# Gentoo freezes

## Cereza

Hello, since two months ago mi Gentoo freezes very often, the screen freezes like it would be a snapshoot I can't change vt using ctrl+alt+function keys and nothing responds, the only thing I can do is reboot using the reset button. Sometimes the computer just shuts down suddenly instead of get freeze.

It is obvious to think that is a temperature problem, but my CPU's (x86 AMD Sempron 3300+) temp is never higher than 38C, mother board's (Gygabite GA K8NS) higher is 25C and 50C for the graphic card (Nvidia GeForce 6200). There are no errors on dmesg. I am using nvidia-drivers-1.0.9755-r1 and tried to use old ones but the computer stills freeze.

This only happens in Gentoo but the true is I never use my other SOs more than 10 minutes.

¿Any idea? thank you in advance.

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## RayDude

Try running memtest86 and see if it causes a crash.

If it does, then its likely a motherboard problem you could try re-seating the ram.

please type these commands and copy the output into a reply so we can know more about your hardware and software configuration:

```
uname -a
```

```
emerge --info
```

```
ifconfig
```

```
cat /proc/cpuinfo
```

```
lspci
```

```
lsusb
```

```
lsmod
```

Raydude

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## Cereza

Thank you very much, I will do the memtest86. Here is the info:

 *uname -a wrote:*   

> Linux gentoo 2.6.21.3 #5 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jun 24 06:15:37 CEST 2007 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3300+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

 

 *emerge --info wrote:*   

> Portage 2.1.2.9 (default-linux/x86/2007.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.5-r3, 2.6.21.3 i686)
> 
> =================================================================
> 
> System uname: 2.6.21.3 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3300+
> ...

 

 *ifconfig wrote:*   

> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:85:C7:ED:A4  
> 
>           inet addr:192.168.0.1  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
> 
>           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
> ...

 

 *cat /proc/cpuinfo wrote:*   

> processor	: 0
> 
> vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
> 
> cpu family	: 15
> ...

 

 *lspci wrote:*   

> 00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb Host Bridge (rev a1)
> 
> 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb LPC Bridge (rev a2)
> 
> 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce 250Gb PCI System Management (rev a1)
> ...

 

 *lsusb wrote:*   

> Bus 003 Device 005: ID 045e:0285 Microsoft Corp. 
> 
> Bus 003 Device 004: ID 045e:001c Microsoft Corp. 
> 
> Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
> ...

 

 *lsmod wrote:*   

> Module                  Size  Used by
> 
> ppp_deflate             5120  0 
> 
> zlib_deflate           19416  1 ppp_deflate
> ...

 

Thanks.

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## misterbob05

I have actually had this problem on a windows machine and it was the video card causing this problem.

It had a bad capacitor on the board that you could look at and tell was bad.

Just throwing that out there as a thought and to say it dosesnt always have to be a software problm

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## RayDude

You have a sempron based on Athlon 64 with an Nvidia chipset.

I have pretty much the same thing, except its a bit newer and there was a problem with the mobo driver which is mostly fixed in the kernel but I still freeze once in a while when X initializes.

The way to eliminate the problem, which I'm currently not doing, is to add "noapic" to your kernel boot line.

apic is apparently causing a software dead lock under certain magic circumstances.

Try adding "noapic" to your kernel boot line and see if the system gets more stable.

My experience has 2.6.20 and older kernels not work at all with my chipset / hardware combination. It crashes on boot everytime. 2.6.21-suspend2-r3 is fairly reliable although I still get hangs once in a while (without "noapic").

The other thing you could try is move back to 2.6.20-gentoo-r8 and see if that works better 2.6.21 is very new and I still think they're working out the kinks on this "tickless" timebase model.

As misterbob implies, hangs are almost always due to hardware failure, you could try swapping out components if you happen to have extras around.

Give these ideas a whirl and let us know how it goes.

Raydude

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## Cereza

 *RayDude wrote:*   

> Try adding "noapic" to your kernel boot line and see if the system gets more stable.

 

Done. Now my grub.conf entry look like this:

```
title=Gentoo GNU/Linux, vanilla-sources 2.6.21.3

root (hd0,7)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21.3 5 elevator=cfq gentoo=noapic nodevfs root=/dev/hda5 vga=0x318 lapic panic=5 pci=routeir
```

(I asume I have to put it after "gentoo=" am I wrong?)

Now I am testing how it works and I will post again with results if computer freezes or not.

 *RayDude wrote:*   

> The other thing you could try is move back to 2.6.20-gentoo-r8 and see if that works better 2.6.21 is very new and I still think they're working out the kinks on this "tickless" timebase model.

 

I could try, yes, I don't remember to had this problem when using older kernels, at least, not as often as now (I use vanilla-sources instead gentoo-sources by the way).

 *RayDude wrote:*   

> As misterbob implies, hangs are almost always due to hardware failure, you could try swapping out components if you happen to have extras around. 

 

I really hope my -remaining- pieces are OK... looks like an epidemy is killing my computer slowly :P

Thank you very much again, this problem is a bit bothering.

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## RayDude

 *Cereza wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Done. Now my grub.conf entry look like this:
> 
> ```
> ...

 

no, just noapic, I don't know what the gentoo= will do, I don't think it will disable apic though.

Raydude

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## jon123

I have a similar machine amd64, geforce 7900, nforce etc...

myth ~ # uname -a

Linux myth 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 #1 SMP Tue Aug 29 01:30:07 UTC 2006 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

I tried noapic with my custom 2.6.20 r8 kernel and it didn't help.  

So I got the kernel from the live cd it still had problems.  Then I added noapic to the live cd kernel and everything is going great.  Been compiling for over a couple hours now and no freezes.

Thanks for the help guys.

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## Cereza

And no freezes since noapic for me too. I did't use the computer too much last days but I think it's solved.

Thank you very much.

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## gami

I had this problem, too, with a 2.6.21 kernel. In irregular intervals the system would become completely irresponsive, but would normally recover after some time. I had never experienced this with previous kernels and do no longer have the issue since I upgraded to 2.6.22. Try either down or upgrading your kernel away from 2.6.21.

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## jon123

Well, I am still freezing.  It just takes longer now.  I even tried switching to the 2.6.22 kernel and noapic and still freezing.

It has frozen one time during boot up, every other time during emerge.

I don't think its the hardware because I have used this hardware with an older install of gentoo, and with windows 64bit with no problems.

Could it be just a x86_64 issue?

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## RayDude

I just switched to 2.6.22-suspend2 and my machine won't boot at all. It has some sort of exception when it inits udev and then flips out producing a huge amount of dump information. I don't even have a chance to see the initial error message.

I think what I'll do is record it with a camcorder so I can pause and see the error message.

Too bad scroll lock doesn't work.

Raydude

Update: Use SLAB, not SLUB.

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## Nickz

[/quote]

no, just noapic, I don't know what the gentoo= will do, I don't think it will disable apic though.

Raydude[/quote]

You could also keep apic and try acpi_skip_timer_override as described here:

http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nforce/1.0-0301/KnownProblems.html

For me is working, on an Asus m2n-mx.

Bye

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## jon123

I couldn't find the acpi_skip_timer_override setting in either of my .config files.  What kernel version are you running?

What type of problem solving can you do to find out why its freezing?

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## Nickz

It's a boot option, just try to read the article in the link above.

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