11.1 too unstable so going back to 10.3

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1

…unless anyone can help?
Ever since I upgraded from 10.3 (rock solid, stable as anything) to 11.0, then 11.1, I am plagued with hard locks that basically make my system unusable. I’ve searched the net for clues and advice, but so much is either contradictory or not relevant to me that I despair of finding a solution. (When I say “upgraded”, I mean “clean install onto new disk”, BTW. A process I’ve repeated several times)

Basic info: Sempron 3000+ with Nvidia chipsets. 1Gb RAM. Desktop PC, not a laptop. No wireless of any description. Suse 11.1 Kernel 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae, KDE4.2. All patched up to date. (Tried with KDE3.5, Gnome and fvwm as well, no change, so it’s not a KDE thing…)

Symptoms: sudden total system lock. Everything stops. No ping, no ssh, no connection to the world, nothing. No longer visible on the network. No mouse cursor, no keyboard response (not even magic keys, SysReq etc etc. Even the NumLock lights are frozen) I’ve kept background processes echoing all system activity to logs - they show no unusual behaviours. Nothing in any system log. We are not experiencing 100%CPU, and it does not come back to life after a short while (or even 12 hours) Only cure is the on/off switch. No overheating shown in logs. No heavy use at the time of lockup.

I can usually guarantee a lock after simply doing a few scrolls in a browser (any one - I use Firefox 3 for preference, but Konqueror, Opera, whatever, they all lock up) I can often run for hours - as long as I don’t use a browser or anything else that needs scrolling. Yet I can VNC to my Server (Suse 10.0) and run Firefox in the VNC window as long as I like.

So basically, something (that might be X Windows apps being scrolled but then again might not, as I get lockups on other activity too - scrolling is simply the most common thing I’m doing when it locks) gives me total lockup. I have the latest kernel, drivers, everything. With 10.3, never a glitch, but the move to 11 has been a nightmare. Does anyone have any suggestions or bright ideas, please?

2

If the different software indicates the same symptoms you need to check if it is not a hardware issue. I would first check the memory with memtest.

I had a while ago (3 years ago to be exact :slight_smile: ) problem with the memory (BIOS set too low voltage for the memory) and no matter what OS i used it would lock up.

3

Fair enough, and I’ll run a test as you suggest. But it doesn’t explain why 10.3 was solid but as soon as I moved up to 11.0 my system became unstable. At the time the indications were that 11.1 would be better, but the subsequent upgrade disproved that one pretty quickly!

Will run memtest overnight and come back with results. Thanks,

4

After reading that again, it may be some BUG with a mouse driver? If you scroll on the desktop without the browser does it also lock up?

If yes then you should file a BUG (but don’t scroll rotfl!)

5

Well KDE 4.22 is still not quite there. I am getting lockups occaisionally, which I can accept because I find the new direction worthwhile and necessary. Why bother with KDE 4.22 when you can use 11.1 with KDE 3.5x which is stable as can be and has a number of advantages over 10.3. Going all the way back seems to be overdoing it a little…

6

Yeh i get lock outs too, whole system freaks out for no reason…
But it might indeed be KDE 4 related, would not be surprised.

7

This week I installed 11.1 64 on a brand new machine with a MSI board and 8 GB RAM. I had exactly the same random lockups. A memtest86+ showed RAM errors when using all 4 banks. 2 RAM banks in any combination were ok. When I switched from automatic setting to 2.0 V DRAM voltage in BIOS, the system became stable. Friends told me that they had similar issues with boards of various brands (Asus, MSI). I think that especially RAM-consuming applications are likely to trigger instabilities with a higher probability. After setting to 2.0 V, the memtest was successful, too.

Kind regards
Volker

8

OK, as a further update, I took the advice and ran memtest86 for a few hours. No errors reported, so I have to remove memory from the list of possible causes.

I’m not too sure where else I can look now. I am surprised that something can take out the whole system, including network interfaces, so fast and so completely, without there being any trace or record in any logs I can find.

I am a bit suspicious of the Nvidia element here - there seems to be some history of problems with Nvidia graphics, from what I’ve been able to find on the Web. I did try using the open source driver, but that just gave me a black screen so I went back to the installed default. Maybe I should try that again?

Thanks for the responses so far - all advice gratefully received.

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> all advice gratefully received.

is there a function, capability offered by 11.x that you actually need?

if you can’t honestly answer yes to that then why bother?
my answer is no, and i’m still on 10.3 and hope 11.2 is usable…
if not i might give SLED 11 a try…

(could that be Novell’s secret marketing strategy?? [keeping openSUSE
perpetually broken–that is, after all how the folks in Redmond got
filthy rich!!])

–
Andy Sipowicz

10

sandfly357 wrote:

> Basic info: Sempron 3000+ with Nvidia chipsets. 1Gb RAM. Desktop PC,
> not a laptop. No wireless of any description. Suse 11.1 Kernel
> 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae

Can’t help you with your stability problems, but i do have one question.
Why do you have a pae kernel if you only have 1GB of ram?

I thought that the pae kernel is only for 32 bit systems to make use of 4GB
ram and more.

–
Chris Maaskant

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On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 20:50 +0000, Chris Maaskant wrote:
> sandfly357 wrote:
>
> > Basic info: Sempron 3000+ with Nvidia chipsets. 1Gb RAM. Desktop PC,
> > not a laptop. No wireless of any description. Suse 11.1 Kernel
> > 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae
>
> Can’t help you with your stability problems, but i do have one question.
> Why do you have a pae kernel if you only have 1GB of ram?
>
> I thought that the pae kernel is only for 32 bit systems to make use of 4GB
> ram and more.
>

The pae kernel does allow a 32bit OS install to see more than 4GB… but
it doesn’t prevent someone from using it if they have less than 4GB.

12

cjcox wrote:

> The pae kernel does allow a 32bit OS install to see more than 4GB… but
> it doesn’t prevent someone from using it if they have less than 4GB.

Yes i understand.
So is a pae kernel the default kernel for 32 bit systems or do you have to
select it during install?
If it is not, why not?

What could be the reason for not having a pae kernel for a 32 bit system?

–
Chris Maaskant

13

The pae kernel is selected during the installation if your processor supports it. Some of the processors supported are Athlon X2 ,X3 and Core2Duo. Also quad core processors.

Not all processors support it so it isn’t always installed on a 32bit system.

14

pilotgi wrote:
> The pae kernel is selected during the installation if your processor
> supports it. Some of the processors supported are Athlon X2 ,X3 and
> Core2Duo. Also quad core processors.

Right, not all support it. But Pentium III does. And so does the 1998
Pentium II. And virtually anything DaDiDaDI since the Pentium Pro (1995)
and AMD’s products since the Athlon. :slight_smile:

Kind regards,
Andreas Stieger

15

pilotgi wrote:
> The pae kernel is selected during the installation if your processor
> supports it. Some of the processors supported are Athlon X2 ,X3 and
> Core2Duo. Also quad core processors.

Right, not all support it. But Pentium III does. And so does the 1998
Pentium II. And virtually anything DaDiDaDI since the Pentium Pro (1995)
and AMD’s Athlon. :slight_smile:

Kind regards,
Andreas Stieger

16

The PAE kernel also got the NX thingy where the default one doesn’t have it :slight_smile:

17

Thanks for the responses everyone - sorry to be slow in responding but was on holiday.

Nothing has improved - the system locks every single time during a browsing session, the only question is “how quickly?”. As previously mentioned, it makes no difference what browser is used. I get occasional random locks during non-browsing use, although these are way less frequent and not generally reproducible.

I know it may well be a compination of my particular OS, X,and Hardware, and I really really would like to know what the problem is. I’ve already ruled out KDE, as I’ve tried Gnome and fvwm as well. Everything points to a problem with X handling graphics when scrolling - text windows are fine, and a non-graphical shell runs perfectly. It has to be a problem with X under v11.x.

But I must have a stable computer, so as there’s absolutely no useful logging that would encourage me to investigate further, Suse 11 will be removed from my system later today and be replaced with 10.3. My system will stay that way until 11.2 at least. I just don’t have the time or level of technical ability to try and resolve it, but I’m bitterly disappointed that my preferred OS cannot deliver a basic solid computing platform on what is a pretty simple system (I’d feel better if I was using bleeding-edge technology, but a Sempron 3000? Come on guys, it’s not exactly new, and I’m hardly stressing the system by just browsing the Web…) I’ll file a bug but don’t expect anything to come of it.

Makes it kind of difficult for me to continue recommending Linux as a viable Windows alternative, when I can’t show a stable instance of the latest version on my own systems :frowning:

18

I had to install suse on many laptops for my friends and still I take care of them.
Here my questions:

  • What happens by booting in “failsafe”? And after reaching runlevel 3, the console, if you issue the command “startx”?

  • Have you the same problems on ubuntu?

The reason for my questions: the distribution putted as default in grub a kernel parameter of minor relevance which makes crash at least a lot of msi motherboards.

19
  1. Upgrading = BAD, especially such a wide upgrade as in 10.3 to 11.1.
  2. PAE kernel, how and why did you install that instead of the normal one? I would change that first and see what happens.

But in all honesty, I would probably go back to 10.3 if that was working well. You can always install KDE4.2 on that if you really want to :).

Actually, try removing beagle as well, it has been reported to cause many problems!

20

I have Sempron 3100+ 64bit, running 10.3 multiboot with 11.1 and others. All running KDE 3.5.x with no lock-ups anytime on either operating system.

11.1 runs the the PAE kernel fully updated. Why, since I only have 512MB RAM? Answer, because the installer chose it for me as its “default”! No problem, so why are we repeatedly questioning this after many months of distro availability. :\

When I install, I take as many defaults as possible. I never “upgrade” to a new release of openSUSE.

I also installed the Default kernel to compare with PAE, in case of problems early on. They both work equally well. :wink:

I do not have NVIDIA (yet…). I too suspect a h/w related problem. :expressionless: