11.3 randomly freezing while Dell Latitude E6400 on docking station

English Hardware
#1

Hello folks,

I’m having an issue with random laptop freezes that I just can’t seem to pinpoint the reason. I have a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop with SUSE 11.3 installed. If I do my work with the laptop sitting connected to my Dell docking station, the system will hard freeze at random intervals, and I have power cycle the laptop to get it working again. I have not had any problems when the laptop is used separately from the docking station.

I’m not sure what other system logs or troubleshooting methods I can use to figure this one out. There isn’t much, if anything, being written to /var/log/messages to explain the sudden freezes, and Google searches turn up little.

If anyone has encountered this issue and has a solution, please let me know. Thanks.

#2

Hello folks,

I’m having an issue with random laptop freezes that I just can’t seem to pinpoint the reason. I have a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop with SUSE 11.3 installed. If I do my work with the laptop sitting connected to my Dell docking station, the system will hard freeze at random intervals, and I have power cycle the laptop to get it working again. I have not had any problems when the laptop is used separately from the docking station.

I’m not sure what other system logs or troubleshooting methods I can use to figure this one out. There isn’t much, if anything, being written to /var/log/messages to explain the sudden freezes, and Google searches turn up little.

If anyone has encountered this issue and has a solution, please let me know. Thanks.
So, I don’t know for sure what your issue might be. I decided to answer your question because I have the very same laptop from my work. I have installed and boot openSUSE from an external USB hard drive. I do use it plugged into my docking station with openSUSE. The only problem I have had related to the docking station was a bad power supply, which would report it was not the right size, even as it was, but no lock ups to deal with. I use the external USB hard drive, booting openSUSE, to separate my personnel use of Linux from my work usage with Windows XP. Now, I don’t think the method of booting openSUSE is important, but I do wonder if my upgrade of the kernel from 2.6.34 to 2.6.36 in openSUSE might be part of my success. If you are interested in a kernel upgrade, just ask how it is done. Also consider you could have some issue with the docking station.

Thank You,