Intermittent (but frequent) problem with FC6.

[Jim Cornette]

Bob St John wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I have an intermittent (but frequent) problem with FC6. At first I
> thought it was a hardware problem, but now I don't think it is.
> 
> This is a dual boot system. Windows XP does not crash at all, but FC6
> crashes frequently.
> 
> uname -a output: Linux Linux 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 #1 SMP Mon Oct 16
> 14:39:22 EDT 2006 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> 
> Other facts:
> - Memtest completes multiple passes without detecting any problems
> - Both FC6 and WinXP are on the same hard disk (and since WinXP works
> fine I don't think it's a disk or disk controller problem.)
> - Same logic as above for the power supply.
> - Logging in text mode causes no problems; logging in with either GNOME
> or KDE crashes the system 99% of the time after a short period of time.
> - The other 1% of the time FC6 seems stable for at least several hours.
> In fact earlier this week it was up for 3 or 4 days with relatively
> heavy usage with no problems.
> - Periodically, in GNOME, straight but zig-zagged brown lines appear on
> the display.
> - As root, I can bring up the KDE environment but not the GNOME
> environment. As other users I can bring up both GNOME and KDE.
> - The crashes happen most frequently when I'm using Evolution, but since
> I use that more than anything else this may not be very indicative.
> - When crashes occur the display freezes but the mouse moves freely.
> - When crashes occur the only thing I can do is physically power off the
> machine. When I turn it back on it boots quickly with only this
> indication of errors: "usb 1-3: cannot allocate device 2 error -110" or
> something close to that.
> - I don't know too much about Linux, but I see no error messages from
> dmesg or in /var/log/messages
> - Thinking that this has something to do with X11, I have deleted the
> xorg.conf file and rebuilt it with system-config-display (several
> times.)
> 
> So I'm at a loss at resolving this problem. Any suggestions?   
> 
> Thanks . . .
> 
> Bob St. John
> 

It does have symptoms related to a GUI problem. You can probably see if 
there is any clues in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log or the 
/var/log/Xorg.0.log.old file if in text mode. Just use the .old file for 
problems if diagnosing using the GUI. The /var/log/Xorg.0.log contains 
info related to the current session and probably will not contain info 
about the lockup. The old log should be the crashed session.

It could be the mouse interaction with X or it might relate to the type 
of video hardware that you have on the machine. You might need the lspci 
info with the video hardware information to allow others to be able to 
help you better. I see you are using the 64-bit version so this might be 
something that is specific to the 64-bit version.

Sorry no help, but a few suggestions however.
Jim

-- 
Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
	Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
		Or as finished as it seems in the end.