# repeated system freeze under high system usage

## Despot Despondency

Hi,

I seem to be having problems with my system freezing all the time. 

I originally thought it was to do with KDE but I don't think it is as it did it when I was logged into the console.

It tends to happen when I run an intensive program in matlab or sometimes when I'm syncing a large program, so I think it's to do with that. 

I've found this post 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-482731-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-925.html

which may be a possibility. However, most of the people there seems to have their systems slow down, where as mine just freezes completely.

At the moment I just want the name of some log files so I can start to look into the problem?

Of course any other pointers would be appreciated!   :Laughing: 

I have an amd64 system with an nvidia graphics card.

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## Hu

Have you performed the standard hardware diagnostics?  What is the output of emerge --info?  Do you use the open nVidia driver or the closed one?  If you normally use the closed driver, does the freeze still happen if you disable loading the closed driver and reboot?

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## Despot Despondency

Hi, thanks for the response.

I've tested the hard-drive, RAM and CPU and they all seem to be fine.

Here's emerge --info

```

Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop/kde, gcc-4.4.3, glibc-2.11.2-r0, 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 x86_64)

=================================================================

System uname: Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r7-x86_64-AMD_Phenom-tm-_II_X4_945_Processor-with-gentoo-1.12.13

Timestamp of tree: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:00:01 +0000

app-shells/bash:     4.0_p37

dev-java/java-config: 2.1.11

dev-lang/python:     2.6.5-r2, 3.1.2-r3

dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4-r3

sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13

sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6-r2

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.65

sys-devel/automake:  1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1

sys-devel/binutils:  2.20.1-r1

sys-devel/gcc:       4.4.3-r2

sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1

sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b

virtual/os-headers:  2.6.30-r1

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"

ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA AdobeFlash-10.1 dlj-1.1"

CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=amdfam10 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"

CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=amdfam10 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/gentoo"

LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"

LINGUAS="en"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"

PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"                                              

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

USE="3dnow 3dnowext X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cups cxx dbus dri dts dvd dvdr embedded emboss encode exif fam firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk hal iconv ipv6 jpeg kde kpathsea latex lcms ldap libnotify mad mikmod mmx mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap multilib ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nvidia ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python qt3support qt4 readline reflection sdl session spell spl sse sse2 ssee4a ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis x264 xcb xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid xvmc zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" 

Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

```

I'm using the closed nvidia driver. 

I haven't tried disabling it so I'll give that a go now and see what happens.

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## Despot Despondency

OK, I've disabled loading the nvidia driver by adding the line

```

LoadKernelModule off

```

to my xorg.conf. Rebooted into the console and ran one of my Matlab experiments. The freezing is still occurring so it doesn't seem to be related to nvidia.

Any other suggestions?

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## Despot Despondency

Um?! 

Well it seems it probably is a hardware problem after all. I just installed Ubuntu on my second hard-drive and the same problems are occurring.

I've used the ultimate boot CD to do some diagnostics and the  both the hard-drives and the RAM passed the tests without any errors. 

I've read that these errors can be because of either the motherboard or the PSU.

What tests can I do to check if either of these are the problem?

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## Jaglover

RAM passed the test does not mean RAM is good. I've seen reports where people say it took days of continuous memtest run before errors showed up.

PSU can cause this. I'd take a multimeter and measure all voltages to make sure they are within specs. I do not believe in mobo sensors.

Pin - Signal   

1  +3.3 VDC Orange     

2  +3.3 VDC Orange     

3  COM Black           

4  +5 VDC Red          

5  COM Black           

6  +5 VDC Red          

7  COM Black           

8  PWR OK Gray         

9  5 VSB Purple        

10 +12V2 Yellow         

11 +12V2 Yellow         

12 +3.3 VDC Orange      

13  +3.3 VDC Orange

14  -12 VDC Blue

15  COM Black

16  PS_ON Green

17  COM Black

18  COM Black

19  COM Black

20  -5 V

21  +5 VDC Red

22  +5 VDC Red

23  +5 VDC Red

24  COM Black

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## Despot Despondency

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> RAM passed the test does not mean RAM is good. I've seen reports where people say it took days of continuous memtest run before errors showed up.
> 
> 

 

OK, I'll run memtest for longer and see if I have any success. 

I have a gut feeling it is the RAM. Are there any other tests I can do on the RAM?

I think I remember seeing posts where people manually set the voltage of their RAM in the BIOS in this situation. Is the wrong voltage in the RAM a possibility?

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> PSU can cause this. I'd take a multimeter and measure all voltages to make sure they are within specs.
> 
> 

 

I will do. Thanks for the advice

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## Jaglover

You could swap the RAM modules, relocating possible troublesome memory regions should change the nature of problems. Or you could remove RAM modules, one at the time and see what happens.

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