Hello,

I'm currently using KDE4.1 and have noticed a problem that sometimes my computer freezes (last days). Sometimes it could run a few days but last times it freezes I was using firefox with many downloads. Maybe firefox is the cause of the crash? I try'd to find out the cause of this problem.

Try'd using dmesg but gives me only data from boot. Are there any logs from kde itselfs ?

Maybe a good idea for the Tutorial/Howto page -> Logs/Logs analyzing in KDE4

Greets,
Ward

Regarding your problem, does your computer hardlock? ( mouse won't move, Caps lock doesn't change )

If your Caps lock key is still responsive try Ctrl + Alt + Backspace, which will forcibly kill X. If it isn't ( responsive ) then it sounds like your computer is overheating / running out of memory.

If you can kill X, next time it happens, change to a virtual terminal ( Ctrl + Alt + F1 ) and try killing either kded ( Powerdevil occassionally trips on itself, locking all input ) or plasma.

You can kill them like so:

Code: Select all

pidof kded

It will produce a number, note it

Code: Select all

kill -9

Do this as your regular user, so you don't inadvertantly kill a system process.

bcooksley wrote:Regarding your problem, does your computer hardlock? ( mouse won't move, Caps lock doesn't change )

If your Caps lock key is still responsive try Ctrl + Alt + Backspace, which will forcibly kill X. If it isn't ( responsive ) then it sounds like your computer is overheating / running out of memory.

If you can kill X, next time it happens, change to a virtual terminal ( Ctrl + Alt + F1 ) and try killing either kded ( Powerdevil occassionally trips on itself, locking all input ) or plasma.

You can kill them like so:

Code: Select all

pidof kded

It will produce a number, note it

Code: Select all

kill -9

Do this as your regular user, so you don't inadvertantly kill a system process.

When I had the problem I couldn't restart X or change ALT+F1 to a terminal so I supposed it maybe had to do with memory ? Can I check some error message somewhere?

I have 1gigabyte DDR ram and when I looked firefox was using 350MB ... But when memory is full it should not halt I guess ? shoudn't linux use the swap to swap some things out of memory and back?

That is definitely sounding like a hardlock. Linux will usually hit swap without problems, how big is your swap?

do you have any proprietary modules in your kernel? ( ATI / NVidia / Linuxant drivers ) Also what distro and hardware do you have?

It could also be overheating ( a quick clean will fix that usually ). RAM can be checked with memtest86.

bcooksley wrote:That is definitely sounding like a hardlock. Linux will usually hit swap without problems, how big is your swap?

do you have any proprietary modules in your kernel? ( ATI / NVidia / Linuxant drivers ) Also what distro and hardware do you have?

It could also be overheating ( a quick clean will fix that usually ). RAM can be checked with memtest86.

I'm running Kubuntu. Don't think overheating is the problem... Maybe I should let memtest running for a night. I'll check the swap space size when I'm back home (and post it here), and yes I'm using ATI drivers

Maybe it has something related but my KDE is rather slow when switching windows etc.. Firefox is the worse

WardLoockx wrote:

bcooksley wrote:That is definitely sounding like a hardlock. Linux will usually hit swap without problems, how big is your swap?

do you have any proprietary modules in your kernel? ( ATI / NVidia / Linuxant drivers ) Also what distro and hardware do you have?

It could also be overheating ( a quick clean will fix that usually ). RAM can be checked with memtest86.

I'm running Kubuntu. Don't think overheating is the problem... Maybe I should let memtest running for a night. I'll check the swap space size when I'm back home (and post it here), and yes I'm using ATI drivers

Maybe it has something related but my KDE is rather slow when switching windows etc.. Firefox is the worse

I have 1 gigabyte of DDR memory and swap space is 2.8Gigabyte... I'm going to run memtest this evening and keep you posted!

allright had Memtest running for 2hours an no errors so I suppose my RAM is fine. Any suggestions ?

Does hitting the caps lock make the light go on and off?

Few days since I had it. But it was a hard freeze, don't know if I was able to use caps ... should try it next time. But I wasn't able to CTR+ALT+BACKSPACE ( restart X) or go to terminal ALT+F1

Actually, to switch to a terminal you press Alt+Ctrl+F1.

Also, if the caps lock is responsive, it means not everything crashed. You could try using the Magic SysRq Key. Press Alt+SysRq+R (called "unRaw"), which will will let the Kernel take back the keyboard, and try Ctrl+Alt+F1 again (Hopefully it's enabled in your distro) .

Alec wrote:Actually, to switch to a terminal you press Alt+Ctrl+F1.

Also, if the caps lock is responsive, it means not everything crashed. You could try using the Magic SysRq Key. Press Alt+SysRq+R (called "unRaw"), which will will let the Kernel take back the keyboard, and try Ctrl+Alt+F1 again (Hopefully it's enabled in your distro) .

In my case, when this happens, the entire machine, including CapsLock, is completely unresponsive. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work, nor does Ctrl-Alt-Esc, nor does Ctrl-Alt-Bksp.

Also, ALL WINDOWS stop updating, including terminal windows. I've got TOP running in a konsole window almost all the time, and it completely stopped updating.

None of the logs show anything. I suspect this is from a cron job, so I'm going to try running each one manually and see what happens.

Definitely a Hard lock then. have you installed any proprietary drivers into your kernel? ( Linuxant, ATI, NVidia, etc ). Are you using 3D effects? This is probably something nasty happening down in the kernel or X ( which with DRI has direct hardware access )

bcooksley wrote:Definitely a Hard lock then. have you installed any proprietary drivers into your kernel? ( Linuxant, ATI, NVidia, etc ). Are you using 3D effects? This is probably something nasty happening down in the kernel or X ( which with DRI has direct hardware access )

I too have this problem - clean install from Suse11.1, system runs for 10-15 mins then locks solid (apart from the mouse - cursor moves OK but no responce to clicks etc) All processes stop, no keyboard response, clock freezes etc etc. Have to power down to recover.

I've not installed any ATI drivers - are you suggesting that I should? Or that having them would be a bad idea?
And KDE tells me that Desktop effects are not supported on my hardware - ATI Radeon 9200SE, 1GB RAM, Sempron2500+ (I know, a bit old, but money's tight these days!))

So any pointers about digging into kernel or X to track down possible issues would be well useful.
Just to be a bit heretical - I couldn't live with the instability, so reinstalled Suse using Gnome - which doesn't lock up at all...... but I really do want to go back to KDE.

Might I be better to wait for 4.2 and try again?

@sandfly: When your system does this freeze, try using another computer to access it over SSH, it will probably work. If you don't have another computer, then just press the power button like you would to turn it on. Wait a minute or two and the system will gracefully shutdown ( the screen won't change though )

I thought this issue was confined to Intel X3100, when trying things like Google Earth. A possible solution would be to totally disable compositing in your xorg.conf.

I had the same problem with 4.1..but i am now using 4.2 beta..now it doesnt freeze like that..