My PC rebooted: how to find out the reason?

sabo007 · September 23, 2014, 12:41pm

Hi,
how can i find out or where do i have to look at, if i want to find out why my pc at work was booted but at the grafical (the normal) kde login prompt?
Yesterday i let one of my co-workers use my pc because mine has more ram than his, and he had to start a program that needed a lot of ram, then i had to leave earlier.
I can ask him later this day but there have to be a log file i can check right?
There are two scenarios:

his program finished and/or he just restarted my pc (maybe accidentally)
his program crashed because it exceeded the RAM and the PC automatically rebooted

How can i find out what happened?

btw: my PC uses opensuse 13.1

wolfi323 · September 23, 2014, 1:07pm

/var/log/messages maybe.

robin_listas · September 23, 2014, 1:33pm

On 2014-09-23 12:46, sabo007 wrote:


> How can i find out what happened?

Have a look at /var/log/messages.

The boot usually starts with a line similar to this one:

<5.6> 2014-09-11 09:45:21 Telcontar rsyslogd - - - [origin software=“rsyslogd” swVersion=“7.4.7” x-pid=“1075” x-info=“http://www.rsyslog.com”] start

which is not related to booting, but to the daemon that does the logging. But these lines very soon after it:

<0.5> 2014-09-11 09:45:21 Telcontar kernel - - - 0.000000] Linux version 3.11.10-21-desktop (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.8.1 20130909 [gcc-4_8-branch revision 202388] (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jul 21 15:28:46 UTC 2014 (9a9565d)
<0.6> 2014-09-11 09:45:21 Telcontar kernel - - - 0.000000] Command line: root=/dev/disk/by-label/a_main resume=/dev/disk/by-label/b_swap splash=verbose console=tty0 vga=0x31a

confirm that it is a boot sequence, not a restart of syslog.
Well, before that will be the lines of the previous session. This is a normal halt sequence on my machine:


<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped Session 131 of user cer.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping Session 1 of user root.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped Session 1 of user root.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping user-0.slice.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Removed slice user-0.slice.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LVM2 metadata daemon...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping Stop Read-Ahead Data Collection 10s After Completed Startup.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped Stop Read-Ahead Data Collection 10s After Completed Startup.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping User Manager for 9...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping User Manager for 1000...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping User Manager for 127...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping CUPS Printing Service...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping ifup managed network interface eth1...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping ifup managed network interface eth0...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping Graphical Interface.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped target Graphical Interface.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: X Display Manager...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping helloworld.service...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped helloworld.service.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping Multi-User System.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopped target Multi-User System.
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: virus scanner daemon...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: Start the hddtemp daemon...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: mdadmd daemon monitoring MD devices...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: This services starts and stops the USB Arbitrator....
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: Supports the direct execution of binary formats....
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: irqbalance daemon providing irq balancing on MP-machines...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping LSB: Set up analog joysticks...
<3.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:14 Telcontar systemd 1 - -  Stopping Initialize hardware monitoring sensors...
<5.6> 2014-08-15 12:37:16 Telcontar rsyslogd - - -  [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="7.4.7" x-pid="1068" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15.

If you don’t see those jobs stopping, it is a crash.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)