program times out, goes dead SOLVED!

[dougmack]

PCLOS 2013.02 kde 32bit. All upgrades applied. Same problem with kernel 3.2.18-pclos2.bfs and 3.2.18-pclos2.pae.bfs. After 15 to 30 minutes (not timed)
machine will go to sleep, never to wake again. The monitor reports no signal. Keyboard is dead. The mobo is powered up, as evidenced by the front-panel
light. Only way to bring it back is to cycle the power switch. This machine worked with PCLOS 2012.08. (I think that was the number.) I've had versions of
PCLOS since 2010.06 on the machine, but never saw this before.

[bicol_willem]

First thing I would do is check memory and hard drive. This doesn´t look like a software problem to me.

[sling-shot]

Is it a laptop or desktop?
Complete machine specs please.

[cyrwyn]

Did you try pressing and holding Alt + SysRq, then in order reisub? Try it 2-3 times. If no response then kernel probably has crashed.

[dougmack]

Replies to above: I don't think it's the mobo. I was running Mint just the day before I installed pclos (again). It's not a laptop.
Specs: Foxconn mobo, G41MXE; CPU: Intel Celeron E3400@2.6GHz. Memory: 8GB; Video: GeForce GTX 550 Ti (NVidia).  This
mobo is 14 months old, the video card a bit less than a year old. I ran pclos on it up until it somehow got corrupted a couple
of weeks ago.
The NVidia problem has not been fixed since last November, and the "Configure Your Desktop>Display and Monitor>unify display>
Make default" still doesn't work either, but that's neither here nor there.

Since writing the above lines, I booted the machine into Mint. The screensaver kicked in after 15 minutes or so, and now, an hour later, I just rolled the trackball, and the machine came back fully to life.  So it's not the hardware, it's pclos.

FWIW, Mint64KDE runs fine on the machine, but PCLOS64 will not run at all.

Thanx for your input--doug

[Just17]

PCLOS 2013.02 kde 32bit. All upgrades applied. Same problem with kernel 3.2.18-pclos2.bfs and 3.2.18-pclos2.pae.bfs. After 15 to 30 minutes (not timed)
machine will go to sleep, never to wake again. The monitor reports no signal. Keyboard is dead. The mobo is powered up, as evidenced by the front-panel
light. Only way to bring it back is to cycle the power switch. This machine worked with PCLOS 2012.08. (I think that was the number.) I've had versions of
PCLOS since 2010.06 on the machine, but never saw this before.

Have you set the machine to hibernate/sleep/whatever they call it these days  after a certain time?

If so it seems you have met with a problem using suspend.

To test this try going directly to suspend to ram and suspend to disk from the shutdown menu.

My machine fails every time ......  but worked on the older kernel  2.6.38.8

Coincidently I also have an Nvidia GTX 550 Ti card.

I wonder if that is the cause? .........  mnnnnnnnn ....

[pags]

Also, as an additional test, do you have access to another machine on the same network?

If so, start sshd (if not already running) on the problem machine, and when it hangs, try to ssh into it from the other machine...this is just a test if the entire system is hung, or just some subsystems...if you do get in that way, you can do a graceful shutdown...

[dougmack]

Two questions for Just 17:
Do you mean suspend to ram OR suspend to disk, or both, and when you say fails, what happens?

Other question: Do you have a TV connected to the HDMI port of the NVidia card, and if so, how do you prevent the system from
thinking it has two side-by-side monitors?

Question for Pags:  I do not know anything about ssh. Unfortunately, I'm not an old Unix hand. I have this laptop running pclos32
on the "network" even tho nothing is really setup, with Samba or anything, since I don't know how to do that either. All I know
is that three machines are plugged into the same router and share the internet and a printer/scanner.

Thanx, guys--doug

[pags]

Two questions for Just 17:
Do you mean suspend to ram OR suspend to disk, or both, and when you say fails, what happens?

Other question: Do you have a TV connected to the HDMI port of the NVidia card, and if so, how do you prevent the system from
thinking it has two side-by-side monitors?

Question for Pags:  I do not know anything about ssh. Unfortunately, I'm not an old Unix hand. I have this laptop running pclos32
on the "network" even tho nothing is really setup, with Samba or anything, since I don't know how to do that either. All I know
is that three machines are plugged into the same router and share the internet and a printer/scanner.

Thanx, guys--doug

I don't have this setup, but you should be able to change monitor settings on the fly with nvidia-settings

If you're interested in doing this...you can start the server (sshd) from pcc, under "Services" (don't have linux running, at the moment, so I can't check the details).  Then, from a command prompt (konsole, xterm, etc.), run

ssh name.or.ip

where "name.or.ip" is the name or ip address of the machine you want to access (IP is probably easier, since you most likely do not have local DNS)...

If you have any other questions and/or clarifications, post back and I'll answer as best I can.

[Just17]

Two questions for Just 17:
Do you mean suspend to ram OR suspend to disk, or both, and when you say fails, what happens?

Either S2R or S2D ........  so do you have either set?

Have you tried to use either from the shutdown menu?

If not, please do and see if they work properly or not.

[dougmack]

First: The nvidia-settings thing worked. Now it thinks there is only one monitor.  The TV screen is black, altho it does not
indicate "no signal." Doesn't matter, since unless things have changed, there was no sound on the TV from pclos--XP worked.

Next: Either of the "suspends" does not wind up shutting down the machine.  As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn off
the computer from pclos.

Letting the computer time itself out and then trying to ssh in, the message is that there is no route to the host. (Before it
timed out, there was, so I guess I got the setup correct.) For my information, when I did have it connected (I think) I tried to
cd to a directory on the distant host and read the contents, but could not read--it read my local contents.  Huh?

BTW: I'm writing from my Dell laptop with pclos, and apparently the upgrades have told it that it's running PCLOS 2013, but it
does not exhibit the timeout problem. uname -a shows 3.2.18-pclos2.bfs #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu May 24 04:44:50 CEST 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux.

[Just17]

Next: Either of the "suspends" does not wind up shutting down the machine.  As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn off the computer from pclos.

So the symptoms you describe about the "time-out" are the same as you see when you try to suspend manually?

That might indicate that you have suspend set up in the power management settings of KDE.

Have a look at KDE CC (configure your desktop) - Hardware - Power Management

Check all settings and disable any 'sleep' or 'suspend' options there - or change them to something other than sleep or suspend.

Then check if your PC 'times-out' again.

[dougmack]

No, when I try to suspend (under the shut-down command) the operating system comes back to life; when it times out,
it never comes back. However, I will find all the instances that I can of screensaver/power saver, etc. and set them all to
not work and see what happens.

--doug

[dougmack]

By this time there are so many errors everything is basically kaput!  I ran a fsck from the 2013.02 DVD and came up with a batch of
errors. I can't send them to you, since I cant' keep the network up on that machine anymore. And the DVD doesn't shut down, either!
This version of pclos seems to have some serious problems.

I had installed a fair number of things from Synaptic repos.  Is there any way I can get a list of what is installed, so as
to reinstall those things when I reinstall pclos 2012.08, which I believe works?  If I can get a list, I will store the list in the
Windows partition, so it will be available when I reinstall pclos.

Thanx for trying, guys.  You did your best.  I'm sure it's not your fault that it didn't work.

--doug

[Old-Polack]

By this time there are so many errors everything is basically kaput!  I ran a fsck from the 2013.02 DVD and came up with a batch of
errors. I can't send them to you, since I cant' keep the network up on that machine anymore. And the DVD doesn't shut down, either!
This version of pclos seems to have some serious problems.

I had installed a fair number of things from Synaptic repos.  Is there any way I can get a list of what is installed, so as
to reinstall those things when I reinstall pclos 2012.08, which I believe works?  If I can get a list, I will store the list in the
Windows partition, so it will be available when I reinstall pclos.

Thanx for trying, guys.  You did your best.  I'm sure it's not your fault that it didn't work.

--doug

Read this:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,113276.msg966873.html#msg966873

Personally, I wouldn't install from an image that old... to many upgrades involved.