KDE freezing completely

[snork]

I pulled the HD out of my main system (call this my old system)  and put it in another computer (call this my new system) that has a different MB and graphic card. It was easy to reconfigure as it didn't need any reconfiguring. It boots and everything looks great.

The only problem is that KDE freezes up quite often (once or twice a day), forcing me to hit the off button as no other method works to correct the matter or give me back control. i.e. <ctl><alt>backspace, SysRq, <ctl><alt>Fx keys, etc. Most of the time the mouse is also frozen, but sometimes it isn't.

Nothing shows up in any logs (.xsession-errors, Xorg.logs, etc.). It usually happens when I go to start a program. The program feedback icon shows up in the menu bar, then everything freezes. It doesn't happen while I'm simply working within a program. System cpu and gpu temps are fine.

Just to try to clarify, both systems ran flawlessly before I switched the HD from the old system to the new system. The new system now has the kde freeze problem.

Old system:
Dual core AMD
8GB RAM
Nvidia Gforce 640
Nvidia driver ver: 96xx proprietary driver

Took HD from Old system, above and installed in New system below.

New system: (has kde freeze problem)
Quad core AMD
8GB RAM
Nvidia Gforce 8400 GS
Nvidia driver ver: 304.51

PCLOS was fully updated before the switch.
No overclocking.
New system previously had PCLOS Gnome on it and ran flawlessly. Still does if I put the original PCLOS/Gnome disk back into the new system.

Not sure what to try except to try and install older nvidia drivers. The Gnome system on the new computer was using the nvidia 96xx drivers whereas the current system on the new computer is using KDE and the repository latest nvidia driver 304.5.

Hope that wasn't too confusing

Can't figure out any other differences.

Does anyone have any suggestions what to try? It's becoming annoying.

[JALU]

Need more info regarding both HDD's.   Problem sounds like a HDD data lead issue or HDD legacy setting in BIOS?

[snork]

Both HDs are identical Hitachi 1TB consumer drives about 2 years old.I bought a bunch at that time. Both drives have only PCL on them and were installed at around the same time 2 years ago. Both have been updated religiously. Both work fine on their previous PCs.

Would you elaborate on your prognoses, please. Trying to understand your reasoning. I don't see anything amiss in either bios and I'm not sure what you mean by "HDD data lead issue".

Also, what additional information would you like?

[JALU]

Do you have GSmartControl installed?  
Check your HDD's (and SATA data cables).
Under Attributes> Reallication event count, Temperature, Offline Uncorrectable etc.
(Not impressed with Hitachi drives - formerly AKA IBM)

[kjpetrie]

Where is the previous HD from the new machine? Has it still got the old /etc/X11/xorg.conf file on it?

A quick comparison might show something.

[AnotherUser]

When your new system locks up, does it still respond to REISUB (see http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,107310.0.html)? If it doesn't even respond to that, then I would guess the problem is not KDE, but the kernel (see other related posts like http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112335.msg960018.html#msg960018)

[sling-shot]

For a lot of unrecognised problems, a clean reinstall is a solution.

Would you try the same things with a LiveDVD and compare?

[snork]

Thank you to each one that responded.

tal time, After I rebooted the system, the second time it happened, I did check the SMART stuff. Both drives were very similar without much change from when they were new. When I install a HD, after about a week, I send all the SMART data to a file so I can compare at an time in the future. I don't see anything in the latest reports that would indicate a problem.

Hitachi used to make the Deskstar disks for IBM. Way back in the 90's, they were considered the best drives around. That isn't true anymore. I picked 10 of these up new, at Fry's Electronics, 2 years ago for $50 each. figuring I'd replace all the disks in my computers. Not the best move.

kjpetrie, neither drive used a xorg.conf file. I spent a little time looking around, but I don't understand how the new xorg stuff works these days.

AnotherUser, I only tried the <alt><sysreq><r>. That the only one that I have used over the years to gain control back. I didn't remember the other commands. Thank you for the link describing all the other sysreq commands. GREAT STUFF to know, for next time. It did not respond to the <alt><sysreq><r> command. However, both systems have the exact same kernel version. Both systems were installed from the LiveCD and upgraded over the years. What could be different about the kernels? I have not recompiled the kernel on either system.

sling-shot, Yeah, if it keeps up, a fresh install was my next step. I downloaded the latest PCLOS last night and have it ready if it happens again.

Just an update, I forced the onboard (embeded?) graphics to be enabled and am currently running off that, instead of the GeForce 8400 GS graphics card, just to see if that helps. On that MB, I have an AMD A8 5600K quad core processor, with onboard graphics. It shows up as:

Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 9904

Not sure what that is, but Glxinfo says;
"name of display: :0                                                                       
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Segmentation fault

I have no idea how to enable OpenGL since there's no xorg.conf file, but I guess that's a question for another thread.

It's been up and running overnight without a freeze, but than it never froze while just idle. I'll give this some time to see what happens. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to figure out how to enable OpenGL on that.

[AnotherUser]

AnotherUser, I only tried the <alt><sysreq><r>. That the only one that I have used over the years to gain control back. I didn't remember the other commands. Thank you for the link describing all the other sysreq commands. GREAT STUFF to know, for next time. It did not respond to the <alt><sysreq><r> command. However, both systems have the exact same kernel version. Both systems were installed from the LiveCD and upgraded over the years. What could be different about the kernels? I have not recompiled the kernel on either system.

There are a number of known defects in the 3.2.18 kernel which is in our repos. I don't know all the details, but it seems to not like some hardware. I have seen in manifest itself on multiple laptops, but based on what I have read online, it's not only laptop hardware that is affected.

There is a 3.4.11 version of the kernel in the Testing section of our repos. Install that and give it a few days. It's very easy and may solve your problem.

[veronicathecow]

Hi snork, it might be worth cleaning your BIOS and then setting it up again.
Also try another power supply as glitches in the power can cause all sorts of problems

[snork]

AnotherUser, So far, it's been stable, using the GPU on the CPU rather than the GeForce 8400 card. Too soon to tell. I noticed that I don't have any sound now. In other words, if I plug the video cord (DVI) into the graphics card, I have sound. If I plug it into the on-board graphics connector, I don't have sound. I'm VERY confused.

I'm using the PAE version of the kernel. The one I see in 'testing' shows kernal-3.4.11-pclos1.bfs. Is that the one you're referring to try?

Now, should I try that using the 8400 or the on-board graphics?

Before I do that, would you recommend reinstalling PCLOS as it may clear up what looks like several problems. During an initial install, there's some scripts that run that detect all the hw and install all the necessary 'stuff' to make it all work. Is there some way to basically do the same thing now, after the OS already installed? I never quite understood why there's nothing like that, especially when you have to change a mother board or other hardware. It seem like you have to go into every little config file and change it by hand.

[snork]

After a lot of trying things, here's what I stand.

I went ahead and installed the kernal-3.4.11. Booted and seemed stable. No direct rendering. I installed the latest Nvidia driver (310.19). Upon reboot, almost immediately froze desktop. Did the Sysreq to get keyboard back and kill processes, and pressed <alt><F2>. After about 20 seconds, I was at a login prompt. Went back to F8 and it was in text mode, still frozen. Rebooted with the same results.

Tried to roll back to Nvidia 3.04.64 drivers and things took a turn for the worst. Booted to a black screen the first time. Second time, bootup process looked completely different, but was able to logiin. Grepped Xorg.0.log and saw that the nvidia driver 3.04.64 was installed, but the client was using ATI drivers.

glxinfo showed the following;

name of display: :0
X Error of failed request:  BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  135 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
  Serial number of failed request:  12
  Current serial number in output stream:  12

Graphics was very jerky. Moving a window around on the screen was funny, as parts of it would move before all of it moved.

Decided maybe it was time to reinstall PCL. Downloaded latest ISO. Booted DVD. Opened a terminal and typed glxinfo and everything looked great. tried glxgears, which ran great. Tried to stop glxgears...system froze. after pressing <alt><ctl><F2> a couple of time, it first went to a terminal, then back to the logon screen. Was able to duplicate that behavior, but not always.

So, if the latest and greatest PCL (it was using the nvidia 3.04.64 drivers) was having troubles with my hardware, I don't know whether or not to do a reinstall. Doing a reinstall will at least get me to a known good state from which to work from.

I feel that the system is becoming unstable and unusable unless there's some magic formula to remove things and reinstall packages to try to get this back to a clean slate and working properly.

p.s. Does this look ok? Curious about the 2 fglrx modules and why the 8.9 is marked as installed and not the 9.012.

dkms status
fglrx, 9.012, 3.2.18-pclos2.pae, i586: built
fglrx, 8.982-1pclos2012, 3.2.18-pclos2.pae, i586: installed
nvidia304, 304.64-1pclos2013, 3.4.11-pclos1.bfs, i586: installed

[snork]

Never did solve my problem, but I narrowed it down. Been a PCL user for a very long time and have enjoyed it.

I have 12 desktop computers here at home. All running PCL. 9 with KDE, 3 with Gnome. All 9 running KDE have become very unstable, freezing up many times. Everyone in the family noticed this over the last couple of weeks. My children were hackling me to install Windose on their computers so they can get things done. :-)

Tried fresh install of PCL/KDE on 2 computers. After full update, they both became very unstable, like the rest. I noticed that with Firefox version 18 installed, KDE freezes up quite often. Remove Firefox completely and things get a little better. Konqueror still causes KDE to crash as does K3B, sometimes. I've seen more KDE Crash Handler windows in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 10 years. Not just on one computer.

After trying everything I could find, I was never able to get PCL/KDE working with one of my computers, that has ALC887 sound and decided to see if other distros had problems with it. Since I work from home, I needed to get a stable, working computer here.

I couldn't get sound to work in Fedora 18 either. I carry around a USB stick with Lubuntu on it. Tried that and sound and graphics both worked flawlessly. Tried Kbuntu (big KDE fan) and it worked flawlessly. Installed on 2 computers and so far, after 3 days, haven't had a single problem.

Not bashing PCL, but my statistics are hard to ignore. PCL/Gnome works flawlessly on 3 desktops and one laptop here. There's clearly something wrong.

[kjpetrie]

Was that fresh install from the latest ISO or something older?

I'm puzzled that you're reporting the problem on 12 different computers, yet there isn't a universal complaint arising from the whole user base. This suggests there's something peculiar to your machines that doesn't affect others. I appreciate the rest of the family just wants everything to work again, so you might have to move them onto something that works while tracking the problem down. We don't want them going back to Win, do we?

As the computers are different models, it must be a software problem, but either you have a rare package installed others don't use, or something is wrong with your upgrade process, because you're having a 100% experience others are not.

I would suggest opening Synaptic and getting a list of 'Local or Obsolete' packages. If you can post that list here, maybe someone will spot something amiss. Otherwise, can you think of anything you use that's unusual?

[snork]

Just to clarify, only the ones that are running PCL/KDE have been having problems. First noticed when an update included Firefox 18. I would click on the FF icon and nothing would happen. KDE would be frozen. These system also had Seamonkey on them and would crash almost as much when starting Seamonkey. In fact, I started another thread a couple of weeks ago when this first started, and thought I had solved it by switching video drivers, as it seemed stable for a couple of days. However, that didn't fix it.

As I alluded to, I downloaded the latest ISO from PCL. Checked md5, both on the file and the burned DVD. Installed on 2 completely different computers. Intel/Dual Core/Asus MB/3 years old, and AMD/Quad Core/Gigabyte MB/brand new

Both seemed very stable for about a day. Did update on one. Started almost immediately freezing problems. Did update on the other. Same problems. Removed FF from both. MUCH less freezing. Konqueror, which I was then using for a web browser/file manager, crashed on me 3 times on one computer, but no freeze. K3B caused KDE to crash 3 times on both computers over the course of 3 days. These caused freezing and had to reboot. Kernel was always responsive to Sysreq key sequences.

No other packages were installed after an initial install and update.
Both disks were checked, repartioned and reformated to ext4, before fresh install of PCL/KDE.


At that time, I became completely frustrated and gave up trying to find/fix the problem as I needed a working computer.

All 12 computers are different in some way, bought at different times. I also have PCL/Gnome on 3 laptops. They also work fine. As a last resort, I downloaded the lastest Gnome ISO and installed it on one of the two computers that I eventually installed Kubuntu on and it worked great. The 3 computers with PCL/Gnome work great. I just don't like Gnome. Cut my Linux teeth on RedHat 7.0 with Gnome. Discovered KDE from trying Mandrake, and fell in love with it. Discovered PCL, was impressed with it's speed and started using it a long time ago. I hated to give up on it, but my days of 'playing' with linux are over. I now need a stable OS to get work done. PCL has always been there for me and very stable.

My children install whatever they want, so I have no idea what's loaded on their computer. I usually have tons of software installed on my computers. Wife has plain vanilla install.

I can see if I was having problems on on or even two computers, but all 9 running PCL/KDE started having problems AT THE SAME TIME!

I wasted 3 days trying to troubleshoot and gave my best guess in the last post as to what the problem might be, and my findings. I don't have time to troubleshoot further. I REALLY hated to have to switch, but I use my computer to get work done and I wasn't able to using the latest release of PCL/KDE.

p.s. My children first started using windoze when they were in about 3rd grade. I started noticing more and more them asking me to use my computer. After awhile, I asked each one separately why they didn't want to use their computer. They all told me the same thing. Windows is terrible, Linux is great. I switched them over to Linux. That was 10 years ago. One has gone onto MAC. The other are still using PCL.