I’ve been using openSUSE on this older machine successful for quite a while until a few weeks ago when my 42.3 began locking with the H/D buzzing away uncontrollably. At first I thought the Meltdown-Spectre patches then I figured H/D failure. There was NO response what so ever to any commands or keystrokes. Hard switching was the only option for reset. With a fresh install of Leap 15 on a clean H/D I still have the same results.
H/D buzzing indicates bad sectors. Run smartctrl to check.
The OS will attempt to read a sector and retry until the check-sums match or the heat death of the universe which ever comes first. This caused the heads to shift a bit and thus the buzz
The G33 video just missed the cut of when Intel’s intent to get serious about improving its GFX performance started manifesting. That happened in 4th generation. G33 is 3rd generation. Installing a PCIe gfx card should significantly improve performance, assuming you are not having other hardware trouble. It’s what I did with my G31 and my G33. I have multiple PCs with that exact CPU, which can be used in a 4th gen Intel gfx motherboard, and I do. I think I have 4 of them. The newest motherboards that can use that CPU use DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2. That difference is pretty big.
Other possible trouble besides bad HD could be relatively simply to fix yourself if you have any soldering talent. Check the motherboard and the inside of the power supply for swollen and/or leaking capacitors. For more info, visit badcaps.net.
Some early SATA cables were made using short lifetime insulation and conductors, so a simple cable change stands a chance of being your solution.
This seems to be under intense program usage and started out of the blue. Installs go flawlessly without issue with both 42.3 & 15 so I’m not so sure about the HD’s being bad. I can get it to lock up in F/B and my online shop with a quick opening and closing of tabs and windows. Could this be a memory or swap issue?
Seriously if you hear a tick or buzz from the hard drive that is a sure indicator it is trying multiple rereads of a at least one sector. This will lock things until the read succeeds. A bad sector can be any where and may not interfere with the install but only shows up on running. Run smartctrl to verify your hard disk.
Note also if you do have bad sectors showing that means smart has run out of spars and can not fix the problem by mapping in good spare sectors.
Ran smart short and then long but no errors reported. Failing HD was my first thought but it seems odd that 42.3 started locking, then with a fresh install of 15 on a different drive yielded the same results. (unless both drives happen to be at the same fail point at the same time)? Going to look to see if I have another drive to install to.
That’s possible, an install on yet another drive may confirm a board issue. I found two (2) old unused 80gib sada drives that I was thinking about using. One for the / and swap and the other for /home. (if that will work)
I think you are correct on that. I finished a fresh install using (2) 80gib seagates (that I know are good) / and /swap on /dev/sdb and /home on /dev/sda. (the system would not install on /dev/sda for some reason) After boot when I pushed it, it locked up just as before.