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I have had frequent crashes for a while now (didn't get around to fixing it) this is the first time I've dealt with an unstable system, how should I trouble shoot?
Is there any particular log files i should be looking at? As there are an absolute ton of them and (atleast the sys log is) increadibly long.
I have Ubuntu 16.04 with a cinnamon DE (i also notice Cinnamon crashes more than it probably should, though this is less of a problem as I can simply restart it)
I was installing quite a lot of software when this problem started, so I'm not really sure which one it is, would this be limited to programs that run 24/7 or can any program cause instability? Also about when this started is when i started to auto-mount my Windows partition, could that be the problem?
What is the distro/version? This is significant because not all distros use the same names for log files. For example, the traditional /var/log/messages on some systems is /var/log/syslog. Generally, /var/log/messages is the first place I would look.
More detail would also be helpful:
What exactly do you mean by "crash"? Freeze, power off, drop to command line, or something else? (If it's unexpected shutdowns, check that your cooling vents are free of dust and that the CPU is free of dust. Overheating is the most common cause of sudden shutdowns.)
What programs are you running when this happens and does there appear to be a pattern (for example, crashes only when you are using the browser, crashes when you are checking for mail).
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