[plug] SUSE 10.3 HANGS hard - or Windows-like behaviour from Linux ....

[Richard Meyer]

On Mon, 2008-03-17 at 09:08 +0900, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au> wrote:
> 
> >I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3 on my machine and I have been getting
> >problems. The whole machine hangs such that I cannot ping it from
> >elsewhere and ALT + CTRL + Fx doesn't do anything.
> 
> How about the power button interrupt to shutdown/restart?

I haven't tried that, since I "know" that most power buttons these days
do other things than power up and down. I'll give it a go.
> 
> >Basically soon after a boot, it just hangs - I thought it was Firefox,
> >but, not restarting FF doesn't stop the hangs, it does delay them.
> >Starting up and signing on to Evolution also causes the same hang, but
> >today I went away for at least 5 hours and got back and my machine was
> >hung.  
> 
> >Anybody have any ideas how to
> >     1. decide which app is doing it
> >     2. why the kernel seems to hang
> >     3. WTF is going on ....
> 
> First; memtest.
> 
> Next, boot in "Fail Safe" mode which is almost conservative in the
> extreme about how the kernel talks to the hardware.
> 
> Add the "irqpoll" kernel command-line option at boot time.
> Add a "3" to boot without GUI; worthwhile if you're uncertain about
> the graphics chip.

All good suggestions, and I'll give them a go. Just to show that the
perversity of the inanimate is endless, it hasn't hiccuped in the last
few days. On Friday, I had to reboot 3 times before it decided to stay
usable.
> 
> The irqpoll option seems to work well with a lot of hardware that I
> deal with in which interrupts just seem to get lost. NVidia chipsets
> seem more prone than AMD when there's an AMD processor.

And that is exactly what I have Nvidia GPU as well as chipset, with AMD
CPU.

Funny that it's been rock-steady under 10.1 and 10.2, though.

Thanks to all who replied.
RM


-- 
Richard Meyer
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. 
William Pitt, 1783

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