Stability issues in OpenSuse 11.1 64-bit

English Hardware
#1

Heya,

My brother helped me install OpenSuse 11.1 64Bit on my Acer TravelMate 7730.

It has an Intel Core2 Duo P8400 CPU and an nVidia Geforce 9600M GT. I don’t know if you need more specs. If so please tell me how to supply them.

My experience so far is that OpenSuse seems to be fond of crashing. Its been rebooted about 8 times since install. I think 3 or 4 of them was due to crashes. The last was just a few minutes ago. I was on Facebook with Firefox and listening to music using…yeah…I forgot the name of the program, it was NOT Amarok. So much I know. It started with ‘b’ I think.

Anyway…what can I do to prevent these crashes?

Daqar

#2

Daqar,

> My experience so far is that OpenSuse seems to be fond of crashing. Its
> been rebooted about 8 times since install. I think 3 or 4 of them was
> due to crashes. The last was just a few minutes ago. I was on Facebook
> with Firefox and listening to music using…yeah…I forgot the name of
> the program, it was NOT Amarok. So much I know. It started with ‘b’ I
> think.

The name of the program was almost certainly Banshee which is the
default music player in gnome.

I’ve been running 64-bit for quite a while and find it just as stable as
the 32-bit. No problems so far, certainly no crashes or hangs.

To prevent this, make sure you’re up-to-date. Have you added any
packages from repos other than the default openSUSE ones?
That may be the resaon for your problems, especially from OBs ones.

Do you get any errors in the log files, that could help pinpoint the
reason for the crashes?

–

Niclas Ekstedt, CNA/CNE/CNS/CLS
Systems Engineer
Atea Sverige AB

#3

On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 21:16 +0000, Daqar wrote:
> Heya,
>
> My brother helped me install OpenSuse 11.1 64Bit on my Acer TravelMate
> 7730.
>
> It has an Intel Core2 Duo P8400 CPU and an nVidia Geforce 9600M GT. I
> don’t know if you need more specs. If so please tell me how to supply
> them.
>
> My experience so far is that OpenSuse seems to be fond of crashing. Its
> been rebooted about 8 times since install. I think 3 or 4 of them was
> due to crashes. The last was just a few minutes ago. I was on Facebook
> with Firefox and listening to music using…yeah…I forgot the name of
> the program, it was NOT Amarok. So much I know. It started with ‘b’ I
> think.

“crash” is an interesting word. Does this mean the whole machine is
really locked up? Or are the graphics just frozen? etc…

#4

I guess crash is a variable. I could move the mouse around on the screen but the computer did not respond to keyboard input or mousebuttons. In the last crash, the sound continued untill the song enden. Then the sound died too.

I think there are too repositories added, maybe 3: VCL, community and nVidia.

my gfx-card and compiz made something of a fuzz when installing and setting up hardware. I think this was the reason for most reboots.

How do I check the error logs?

Daqar

#5

Hi,

I have the same issue here with 11.1 64 bit, just the same lockups
as yours. If I am listening to music (with Amarok), the music will continue
up to the end of play list. Furthermore, most of these lockups happen
when I am scrolling on Firefox, but I have realized that it also happens
when I am working in other applications like openOffice and emerald window
manager. Any one knows if these applications are all GTK based?

I do not think these lockups are Compiz related, since I used to have
similar, but not equal, ones when Compiz was disabled. But you
could try disable Compiz an see what happens.

I am starting to think this is not hardware related either, since your video
card is NVIDIA while mine is Intel! So, what desktop do you use?
Gnome or KDE? I was wondering if this is KDE related, since
I use KDE 4.1.3.

Take a look here: http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/laptop/418874-keyboard-mouse-locks-kde-4-1-3-11-1_64-a.html

Any help is welcome here. This seems to be a common issue for 64-bit
up to date system users (I do not remember having this problem on
a fresh install)!

Bye.

#6

I have not seen the issue. But I destroy pulseaudio. You might want to
try getting rid of that (you can keep libpulse, just get rid of
pulseaudio, under YaST it will try to eliminate the dependent elements
if you just tell it to delete pulseaudio.

Is that going to fix your “crash”? I have no idea. I just know that
mine doesn’t crash and I have BOTH an Nvidia box AND an Intel GPU’d box.

#7

On Wed, 2009-08-19 at 16:11 +0000, cjcox wrote:
> I have not seen the issue. But I destroy pulseaudio. You might want to
> try getting rid of that (you can keep libpulse, just get rid of
> pulseaudio, under YaST it will try to eliminate the dependent elements
> if you just tell it to delete pulseaudio.
>
> Is that going to fix your “crash”? I have no idea. I just know that
> mine doesn’t crash and I have BOTH an Nvidia box AND an Intel GPU’d box.
>
>

Also, after destroying pulseaudio, remember that alsaconf is your
friend… just to make sure all of that is working.

#8

I think you have miss understood. At least in my case, the lockups are not
related to audio. I said Amarok still works to emphasize that only the
mouse and keyboard lock. The lockups happen still if I am not listening
to music and Amarok is not running. I meant that it is not a hard lock.
As instance, if I am chatting on aMSN, I can still receiver messages
but can not type. If I am talking at Skype, my contact can still hear me and
I can still hear him/her. As well, the video does not crash.

I do not think is Pulseaudio too. I work in a desktop with the same
software configuration as in my laptop. I mean, openSUSE 11.1 x_64,
the same applications, and I do not have these lockups on this computer.
I have they only on my laptop. In both I have Pulseaudio installed but unchecked
in Yast.

But, any way, thanks!

#9

Check “top” in a console, it could be something hogging resources,causing things to lock-up

Andy

#10

ednso adjusted his/her AFDB on Wednesday 19 Aug 2009 17:46 to write:

> I think you have miss understood. At least in my case, the lockups are
> not
> related to audio. I said Amarok still works to emphasize that only the
> mouse and keyboard lock. The lockups happen still if I am not listening
> to music and Amarok is not running. I meant that it is not a hard lock.
> As instance, if I am chatting on aMSN, I can still receiver messages
> but can not type. If I am talking at Skype, my contact can still hear
> me and
> I can still hear him/her. As well, the video does not crash.

In other words you are still using the sound system.

>
> I do not think is Pulseaudio too. I work in a desktop with the same
> software configuration as in my laptop. I mean, openSUSE 11.1 x_64,
> the same applications, and I do not have these lockups on this
> computer.

Does it use the same sound card and drivers?

> I have they only on my laptop. In both I have Pulseaudio installed but
> unchecked
> in Yast.

But you need to uninstall all of pulse except for libpulse0

Then remove and add your soundcard again using YaST

If that does not fix it then it IS somewhere else.

As pointed out run top in a console and monitor the CPU usage see if
something like beagle is running if so un-install anything like beagle,
strigi, kerry any of the desktop search stuff.

Then try again.

If it still crashes try and press Ctrl+Alt+F1 does it drop you to a console,
if so login as root and run top see if anything is still hogging the CPU
like X or plasma.

We need to know what is running when it crashes.

It could be something quite simple like the update daemon or you wifi
drivers or the graphic drivers.

HTH

–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#11

How do I access the console if the computer doesn’t respond to keyboard input?

Daqar

#12

Daqar adjusted his/her AFDB on Saturday 22 Aug 2009 11:36 to write:

>
> How do I access the console if the computer doesn’t respond to keyboard
> input?
>
> Daqar
>
>

What even if you boot to runlevel 3 with no desktop?

–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#13

If you have another Linux PC on the LAN, just ssh into your PC.

#14

I’m not good enough at Linux to wanna boot without a grafical user interface. I don’t know the commands and I’m likely to screw it up.

Daqar

#15

Daqar adjusted his/her AFDB on Sunday 23 Aug 2009 18:46 to write:

> I’m not good enough at Linux to wanna boot without a grafical user
> interface. I don’t know the commands and I’m likely to screw it up.

>
Daqar

Trust me if you follow these instructions you will not screw it up, do not
be put off the commandline, and what I am going to show you will do nothing
to the machine that has anything to do with your GUI so you will always be
able to get back to it, as it is your machine is not stable and is not worth
running anyway :slight_smile:

I will show you the commands in order and put some comments inside ]`s in
fact there should only be about 3 commands from start to finish the rest
will use YaST ( not a pretty version but one you control with just the Tab
key.

If you want to try then here we go from the top:

reboot the machine and when the grub bootscreen comes up and you have the
SuSE selected just type 3 yep just the number 3, you should see it printed
on the kernel parameter line added to the end of anything there, then press
enter, now SuSE will boot up and eventually you will get to a login prompt.

At the prompt type

root

[and then enter your root password, next type]

yast

and a blue version of yast will appear on the screen, you use the Tab button
and cursor keys to move about and Shift+Tab to go backwards, you need to go
to the hardware section and then sound, first off we will just try and
delete the card select the card navigate to the delete and delete it, you
will notice it stays there but is unconfigured, so just configure it again,
do a normal setup but on the “other” button if you press the down cursor you
will see “set as default” select it also under “pulseaudio configuration”
select that and disable it you may have to press the Spacebar to change the
state.

next just ok your way out of yast.

When back at the command prompt type:

init 5

And your GUI should start up, now when you login you might get a load of
messages about your card has changed or do you want to forget about the
previous card, just ok them all then go to “Personal settings” and check
the card in multimedia, see if that helps, if not then you might have to try
un-installing the pulseaudio apps to see if that helps.

But that can be done from the GUI with YaST ( if you want to try that then
just remember do not un-install libpulse0 ) just use the search to find
pulse and delete all others except libpulse0 .

But we will leave that till you have tried the soundcard bit first and hope
that works.

So there ya go, only 3 commands and one of those was the login :slight_smile:

If you are still not happy and want more help then just holler but I am not
going to be here for a couple of days starting from tomorrow morning,
however oldcpu is around and he is good with the old sound stuff, he is more
in depth with alsa and the drivers side, I am more a hardware guy but what I
have told you worked for me, and at least if it still does not work you can
get it all back by just reversing the process.

HTH

–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#16

I finally managed to muster the courage to try out your solution and check it out. I’ve been listening to a couple of songs now while downloading and installing add-ons to firefox…and guess what! No crash!! It seems to work now. Thanks for the help man.

Sorry it took me so long to reply. But I just started an internship. And most programs I use I have for Windows 7, so I don’t boot much in OpenSuse. But that might change since I just found an opensource program relevant to my line of study and I have no clue how to install it in Windows.

Daqar

#17

I accidentally reinstalled PulseAudio when trying to connect my guitar to the line-in input, for recording. Songbird seems to crash after two songs. Computer doesn’t crash though. I can just restart Songbird. Is it the same problem? I mean…should I remove PulseAudio?

Daqar

#18

What can you tell us about:

  • your songbird version ?
  • the sound engine you are using in songbird (even though you have pulse installed, its possible it is not pulse) ?
  • the desktop you are using ?
  • the specification of the sound files that you are playing ?
  • the software repositories that you have setup and installed from
  • the versions of pulse audio you installed

To find out the specifications on media files, you can install “mediainfo” from Packman PackMan :: Package details for MediaInfo .

To tell us what repositories you have setup, provide the output of:

zypper lr -d

Do you need help providing the rest of the information?

#19

OK I’m a little confused here. Turns out Tuxguitar needs PulseAudio. Thats probably why I reinstalled it…Could it be that Songbird just doesn’t perform very well?

Daqar

#20

It may be. It may not be.

How one one make an informed assessment without information?