# System freezing?

## pmam

After half a year working OK with my machine, I am facing with freezing issue:

It occurs after one to few hours of regular working - suddenly the machine totally freezing - 

The screen is freeze and nothing is active: nor the mouse, keyboard etc, neither Hard Disk activity. 

Is there a log file contains relevant info?

----------

## i92guboj

Most probably candidates for a hard-freeze are always 3rd party drivers and extraneous kernel patchsets. Other than that, hardware issues.

The first thing you should find out is whether it is a real hard-freeze. Try to connect via ssh using another computer or a smartphone, maybe it's just X which freezes. If that fails, try to see if the alt-sysrq combos work (ie. can you reboot safely using alt-sysrq-u to umount and then alt-sysrq-b to reboot?).

See your emerge log, in case some 3rd party driver (nvidia, wifi stuff...) has been updated recently, and try a vanilla kernel as from kernel.org with no patches. Keep an eye on the cpu temperature, and try a boot cd with memtest86 on it, just to be reasonably sure that it's not a hardware problem. Also, try a long SMART test on your HD.

All of this, while keeping an eye on the system log (/var/log/messages, usually) which can also be viewed using the dmesg tool. If you see something strange in there, a driver segfaulting or something like that ask here.

If you can't narrow it that way, the only thing you can do is to try to get a core dump (you should be able to easily find how-to do so) to be able to see what's really happening.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

 *Quote:*   

> The first thing you should find out is whether it is a real hard-freeze.
> 
> ... try to see if the alt-sysrq combos work

 

I will check it in the next time of freezing.

 *Quote:*   

> Keep an eye on the cpu temperature

 

I need to emerge additional package to see cpu temp, or I already have it in KDE tools?

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

I haven't much idea about what kde ships these days. I guess there should be some suitable tool in there, but it might depend on a couple use flags (acpi and lm_sensors surely). If you can't find any easy way to check it in kde and you have gtk+ installed the easiest thing would be to emerge gkrellm which has almost no dependencies other than gtk+ and use that. If not, emerge lm_sensors which can be used in command line. If you use lm_sensors, please, read the emerge output since you will need to follow the instructions to configure it before you are able to get any lectures from it.

Anyway, nowadays motherboards should really shut down by themselves before the temperature comes to a point where the hardware will fail (unless you configured otherwise in your BIOS setup), so I really doubt that's the problem, but it doesn't harm to check it of course.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

 *Quote:*   

> so I really doubt that's the problem, but it doesn't harm to check it of course.

 

I installed gkrellm and lm_sensors and as you said - cpu temp seems OK.

I saw the same problem in another machine, which has a similar hardware setup: motherboard, graphic hardware etc -

so it is not a problem of a particular hardware device, like HD etc, and it is going to the direction you mentioned:

 *Quote:*   

> Most probably candidates for a hard-freeze are always 3rd party drivers and extraneous kernel patchsets.

 

ssh is failed:

```
ssh root@10.0.0.7

ssh: connect to host 10.0.0.7 port 22: No route to host
```

 *Quote:*   

> try to see if the alt-sysrq combos work (ie. can you reboot safely using alt-sysrq-u to umount and then alt-sysrq-b to reboot?). 

 

Do you mean to press in the same time on alt+sysrq+u or b - 

I done this and without any result.

Seems it is due to my last updating and not really see how to handle what you said here:

 *Quote:*   

> See your emerge log, in case some 3rd party driver (nvidia, wifi stuff...) has been updated recently, and try a vanilla kernel as from kernel.org with no patches.

 

Please advise what is the right direction you recommend me to focus on!

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

 *pmam wrote:*   

> 
> 
>  *Quote:*   try to see if the alt-sysrq combos work (ie. can you reboot safely using alt-sysrq-u to umount and then alt-sysrq-b to reboot?).  
> 
> Do you mean to press in the same time on alt+sysrq+u or b - 
> ...

 

This has to be enabled in the kernel. It's under the "Kernel hacking" department and it's called something like "magic sysrq key".

If you have it enabled and it doesn't work, then your system is really frozen. By the way, the whole catalog of actions it can perform is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

 *Quote:*   

> Please advise what is the right direction you recommend me to focus on!
> 
> Thanks

 

What graphic driver do you use? Any wifi card that requires proprietary firmware or drivers? What kernel do you use? Is it vanilla-sources, gentoo-sources or some other thing?

Also, did you run the long smart test in your HD? If not, please, do it. If you don't know how, I suggest you download Seatools DOS-based livecd, boot it, and check your HD.

----------

## pmam

Here is hardware info: 

```
lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)                                                                                  

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)                                                                                                  

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)                                                                                                  

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)                                                                                          

00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)                                                                                          

00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)                                                                                          

00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)                                                                                          

00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)                                                                                            

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)                                                                                                                     

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)                                                                                        

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 01)                                                                                       

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)                                                                                                         

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)                                                     

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
```

Another machine:

```
lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)

00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)

00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)

00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)

00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 01)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05)

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
```

Kernel: I use the default kernel from manual kernel config's installation - As far as I know it is gentoo-sources but hope the following info helps:

```
uname -a                                                                                                                                                               

Linux mg_e2180 3.14.14-gentoo #3 SMP Sun Oct 26 14:59:02 IST 2014 x86_64 Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
```

Another machine:

```
uname -a

Linux mg_6300 3.12.21-gentoo-r1 #2 SMP Wed Oct 8 15:44:12 IDT 2014 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
```

 *Quote:*   

> Also, did you run the long smart test in your HD?

 

I thought it is not the problem since I found out that the other machine also freezing - 

If it is needed I will try to do it?

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

Intel hardware is said not to be problematic, though I can't tell myself since I never owned an Intel video chip. I would still try using vesa instead, for that, all you should need is to change

```
VIDEO_CARDS="intel"
```

by

```
VIDEO_CARDS="vesa"
```

and then 

```
emerge -aDN @world
```

You surely are not using an xorg.conf file, so you shouldn't need any extra setup. This will leave you with an unaccelerated display, but will allow to confirm or discard a problem with the video driver. But then, I have no idea how frequently the freeze happens. You might need to live with vesa a few days until you can confirm or discard something, that means slow video output and no opengl nor compositing.

To revert the change just swap the line again in make.conf and run the emerge line again.

About your wifi chip, I am not familiar with it. Can you provide a link to whatever guide you used to set it up? 

About the HD test, well, if it's two machines then it would be strange but that thing can happen... if you can run the test then we could discard one source of trouble.

I just want to say that this kind of problem is often hard to diagnose. You can only go discarding things, one at a time, and you might never find where the problem lies unless you get into kernel debugging. And even then it's no trivial task. As an example, I had lockups with one machine for years before discovering it was an issue with a crappy chipset + crappy usb ports combo. To tell the truth USB in linux has never worked well for me until very recently (two/three years ago?). Maybe bad luck.

Please, also post the output of the "dmesg" command, since there could be some hint in there about missbehaving drivers or something.

Also, try to find a way to reproduce it.

----------

## pmam

 *Quote:*   

> Also, try to find a way to reproduce it.

 

Do you mean to reproduce the freezing? It is quite hard...

 *Quote:*   

> About your wifi chip

 

I am quite suspecting in WIFI - I had installed it recently in both machines - 

I added the relevant driver to kernel configuration and follow this guide: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wifi.

May be it is good idea to un-install it and see if the problem will disappear?

Here is my dmesg: http://pastebin.com/WmydcCb7

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

That's one possibility, yes. Specially if both machines share the same wifi chip.

Another thing I was thinking of (but I forgot to tell you in my last post) is that this kind of issue often triggered by ACPI.  

I saw this in your dmesg output:

```
[    0.090168] pci 0000:00:1f.0: address space collision: [io  0x0800-0x087f] conflicts with ACPI CPU throttle [??? 0x00000810-0x00000815 flags 0x80000000]
```

So there's a chance that this has been caused by a regression in the kernel, regarding ACPI. A way to test this would be to disable acpi either by recompiling the kernel without it or by by passing the right parameter to the kernel at boot time. After that, double check your dmesg output to see if it there's indeed no trace of it.

On a quick look, the rest of the dmesg output seems fine and you are not using crazy fs's or some other thing that would -usually- be problematic.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

 *Quote:*   

> That's one possibility, yes. Specially if both machines share the same wifi chip. 

 

First I take this and afterword ACPI..

BTW: I saw your remark regarding VIDEO_CARDS="intel" - 

I do not have any of this in my /etc/portage/make.conf as you can see below - Should I need it?

Or due to the fact It is on-board Graphic interface, it is enough to configure it in kernel makeconfig?

```
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically

# built this stage.

# Please consult /usr/share/portage/config/make.conf.example for a more

# detailed example.

CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe"

CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

# WARNING: Changing your CHOST is not something that should be done lightly.

# Please consult http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/change-chost.xml before changing.

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

# These are the USE flags that were used in addition to what is provided by the

# profile used for building.

USE="X dbus ffmpeg -systemd gbm icu libkms minizip mmx modemmanager networkmanager

     sse sse2 xa -bindist sqlite gstreamer consolekit plasma polkit kde qt4 mysql xmp semantic-desktop embedded

     static-libs hpcups static-ppds usb avahi snmp zeroconf autoipd mdnsresponder-compat soprano lm_sensors"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

DISTDIR="${PORTDIR}/distfiles"

PKGDIR="${PORTDIR}/packages"

ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"

MAKEOPTS="-j4"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.isoc.org.il/pub/gentoo/"

SYNC="rsync://rsync1.ie.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

LINGUAS="he"

PORT_LOGDIR="/var/log/portage"

PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="info,warn,error,log,qa"

PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save"

```

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

It's not sctrictly necesary. That variable controls what X video drivers will be built (I think it's used in several other packages but can't remember right now). You can check by doing "emerge -pv xorg-drivers", you will then see the VIDEO_DRIVERS var in action, along with another one called INPUT_DEVICES. If you don't set these in your make.conf, then all the drivers will be built. Since you have both "intel" and "vesa", X will choose whatever it thinks it is best (which obviously is the accelerated intel driver).

You could force a given video driver by using your xorg.conf file/directory. To force the vesa driver just create the directory /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ (if it doesn't exist yet), and then drop a file like this with this content into it:

 */etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-vesa.conf wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Section "Device"
> 
> 	Identifier	"vesa card"
> ...

 

I guess just that should work.

But, in any case, don't try too much things at a time. Start with wifi or whatever and if that doesn't work then move into the next one.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj, 

 *Quote:*   

> But, in any case, don't try too much things at a time.

 

Yes - Need to be in focus... However, I am quite lost while trying to un-install WIFI drivers from kernel -

I could not enter menuconfig -so as you can see in the first commands of the following file, I tried to enable it (as I done it in previous similar case),

but this time I get many strange questions as you can see - Do not know how to solve this issue?    

http://pastebin.com/S3Zm2WqG

This 'menuconfig' issue (i.e: can not enter to menuconfig) happens to me few times - Do not know why? 

Please advise!

Thanks

----------

## Navar

Assuming we haven't ruled out hardware causes, power problems can be quite the house of cards.  Faulted power supplies, power to location (any power conditioning such as UPS?), brown outs, surges, lightning storms, ESD, etc.  Are these units from same vendor?

Eliminate your live filesystem as a regression for now and see if the systems are stable off a live bootable distro if you have one handy.  Memtest+ for several hours would help stress, along with app-benchmarks/stress.  You can stress test with shell scripts.  If you cannot hard fault crash those systems in those scenarios, then I would try reverting back to one of your prior successful kernel builds, remove the wifi, etc.  I'd leave testing video causation last staying at a basic console, wouldn't even run X.  SMART tests and logs are a bit hit and miss as far as pre-determining drive failure (but can't hurt to check).

If the WIFI drivers were module built you could blacklist them autoloading by modprobe.

----------

## i92guboj

 *pmam wrote:*   

> i92guboj, 
> 
>  *Quote:*   But, in any case, don't try too much things at a time. 
> 
> Yes - Need to be in focus... However, I am quite lost while trying to un-install WIFI drivers from kernel -
> ...

 

Note that you use "make menudonfig", that's a typo. In any case, please, make sure you are not mixing versions. You can get the currently active kernel version with "uname -r", or "uname -a".

If your wifi thing is compiled as a module you might see it listed by using "lsmod". Post the output here if not sure.

If that's the case, you can just blacklist. But, if it's compiled into the kernel, the only way to make sure it's not interfering is to re-compile the kernel with it disabled.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

 *Quote:*   

> Note that you use "make menudonfig", that's a typo

 

Oops... I hope I did not do any damage.. what this "menudonfig" suppose to do?

I do not know how to quit of it? May be to reboot - hope it does not change kernel config...

My WIFI is compiled into the kernel - Hope to enable "make menuconfig" soon..

Navar,

Since it happens in both machines, I think that power problems are probably not the reason..

I will try to check the other aspects, first...

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

I mean you wrote "menudonfig" in the things you posted. Just try "make menuconfig" and it should work. But, please, first check the kernel version as I told you. It won't do any good if you are randomly testing unconfigured kernels which don't realate to your real setup.

----------

## Navar

 *pmam wrote:*   

> Oops... I hope I did not do any damage.. what this "menudonfig" suppose to do?
> 
> I do not know how to quit of it? May be to reboot - hope it does not change kernel config...

 

I'd say it's a regex parsing error on scripts/tags.sh as it should have errored out as an invalid target... anyway, just ctrl-c out and re-attempt.  If /proc/config.gz exists your existing built kernel keeps a copy of your configuration file settings internally.

 *pmam wrote:*   

> Since it happens in both machines, I think that power problems are probably not the reason..
> 
> I will try to check the other aspects, first...

 

Hopefully you're correct in that assertion.  Because both machines are affected is one of the reasons why power issues could certainly be a cause.

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

 *Quote:*   

> I mean you wrote "menudonfig" in the things you posted.

 

Yes I know, but this typo bring about a screen full of questions so I hope there is no demage... 

I rebooted and now can proceed to your remark about kernel's rev -

Yes you are right - I think there is a problem here as you can see below -

I think kernel should be 'linux-3.14.14-gentoo' but not '3.12.21-gentoo-r1' -

Am I right? And what should I do?

```
uname -r

3.12.21-gentoo-r1

ls -l

total 4

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 Oct 27 11:53 linux -> linux-3.14.14-gentoo

drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Oct 27 14:30 linux-3.14.14-gentoo

eselect kernel list

Available kernel symlink targets:

  [1]   linux-3.14.14-gentoo *

```

Navar,

 *Quote:*   

>  anyway, just ctrl-c out and re-attempt. If /proc/config.gz exists your existing built kernel keeps a copy of your configuration file settings internally.
> 
> 

 

Hope this right in my machine...

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

Since I am a big fan of the "fix one thing at a time" technique, what I would do first is to sort that mismatch out.  

Check whether you have a /proc/config.gz file. If you have one, then do this AS ROOT:

```
cd /usr/src/linux

rm .config

cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip > .config # <-- note it's ".config", with a dot

make oldconfig # this will trigger lots of questions, answer the best you can, most stuff is irrelevant

make menuconfig # now it should work
```

Make whatever changes you want, save, and then recompile your kernel and install it

```
make && make install modules_install
```

You also need to add it to your bootloader, with grub2 this should suffice:

```
 grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
```

Now reboot, uname -r should report the right kernel version.

If you get into a problem with any step just ask and we'll try to do our best. 

For the future, keep in mind that while portage will install newer kernel sources, it won't compile them for you, and it won't install the new kernel in /boot. You have to do that manually as far as I know (I could have missed something in this field since I've been using kernels outside portage for like a decade).

----------

## Navar

pmam,

So I don't confuse matters more, this just an explanation only:

What you ran into before was similar to a non-specialized menu option of config choices, such as you would get with doing make oldconfig target.  Your prior kernel was apparently removed, but portage should have kept your modified files and respective directory, so in this case, /usr/src/linux-3.12.21-gentoo-r1/.config should still exist unless you manually deleted.  If it does or you have /proc/config.gz available, either could be used as a continuation of a pre-existing .config file to use in your 3.14.14 version using the make oldconfig option above where you will be prompted only with newer options in that version versus what you set in 3.12.21-r1's config.  This is commonly done and most new options are usually newer hardware support that you can answer N (usually the default) to.

Also keep in mind, compiling another kernel will certainly stress test a system.

----------

## pmam

 *Quote:*   

> Check whether you have a /proc/config.gz

 

No such file...

As you may see in the pastebin in my previous post, I have done these commands:

```
cp linux-3.12.21-gentoo-r1/.config linux-3.14.14-gentoo/

rm -rf linux-3.12.21-gentoo-r1
```

But then I done this typo...

Hope I can get out of this... 

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

Forget about the typo, it's not important. Then you need to cd /usr/src/linux, and then do

```
make oldconfig
```

it will ask you things, that's the usual procedure and you have to go through these steps each time you do a significative update (ie. not from 3.12.3 to 3.12.4, but when from 3.12.x to 3.14.x which is the case). The amount of questions will depend upon the amount of changes. To get past this you will have to answer the questions, if you don't know what to choose just choose the default which will be ok most times.

After that you will be able to make menuconfig and review it more easily using the menu system.

EDIT: when you are at it you might be interested in enabling the config.gz thing. It can be found in menuconfig under  General setup:

```
[*]   Enable access to .config through /proc/config.gz            
```

----------

## pmam

There were no questions - It was very fast so I do not know if it is ok?

```
make oldconfig

scripts/kconfig/conf --oldconfig Kconfig

#

# configuration written to .config
```

EDIT: There is problem when I want to compile:

```
make && make modules_install

Makefile:615: Cannot use CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_STRONG: -fstack-protector-strong not supported by compiler

make[1]: Nothing to be done for 'all'.

make[1]: Nothing to be done for 'relocs'.

  CHK     include/config/kernel.release

  CHK     include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h

  CHK     include/generated/utsrelease.h

  CC      kernel/bounds.s

gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-fstack-protector-strong’

/usr/src/linux-3.14.14-gentoo/./Kbuild:35: recipe for target 'kernel/bounds.s' failed

make[1]: *** [kernel/bounds.s] Error 1

Makefile:884: recipe for target 'prepare0' failed

make: *** [prepare0] Error 2

```

----------

## i92guboj

I suggest you clean your sources a bit and try again:

```
make clean

make && make install modules_install
```

If that fails, post the output for gcc-config -l

----------

## pmam

It fails:

```
gcc-config -l

 [1] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-4.7.3 *
```

----------

## i92guboj

That seems fine, so run

```
make menuconfig
```

Navigate to general setup -> Stack Protector buffer overflow detection and choose "Regular", exit, save, try again.

----------

## pmam

Dear i92guboj,

You are great! Now compilation was run OK   :Very Happy: 

I hope all parameters of kernel's configuration is ok.

Now I will see if there is no freezing after removing WIFI - 

One machine is working ok without WIFI for several hours -

Some optimism after hard day...

I do not know if the below output is ok or  should I do something regarding kernel's ver?

```
uname -r

3.12.21-gentoo-r1

src # ls -l

total 4

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 Oct 27 11:53 linux -> linux-3.14.14-gentoo

drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Oct 27 16:17 linux-3.14.14-gentoo

eselect kernel list

Available kernel symlink targets:

  [1]   linux-3.14.14-gentoo *

```

EDIT: Sorry... After running grub and reboot I get better output:

```
uname -r

3.14.14-gentoo
```

I need to re-read carefully this topic in order to prevent same issue again... especially this comment not so clear to me:

 *Quote:*   

> For the future, keep in mind that while portage will install newer kernel sources, it won't compile them for you, and it won't install the new kernel in /boot. 

 

Thanks

----------

## i92guboj

Well, regarding that, maybe the problem came because you used genkernel to build the first kernel. I am not stating it, just guessing... 

I know nothing about genkernel or how it does things. The important thing is that you stick to one way or the other, whatever way you choose.

Maybe genkernel has a way to automate things a bit. Dunno.

Idon't know if that clears something up a bit or if I'm only making a bigger mess out of it  :Laughing: 

----------

## pmam

i92guboj,

The machines working ok without freezing for many hours, so I hope we found out the reason - 

WIFI interface. In case this is right – What can I do in order to enable WIFI without freezing?

Can I find a better driver suitable to this hardware: 

```
Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

168c0013   Yes   Atheros Communications Inc.   AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter   ath5k   v2.6.25-
```

Also - Do I need to run grub after each kernel's compiling?  

Thanks

----------

## pmam

Hi, 

I am not giving up so fast    :Wink: 

So I decided to re-install  WIFI drivers into kernel, but this time I followed very carefully this guide : http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wifi.

I double checked every step and pay attention to the exact driver should be marked according my particular WIFI card.

May be I had a mistake during the previous menuconfig, I do not know, 

however, one thing is for sure: This time I unmerge 'linux-firmware' - 

As you may see in the Expand' nearby 'Firmaware' chapter of this guide, it is necessary for ath9k_htc, but my Driver is ath5k - 

In previous time I emerged this firmware and it may caused to the freezing problem.

For long time both machines working ok  -So far so good...

Thanks

----------

