 0, clocks: 1002339, slice: 501169
CPU0<T0:1002336,T1:501152,D:15,S:501169,C:1002339>
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20030122
ACPI: Disabled via command line (acpi=off)
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfdb81, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router SIS [1039/0008] at 00:01.0
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: CMI8330 quirk - fixing interrupts and dma
isapnp: Card 'CMI8330/C3D Audio Adapter'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 32000K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SIS5513: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:00.1
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:00.1. Please try using pci=biosirq.
SIS5513: chipset revision 208
SIS5513: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
SiS5600 ATA 33 controller
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaio, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
hda: FUJITSU MPF3102AT, ATA DISK drive
hdb: LS-120 CSMO 05 UHD Floppy, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
blk: queue c03cb420, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdb: DMA disabled
hdc: WDC AC28400R, ATA DISK drive
hdd: AOPEN CD-RW CRW1632, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
blk: queue c03cb86c, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 20015856 sectors (10248 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=1245/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdc: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hdc: host protected area => 1
hdc: 16514064 sectors (8455 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=16383/16/63, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1
/dev/ide/host0/bus1/target0/lun0:<6> [PTBL] [1027/255/63] p1 p2 < p5 p6 >
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 8192)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 106k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Mounted devfs on /dev
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Mounted devfs on /dev
Freeing unused kernel memory: 136k freed
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xc483a000, IRQ 9
usb-ohci.c: usb-00:01.2, Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub founf
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usbdevfs: remount parameter error
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide1(22,5), internal journal
Adding Swap: 216836k swap-space (priority -1)
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: AOPEN Model: CD-RW CRW1632 Rev: 1.03
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
MSDOS FS: IO charset iso8859-15
MSDOS FS: Using codepage 850
MSDOS FS: IO charset iso8859-15
MSDOS FS: Using codepage 850
inserting floppy driver for 2.4.21-0.13mdk
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdb: No disk in drive
hdb: 123264kB, 963/8/32 CHS, 533 kBps, 512 sector size, 720 rpm
devfs_do_symlink(disc0): could not append to parent, err: -17
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 32x/32x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
lp0: using parport0 (polling).

i tried adding pci=biosirq to the commandline start it seems to work slightly more stable now but still freezes every now and again

Anybody got any ideas??

well depending on your bootloader ex: lilo.conf or grub.conf under the /etc directory add the line:

"append=pci=noacpi pci=biosirq"

a little different than what you have, but may work.

Your bootloader already has acpi turned off; see the part of dmesg which talks about:

Kernel Command Line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=1605 devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off

So if you're using Lilo as your bootloader, you could try adding 'pci=biosirq' to the 'append =' line in /etc/lilo.conf. In fact, this is suggested about half way through the dmesg output with the line:

PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:00.1. Please try using pci=biosirq

The other change I would suggest is to add 'noapic' to the same line.

So if your /etc/lilo.conf (or the Grub equivalent) has a line:

append = "devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"

change that to read:

append = "noapic pci=biosirq devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"

The other thing you could check is your video RAM. You didn't say if your motherboard has an on-board graphics controller (or is that what you mean by 'on board SISAGP'?). If it does have on-board graphics, then it will use motherboard memory for the video RAM. Your dmesg output indicates 63MB memory available for use, but if some of this is not allocated for exclusive use of the video memory, then if the kernel allocates some program memory to the space being used for graphics memory, you could get memory conflicts that could result in the sort of freezing you are experiencing. If this is happening, you could try adding this to the same 'append =' line in /etc/lilo.conf (or the Grub equivalent):

mem=xxM

where xx = the difference between your system RAM (64MB in your case) and the amount of RAM allocated to the graphics in the BIOS. Most BIOS setup programs will let you change that value. So if you have allocated 16MB to the graphics in the BIOS, make xx the value of 48 (64 - 16). ie, the statement would be 'mem=48M'.

i do have an onboard graphics card and in my bios i think its set as 32M i'll try setting the mem function in lilo.conf and see how it goes. u know this might just be the problem after all coz games like tuxracer are excruciatingly slow, lack of graphics accelleration memory could explain this.

Thanks for the help. i'll let u know how it goes.

i tried the mem=48M and set my onboard AGP to 16M works a little slower but much stabler. still froze last night but this was after a few hours of gaming so its not such a big problem. thanks guys for the help.

Glad to be of help. For your freezing problem, although this could be caused by many things, your power supply is your prime suspect, and is the easiest to rule out if it isn't the cause. For more info, check here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...lys#post323816

no its not my power supply coz my windows drive runs fine so it must be the onboard graphics which was causing the problem. i first ran linux on another machine with a Trio3D card and it ran fine even better than my windows system.

When I first set up Linux with my current computer it froze. It seems that Linux is fussier about BIOS settings than Windows. I had to go into BIOS and ensure the mouse setting was correct. I had changed it to use a USB mouse and forgot to change it back. Windows didn't care but Linux did!!!

Of course it could be something else, but hope this helps!

DAVE