opensuse 11.2 shutting down

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

When I go to sleep and come back my opensuse 11.2 turns itself off and I don’t know why.

I am running gnome and the power settings are:

On AC power:

  • Put the computer to sleep - never
  • Spin down hard disk when possible - checked
  • Put display to sleep when inactive - 1 hour

Screen saver:

  • Regard the computer as idle after - 30mins.
  • Activate screensaver when computer is idle - checked
  • Lock screen when screen is active - unchecked

I’ve noticed this same behavior when the computer is in mode init 3 and init 5 so I don’t see the screen saver settings having any effect.

I’ve just changed the “Put display to sleep when inactive - 1 hour” to “never” as I really can’t see anything else to do.

I do have a 3ware 8 port RAID card which I only mention in case it makes a difference with the “Spin down hard disks when possible” setting however these exact same settings with the same hardware were never an issue with opensuse 11.0 from which I upgraded. So that you know, I upgraded by wiping the old install and doing a clean install so I don’t see this being an upgrade corruption issue.

Does anyone have any ideas that would make sense?

Thanks,
Reg

2

Is this a desktop?

3

Yes it is.

4

Do you still have a dual boot?
I have to make sure this is not a PSU issue.
(Power supply unit)
To make sure maybe you should see if windows shuts down too if you still have it.
Is this KDE or Gnome?
This too might be a factor however a computer that seems to shut down on its own might not be a good sign.

5

Ah, you need to know about the system, here is it:

I use gnome both when I had 11.0 on the computer and now with 11.2.

This is a dedicated Linux desktop setup as a server - definitely there is no dual boot – just opensuse 11.2. In fact, this computer has never had Windows on it.

There is 8GB of RAM of which I’ve never seen it use more than 2GB since I have installed 11.2.

The processor is Intel 4 core/2.66Ghz.

The drives are on a 3ware RAID controller setup as a RAID 5 with 3 x 1 TB disks and a RAID 1 setup with 2 x 1TB disks. The RAID 1 handles commonly written areas meaning for the most part the /var/ directory and the RAID 5 contains everything else. Both RAID disk combinations still have a ridiculous amount of space on them.

Although now a year old, the motherboard (ASUS) was chosen for having the latest power saving hardware (I care about being green as much as anybody), I have no idea how effective Linux is in controlling it however even though I use gnome, before I upgraded from opensuse 11.0 I used kpowersave (before I knew it was meant for the KDE) and it even adjusted the processor speed stepping so it seems pretty good at working with the power saving of motherboard, although, I can’t tell much of what it is doing with the gnome power management tool at all (kpowersave has it all over gnome for the moment in terms of giving you feedback).

The power supply is 550 watt and as far as I can tell never been even close to maxed out.

The server and the rest of the network (including routers, switches, modems everything attached to the computer) is supplied power through a UPS that can hold up the power for about 30 mins. in the event of a power failure which so far (cross fingers) hasn’t happened around here.

I have the screen saver set to random. While this shouldn’t be a problem, on 11.0 it caused suse to crash. I have not see it cause 11.2 to crash and I suspect that issue has be fixed but I thought I would mention it.

It was not shutting itself down with 11.0 so I don’t see it being the hardware.

I don’t know how to tell if opensuse crashed/froze or shut itself down which, if it just freezes when I leave it for a few hours, is certainly part of the problem since until thinking about it now, I always assumed that it shut itself down and that could be a mistake.

And that’s everything I can think of to tell you.

6

Reg gie wrote:
> I have the screen saver set to random. While this shouldn’t be a
> problem, on 11.0 it caused suse to crash. I have not see it cause 11.2
> to crash and I suspect that issue has be fixed but I thought I would
> mention it.

i highly recommend you do one of these:

  1. pick one screen saver and run it for a week, and if it doesn’t lock
    up your system make a note it is okay and then try another for a
    week…then when you find the ones that DO lock your system (and i bet
    you will) you can log a bug report AND disable it on your system…

  2. set your screen saver to blank screen

  3. after the years it will take doing item 1 above you will have
    purged your machine of all locking screen savers and can again set
    random…

try one and see…

–
palladium

7

I suspect you are right as I have confirmed it is crashing, not shutting down by itself however a couple of things to note:

  • When I troubleshooted the problem last time I eventually determined it wasn’t any one screensaver but simply that after it had gone through a few it would eventually just hang so doing a one by one approach may not be useful.

  • This is a server that I will soon put into production, and now that I know it is a crashing issue, it is fair to say that it may have nothing to do with the screensavers or power management.

So, given the above, what I really need to do is learn how to determine what caused a crash after I reboot a crashed system and this is something I have no experience at. So, other than blindly combing logs of which there are dozens, is there a smart methodical way to determine what is crashing a system after a restart – when you are not around to see what the cause is as it happens?

8

Reg gie wrote:
> - This is a server that I will soon put into production

slow down…production servers need neither a screen saver or X
(windows)–all of which just turn money into heat while soaking up CPU
clicks better used to serve…in fact they don’t even need a monitor
or keyboard (after initial setup)…just administer them using Webmin
<http://www.webmin.com/> from any browser on the planet, or like the
“big boys” via an ssh commandline, or via several ways to do it all in
a gui…

and, now i wonder why you are using openSUSE which is gonna go
unsupported (with critical security updates) about the time you learn
how to administer it (May 2011) and not something you can set up and
run with security confidence for (say) five years or more…

> what I really need to do is learn how to determine what caused a crash

sure, but that is not (in my opinion) a topic for this openSUSE
install-boot-login forum, because first is has nothing to do with
openSUSE…because what you are looking for now is a course in Linux
Administration…generic Linux is probably more than good
enough…but if you wanna begin with openSUSE docs, go here:
http://www.novell.com/documentation/opensuse112/

and pick all you wish, but especially from the “Administration” menu

more generic and a must read cover-to-cover Rute User’s Tutorial
and Exposition at: http://rute.2038bug.com/

your nearest university/technical training center probably has several
semester long courses in troubleshooting . . .

remember the rule: Have a lot of fun.

–
palladium

9

What do you mean going to go unsupported? The reason I chose openSUSE was the reviews it got and that I’ve always had respect for Novell.

Is there an article about this somewhere?

The rest is irrelevant if openSUSE is going to die.

10

Ok, I should respond to the rest, just panicked for a moment.

Reg gie wrote:
> - This is a server that I will soon put into production

slow down…production servers need neither a screen saver

Yes, I am well aware of this and with two openSUSE machines, one for development and one as the server, I am very familiar with ssh.

However, call it a programmer’s mentality but one step at a time. Right now I have potentially a problem with screensavers or X11 running ro something and whether I’m going to have X11 or not, it’s still something wrong to be troubleshooted. Also, just to see if it was screensavers I did leave the server init 3 mode and it still stopped. That is why I thought it was shutting down too – because I couldn’t see how it would crash when just running in init 3 mode.

sure, but that is not (in my opinion) a topic for this openSUSE
install-boot-login forum…

Fair enough! It was my best guess and perhaps wrong. I do like anyone else have other resources and as you pointed out, it’s now gone into the realm of Linux in general, not openSUSE specific (notwithstanding that I suspect this is an openSUSE bug) – sorry, my mistake.

Have a lot of fun.

Always!

11

Update:

I’ve been turning off options one at a time around the screensaver and power options. Last time I turned off the “blank screen after X amount of time” and it still crashed.

This time I’ve turned off screensavers all together. I turned off all other related options one at a time first because I really want to pinpoint the problem.

The last time it crashed while displaying the rubiks cude screensaver so I put it on that screensaver alone sure enough it didn’t crash (although I didn’t leave to run all night.)

I am leaving it running without a screesaver ever going on and see if it crashes. If not, then I’ll try running it in init 3 mode.

Now here’s an interesting question. If it works without crashing as is and then works without crashing in init 3 mode that would suggest that somehow the screensaver settings are influencing init 3 mode which I would have never guessed possible. But, that’s supposition at this point, right now it’s a waiting game with the current settings to see what happens.

12

Reg gie wrote:
> Is there an article about this somewhere?

openSUSE is the no cost always moving product of “the openSUSE
Community”…

we here squash bugs out of the leading edge of Linux technology and
innovation…Novell supports our efforts with organization,
electrons, space, developers, hackers and etc…and, with the
openSUSE code base:

-polishes it up
-makes it Enterprise ready
-provides on going long lasting security/update/etc support
-provides forums
-provides training
-periodically releases a new version of YEARS long lasting SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server (SLES) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED)

service life cites:
openSUSE http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Linux_Lifetime
SLES/SLES http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/

if you were looking for a long term support Linux server at no cost
you probably need to start over…on the other hand, SLEx is not a
lot of money (especially compared to the alternatives) AND the small
cost supports the open source community (and, of course Novell’s
bottom line and stock holders)

note: i don’t work for anyone, and won’t receive anything if you
purchase a million SLEx licenses…

–
palladium

13

Just wanted to confirm that this was caused by having the screen saver set to random. Once, turned to blank the problem went away.