Hello.


I've got another problem with Slackware. There is something that bugs me. It's related to a idle time when computer is turned on but i don't do anything. After some idle time Slackware hangs up/freezes. When, for an example, i turn on music i can hear it on idle time but after some time music still plays but i'm losing picture (monitor detects no signal), num lock is locked, led on keyboard are turned on but won't turn off while pressing num lock.

I've switched off power saving options in Slackware and on bios setup.


Can somebody help me? If yes than pleas write commands to run in a way that i would understand - im rather new in Linux world.

Thanks in an advance.


My spec is:

X4 620 (without overclocking)
AMD 760G (Radeon HD 3000)
Catalyst 11.5 for Radeon graphic.



I really don't know why it happens all the time, what's wrong with it and how to fix it.



BTW - computer works fine with Windows. Also, with Slackware i can work for an hours, many hours and everything is fine but as soon as i leave it for some amount of time = it hangs/freezes.


There is something wrong with hibernation. Not always computern is turned off correctly. TV is switched off, slackware logged off but i hear drives working and cooler fans. It should be switched off completly.

Are you using the generic kernel or do you still have one of the huge kernels loading at boot? I had a similar problem until I switched to the generic kernel with an initrd.

I'm using 2.6.37.6-smp.

That's only part of the answer. What is the full name of the kernel that is loaded by LILO? It should be something like vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.37.6-smp or vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.37.6-smp. If it's just /boot/vmlinuz, that is a soft link to one of the other kernels. See which one it's pointing to.

If you haven't created an initrd and modified lilo.conf since you installed Slackware, you're using the huge kernel and that can lead to problems.

Sorry, my mistake.

I don't know how to find which kernel is it. That's right, it's symlink but i don't know where it points to - don't know how to check where it points. I tried something funny from Windows - clicked at properities and it is said that this points to : vmlinuz-2.6.37.6, but i'm not sure if this is something that You asked about.


I use kernel that was made by my friend. I checked standard one - "huge-smp"

and as i see so far, everything is ok, but to be sure i would have to install AMD Catalyst drivers on the second kernel but i've got error like this:



but my assumption is that my firend's kernel is at fault. If you could show me the right directions toward installing drivers on the second kernel i will be thankfull.

No problem.

typing 'ls -l /boot/vmlinuz' at the command line will give you a long listing of that file. For instance, mine says
The "huge" kernels are really only for getting the system up and running initially. You really want to use one of the generic kernels in the /boot directory, in your case probably vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.37.6-smp, but it requires building an initrd first. The directions for doing that can be found in /boot/README.initrd.

I'm not familiar with those modules, but if they work on the huge kernel, they should work on the generic one.

I had issues with my system locking up during hibernation using the huge kernel. I've not had the problem at all with the generic kernel. Read the /boot/README.initrd file and let me know if you need any more help.

Thanks for the command.


I will be talking with my friend about this one. I'm using huge-smp kernel because they support Multicore Processors. I've got an x4 processor.



If You mean Catalyst, then they are default driver for Radeon graphic cards/chipset from AMD.


Well, my problem was a bit complicated because it locked itself after idle time, not only after hibernation.


Anyway. I'm closer to solution. My friend came from work, we sat together and he helped me a lot with this problem (he is a person with great knowledge. We did it from different locations in my country that are far apart).


1. We deleted his kernel.
2. We loades standard kernel modules from Slackware DVD.
3. We loaded standard mesa packages because flgrx do a little mess when it's installed
4. We copied from DVD boot and did: make menu, make modules, make modules_install in order to run catalyst drivers from AMD (there is a bug in kernel modules. It has wrong name so without make config, make modules, and make modules_install you won't be able to install catalyst drivers because instalator will say that kernel version are wrong. When patched by these 3 command we can install amd drivers)
5. We installed AMD drivers.


An i tough that i'm at home, that everything is fine and finished...but as soon as i had left computer for 15 minutes...than it happened again. It didn't happen when i hadn't had installed drivers from AMD.


Right now i removed AMD drivers, i installed mesa again, i renamed FGL_renamed.something to libglx.so and now i have Mesa drivers, kde desktop effect and i'm rather sure that freez won't happen again. Drivers are at fault.

When i will have more time than i'm going to install previous version of catalyst - i don't remember this bug in 11.3.


Thank for the time.

The link is correct (but to be sure you could edit lilo.conf to point directly to the file instead of the link).

The simplest way to fix this up is to reinstall kernel-huge-smp-2.6.37.6_smp-i686-2.txz, kernel-generic-smp-2.6.37.6_smp-i686-2.txz, and kernel-modules-smp-2.6.37.6_smp-i686-2.txz then boot up on the huge kernel (means re-running lilo).

Having successfully booted from the huge kernel, run
Make the generated file executable, edit it then run it to creat the initrd.gz file in /boot.

Then, after editing the lilo.conf file and running lilo, you should be able to boot into the generic kernel.

The link is not mine, it was posted not by me - i only quoted it.

I did earlier it. I reinstalled huge-smp and kernel-modules.



Earlier it was said that i should use generic, not huge - why? What's the difference?


I need to mention that as soon as i reinstalled huge-smp, kernel-modules, removed ATI drivers (catalyst 11.5) computer doesent freeze at idle time. Now i only need to check hibernation. I use mesa driver from DVD.


Thanks for an advice

Yes, it's a driver fault. I've checked it again and with mesa everything is ok.

Thanks for help.

The huge kernel comes with a great many modules pre-loaded so that just about any system can be booted from it. The generic kernel is stripped down but requires the modules necessary for booting the system (hardware, filesystem and any peripherals) be available before mounting the filesystem. That's done through an "initrd", or initial ramdisk, that contains the necessary modules. Sometimes the huge kernel can play havoc with some hardware.

It's ultimately up to you whether you use the huge kernel or the generic one, but the documentation from Slackware says specifically not to bother reporting any bugs unless you're running a generic kernel.

Thanks for describing differences.

I forgot to say that problem was solved - it was driver related problem with 3d settings in KDE, and OpenGl. I switched to nVidia and everything works fine with hibernation, sleep, 3d and desktop effects...

Another bug from AMD - it's my mistake to buy again something from AMD. Never again. People says that AMD driver has been improved over last years but in fact i don't even want to know what is improved, better compared to past years when i had for six months problem (i tried drivers from january to june) with mentioned behaviour on 760G and their drivers which couldn't work with 3d effects, with opengl and with suspend/hibernation because after that computer freezes and num lock was flashing but keyboard doesen't work.



The most funny thing is that i know that on different AMD graphic cards there is no such problem...Friend has 4200 in a laptop...and everything works fine.