desktop keeps hanging
 

hello.
first i'd like to introduce myself, for i'm new to these forums, which already helped me a lot before i registered here. i've been using linux for about a year now, starting with debian, moving over to fedora, now landed at gentoo (where i'll definitely stay).
now for my problem: from time to time, my xorg(6.8.2)/gnome(2.10) desktop hangs, i've been not able yet to spot if it's the x server's fault or the gnome desktop, for i found no way to provoke this failure. following symptoms: the desktop freezes (even cpu monitors stop working), no animation is going on, and no interaction is possible, neither keyboard, nor mouse (though i can still move the mouse pointer, but i'm unable to click anything). switching to another terminal (ctrl-alt-f1...) doesn't work either which makes me suspect the failiure is somewhere on the x side. my logs in /var/logs/ seem to be a bit out of date, for they're from yesterday, when i shut down the computer properly for the last time.
i'd be glad if someone could give me a wink where to look for a solution, or which info/configs to post here.

thanks in advance,
stn

I have exited a problem like that by ssh'ing into the frozen machine from another computer and rebooting the machine, or killing processes until it starts working again.
If your "caps lock" or "num lock" keys stop working then the keyboard has crashed and I have never recovered from that; but take a look in /var/log/messages, syslog and debug anyway to catch any errors while logged in. You will need to have "sshd" running on the affected machine in order to login via the "ssh" command from another computer. You will also need another computer to log in with!!

okay, thx for your reply, but unfortunately i don't have another computer available to do this.

i found out it's neither xorg nor gnome, but a bug in the nvidia drivers:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...8&page=1&pp=15

it's a rather long "me, too"-thread of people having the same problem with different setups, but same drivers. at least i know what to disable to keep the hangup from occuring. i'm running the open source "nv" driver now instead of "nvidia" and my system is stable now. there is no glx or composite available now, but i don't need those anyway.

greetings
stn