# Laptop crashes on Ubuntu and Gentoo

## myguidingstar

Hi everyone,

I've just bought an ASUS laptop model A42F but it crashes after about a day working, or it crashes if I open some flash on firefox or even if I compile packages with -j3 option. A rarer crash is that sometimes a program terminate without a warning, and if I emerge many packages at once, there are often several packages can't be build as `make` program exits.

These strange things also happen on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if my laptop is too incompatible with Linux. My brother installed Windows XP and then Win 7 64 bit on it, but no such crash happens.

Please give me an overview on steps I should do to get rid of this. I don't even want to boot Windows up.

And how does it look like? It dumps into the black screen with something containing the word "bug" and a lot of hex code. Sorry I don't understand them.

My system is AMD64 with, I think, safe config of kernel and cflag

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## Hu

This sounds like a problem with bad RAM or inadequate cooling.  What is the CPU temperature during the large emerge runs?  Have you run memtest?

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## myguidingstar

Thanks for your quick reply but I don't think it's that simple, Hu. memtest passes completely with no error. And temperature is normal.

And if a sound is being played when the crash happens, it will repeat forever within a second of the sound.

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## disi

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/A42F/#specifications

Maybe the Intel graphics? Were you on X or console, when it crashes?

Did he install the Windows versions on the same hardware or on another laptop of the same model?

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## cwr

It sounds an awful lot like a memory error to me - I've had very few memory

errors, and the ones I've had didn't show up on memtest.  You could try reseating

the memory anyway, and then running memtest for ~24hrs to see if anything

turns up.

Good luck anyway - Will

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## ppurka

Did you try stressing the machine when on Windows? All the examples you have given are when you are stressing the machine on linux (flash uses software decoding on linux, compiling packages definitely stresses the machine, etc). Try running a memory intensive process in Windows, or maybe even start a compilation in Windows, if you can. Another option is, try to play a 3D game. If it still crashes then you have a reproducible case of some defect which is not related to the OS.

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## myguidingstar

 *disi wrote:*   

> http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/A42F/#specifications
> 
> Maybe the Intel graphics? Were you on X or console, when it crashes?
> 
> Did he install the Windows versions on the same hardware or on another laptop of the same model?

 

It also happens on console when I compile packages, so it's not X related issues. Anyway, I think Intel graphic cards just do well.

And on my laptop, not another.

My bro did play 3d game for long time many times on it and nothing happens. Sorry I won't take the test myself cos I hate Windows so much. By the way, it's not a really big `stressing the machine`: after too much crashing I unset -j in make.conf and as I told you, sometimes a program exited unexpectedly (The ones I can figure out are firefox, dbus, make)

I guest it's a hardware defect but Windows installations make me confused. Maybe the manufacture had something to do with Microsoft :\/

I don't even know how to complain to the manufacture in this case.

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## myguidingstar

In short:

It crashes when I compile with high -j or jump into some flash sites.

Some programs exit unexpectedly even when CPU and memory usage is low.

Crashes can happen after a long using time, maybe a day or so.

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## Hu

If the hardware is unreliable, then it is possible that some programs built locally were miscompiled.  A miscompiled program may continue to malfunction even when run on hardware which is (currently) reliable.  I would start with identifying a reason for the problems with high parallelism.  Once you fix that, then investigate the Flash problem (if it is still reproducible).  Finally, install tinderbox-supplied binaries for anything you have built locally.

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## myguidingstar

Hu, this does happens on my Ubuntu installation, too

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## Logicien

Hello,

the Adobe flash plugin have a long and not finishing history of making the web browsers stop working, often close without error message in Linux. Steve Job ever critic Adobe because their flash plugin was making the Mac's operating systems freeze.

I experiment again browsers crash with Adobe flash plugin on sites like http://www.fisheadmovie.com/watch1 with Iceape of Debian. If I use GNU flash plugin Gnash, things become stable at the price of some disabled flash animations. I do not remember that Adobe plash plugin ever make the Linux system freeze. It is not complely sure that your system crash on flash sites are related to a material/os problem.

In my opinion, among others possible causes, it can come from the kernel configuration and/or parameters. I would try a 32 bits installation with a generic kernel just to be sure it is not related to the architecture used and/or kernel personalisation.

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