[SOLVED] Temporary short-term system "freeze"?

brucehinrichs · 06-03-2010, 01:00 PM

I'm having a strange issue on my Debian Sid-Liquorix install. The system seems to freeze randomly until I move my mouse or press a key. The cursor stops flashing, and I'm losing time. This started about a week ago. I noticed it, but didn't think much of it until I noticed the system clock was almost a half an hour slow.

While searching LQ for similar posts, I ran across this one and tried:

Code:

ps -e | grep acpid

The result:

Code:

root@Frank2:/home/bruce# ps -e | grep acpid
   84 ?        00:00:00 kacpid
 1809 ?        00:00:00 acpid

I wonder if this is resulting in a conflict of sorts?

I also noticed a bunch of entries in dmesg related to iwlagn (I don't know what these are either). I'm not using wireless at the time I ran dmesg, but when I do use it, this pause seems to interrupt my wireless connection as well.

I'm really at a loss to explain this behavior. It's more of an annoyance than a serious problem, but I'd like to resolve it. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Some other system information:

Code:

root@Frank2:/home/bruce# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600M GT] (rev a1)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
0e:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
0e:06.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
0e:06.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)

Code:

root@Frank2:/home/bruce# uname -a
Linux Frank2 2.6.34-0.dmz.5-liquorix-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 26 22:11:50 CDT 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Tail portion of dmesg:

Code:

iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: Microcode SW error detected.  Restarting 0x82000000.
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: Start IWL Error Log Dump:
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: Status: 0x000213E4, count: 5
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: Desc                               Time       data1      data2      line
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: NMI_INTERRUPT_WDG            (#04) 1679893515 0x00000002 0x03630000 208
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: blink1  blink2  ilink1  ilink2
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: 0x04B0C 0x004C2 0x006DE 0x04B1E
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: Start IWL Event Log Dump: display last 20 entries
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679691096:0x00002000:0350
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692367:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692368:0x00000000:0302
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692381:0x00002000:0350
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692538:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692539:0x00000000:0302
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692552:0x00002000:0350
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692659:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692660:0x00000000:0302
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679692673:0x00002000:0350
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693092:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693093:0x00000000:0302
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693133:0x00000000:0304
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693375:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693376:0x00000000:0302
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693389:0x00002000:0350
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693517:0x00000107:0106
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693518:0x00000000:0301
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679693902:0x00000000:0356
iwlagn 0000:0c:00.0: EVT_LOGT:1679893518:0x00000000:0125

EDIT: DE is gnome

fruttenboel · 06-05-2010, 03:44 AM

did you change anything very simple?

I once had similar events after I chenged the name of the computer from 'hydrogen' into 'nitrogen'.

Didn't think of that much, until suddenly the startup became slllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Turned out that 'hydrogen' had an entry in /etc/hosts and 'nitrogen' had not and suddenly it could not determine its own LAN IP address anymore. Added an entry for nitrogen and vwalla all was fast again...

brucehinrichs · 06-05-2010, 11:10 AM

Thanks for the reply, fruttenboel. The only thing I changed was to update the install. Since it is Sid (experimental) I update daily. The system runs just fine as long as I'm constantly using the keyboard and touchpad. The problem only happens when it sits idle. Maybe it's a bug that will eventually just get fixed, I dunno. The upside is I'm using my Slackware and Arch installs more.

brucehinrichs · 06-05-2010, 04:25 PM

Interesting: I updated my Slackware64 13.0 to 13.1 using the 'official' guide and I'm seeing the same behavior on Slack now.

Code:

root@Frank2:~# uname -a
Linux Frank2 2.6.33.4 #3 SMP Wed May 12 23:13:09 CDT 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9300  @ 2.50GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Tail portion of dmesg:

Code:

Adding 1951856k swap on /dev/sda1.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:1951856k 
fuse init (API version 7.13)
EXT3-fs (sda7): using internal journal
ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs (sda3): using internal journal
EXT3-fs (sda3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode
tg3 0000:04:00.0: irq 33 for MSI/MSI-X
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX.
NET: Registered protocol family 10
lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
CPUFREQ: Per core ondemand sysfs interface is deprecated - up_threshold
root@Frank2:~#

EDIT: DE is KDE

brucehinrichs · 06-05-2010, 04:38 PM

Arch seems fine.

Code:

[bruce@Frank2 ~]$ uname -a
Linux Frank2 2.6.33-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Apr 4 10:27:30 CEST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

One other thing I've noticed is that my Synaptics touchpad is working the way I like in Debian and Slackware, but I haven't quite got it configured the same yet in Arch. Hmm.

EDIT: DE is xfce for Arch.

fruttenboel · 06-06-2010, 05:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brucehinrichs

Arch seems fine.

Code:

[bruce@Frank2 ~]$ uname -a
Linux Frank2 2.6.33-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Apr 4 10:27:30 CEST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

One other thing I've noticed is that my Synaptics touchpad is working the way I like in Debian and Slackware, but I haven't quite got it configured the same yet in Arch. Hmm.

EDIT: DE is xfce for Arch.

long shot: kill cpufreq and see what it does. I have a hunch this is the culprit.

Reason: when the system is idle, it will lower the system clock. when the system clock is down enough it will not notice fast events quick enough and needs some time to crank up the core frequency. aparently the built-in leprechaun needs a better alarm bell.
perhaps cpufreq needs additional parameters?

brucehinrichs · 06-06-2010, 03:52 PM

Thanks, will try that as soon as possible. I'm now having an Xorg issue. Once that is sorted, I'll get back to this one. Appreciate the help.

brucehinrichs · 06-06-2010, 08:47 PM

Xorg is resolved.

I removed cpufrequtils via synaptic (mark for complete removal), restarted, opened a terminal and did:

Code:

bruce@Frank2:~$ ps -e | grep cpu
bruce@Frank2:~$ ps -e | grep cpufreq
bruce@Frank2:~$ ps -e | grep freq

Just to be sure I checked the output of ps -e line-by-line and saw nothing to do with cpu frequency.

Still does it.

Thanks for the input, I'll keep looking.

EDIT: That did, however, seem to fix the wireless being dropped.

brucehinrichs · 06-22-2010, 02:06 PM

Code:

bruce@Frank2:~$ uname -a
Linux Frank2 2.6.34-0.dmz.12-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Thu Jun 17 23:10:49 CDT 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Well, I've updated the kernel a couple of times and the situation, while not going away completely, has gotten better.

I'm marking this solved for now....