[plug] hot freeze - not a contradiction in terms

[Steve Boak]

On Tuesday 12 December 2006 20:34, Gavin Chester wrote:
> With this hot spell I have seen my workstation emulating a windoze PC in
> the sense that twice today without warning it has lost all keyboard
> input and apparent disc I/O so that I could not even open a VT or do
> anything except a full reboot.
>

Have you recently done an update? I'm having similar sounding problems with my 
home sever since about a week ago. It's really annoying because this system 
collects environmental data from a weather station, and every time it is down 
I have a gap in my records :-(

The only thing I can put it down to is that it started after I did an apt-get 
upgrade for the first time in a couple of months and about 500MB of updates 
were installed. I'd hate to try and guess which one is causing the problem...

I'm running Debian Testing with a custom 2.6.17.7 low-latency kernel on a VIA 
Esther 1200MHz processor with a gig of RAM and 60GB 2.5 inch drive. The whole 
system runs almost silently with one small temperature controlled fan, 
although it is supposed to be quite happy fanless as it has a heatsink almost 
half the size of the motherboard. The CPU never goes above 40 degrees, and 
the drive sits around 35 degrees.

I have looked through every log file on the system, and there is absolutely no 
indication of any problems. There appears to be no file system corruption and 
smartctl shows no disk errors either.

At the moment it's 'seizures' are happening at random once or twice a day (or 
night), and the only symptoms are (looking at the screen) the clock stops, 
and keyboard and mouse fail to respond. No external ports respond either, so 
it seems to be completely locked up. Probably some sort of deadlock or race 
condition in a driver? 
Curiously, it never seems to happen when I am actually using the system, but 
some time after I have walked away. Hard reset is needed to recover. Thinks - 
I haven't cycled the power after one of these crashes, must try that next 
time...

If that doesn't work, I'll try a newer kernel.

Anyone else had weird lockup problems after recent updates?

Steve

-- 
Steve Boak, (08) 9756 0662, P.O. Box 240, Nannup, WA 6275
Nannup Telecentre IT support, ph (08) 9756 3022
Engin (VoIP) number (08)64616187 (Local number in Perth)