Hi all,
I am running 11.3 for about 4 months and it suddenly started to hang intermittently, sometimes many times a day. Once KDE restarted and other times the screen went black. Most of the time it was just hanging and I needed to force a shutdown. The only clue I got is KDE displayed a notification saying “Disabling IRQ #24” not long after it started to go nuts.
After searching around, I figured the problem was with my external video card so I pulled it out 2 days ago and so far it didn’t freeze again.
After searching around some more, I found many users fixed very similar issues by upgrading to kernel 2.6.35 and I am ready to go for this solution.
But now, I couldn’t find out how to upgrade the kernel. People said it can be done in Yast but I only see version 2.6.34. What is the easiest way to upgrade?
Thanks a lot for your help!
This might seem like another dummy question, but if I upgrade the kernel, will I have to re-install all my drivers again? It first took me about 2 weeks to properly setup my system and fix everything. I would rather avoid going through all this pain again…
To upgrade your kernel I suggest you look at my thread on the subject here:
S.A.K.C. - SUSE Automated Kernel Compiler - Version 2.00
Message #17 has the mot recent version of SAKC. Further, message #22 has another useful script called KLIST you might find helpful in maintaining more than one kernel source file. SACK does not remove your existing kernel(s) and leaves them present to use in the event a new kernel does not work. Now SAKC does not have a kernel version removal option, but unused kernels do not cause a problem unless you are running out of disk space AND I can help you remove one manually if you need help with that.
To be able to compile a kernel you should first visit YaST / Software / Software Management and select the view button on the top right and pick Patterns. In the Pattern listing select Base, Kernel & C++ Development and allow all required packages to install. The most recent stable kernel is 2.6.37.2 and so you should just go for it over 35 in my opinion.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.37.2.tar.bz2
Please let me know if you have any questions and good luck.
Thank You,
Hello,
I used your S.A.C.K. script and it worked like a charm. I don’t know why there is so much code in the kernel 2.6.37.2 thought, it took 74 minutes to compile on my machine with 2 * 1.4GB CPU!
I did not need to reinstall the madwifi drivers nor the Nvidia drivers.
When I looked at what had I installed in YaST for Nvidia, I found out I had xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau but also nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-default, vidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop and x11-video-nvidiaG02. The 3 latest items versions were marked in red.
So maybe the freezing problems I experienced were related to a conflict between these drivers. I only kept xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau and it it still using my external card. Maybe I first left useless proprietary drivers that caused me so much trouble after messing up when I did setup my system. But I can’t be sure about it since it ran for 3 months without any problems.
Thanks a lot for your script and your quick answers! It is not the first time you help me out and this is truly appreciated. I must admit openSuSE has an excellent community support.
Cheers!