Well, its been 2 days since I have had Suse 11.2 on this laptop. (Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M7400 1.6 GHz Centrino, 60GB HDD)Everything seems to work in order, but at certain times, the computer will just log out on its own, without any reason. It gives no error when it does this, so there is no way for me to determine what the cause is. As far as the rest of the OS goes, everything seems perfectly fine, except for the automatic log out the computer does. It just annoys me when the computer logs out by itself sometimes because then I am lost on where I was before, since nothing gets saved when it does this. It makes things really challenging when you are typing something as I am now and then the computer just logs itself out on its own, leaving me with nothing because it does not save anything. Anyone had this issue before?? And if so, what are the repair steps to this issue??
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Have you checked /var/log/messages? Are you by chance having this happen
when pressing some combination of the backspace key? For example, test it
by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (twice). You’ll hear a “zap warning” the
first time and the second time it restarts X (logging you out of the GUI).
Good luck.
On 02/16/2010 05:16 AM, j-dub wrote:
>
> Well, its been 2 days since I have had Suse 11.2 on this laptop.
> (Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M7400 1.6 GHz Centrino, 60GB HDD)Everything seems
> to work in order, but at certain times, the computer will just log out
> on its own, without any reason. It gives no error when it does this, so
> there is no way for me to determine what the cause is. As far as the
> rest of the OS goes, everything seems perfectly fine, except for the
> automatic log out the computer does. It just annoys me when the
> computer logs out by itself sometimes because then I am lost on where I
> was before, since nothing gets saved when it does this. It makes things
> really challenging when you are typing something as I am now and then
> the computer just logs itself out on its own, leaving me with nothing
> because it does not save anything. Anyone had this issue before?? And
> if so, what are the repair steps to this issue??
>
>
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Nothing in the logs that look as if they are causing this, which I find really strange. Tried the Ctl-Alt-Backspace and it did nothing. In some way, the log out typically occurs when I look at a page on Firefox with either a large image, or large amounts of information on a single page. It sounds weird to explain, but the last two times it happened, I was trying to locate images on google image search and as soon as I clicked on the ‘see larger image’, it would automatically log out on its own. Backspace I don’t use to navigate at all, only to type so its definitely not that from as far as I can tell.
What do you see when it ‘logs out’? From your description I deduce that it is not a screensaver kicking in, rather looks to me like a crash. How much RAM do you have? Is it KDE or Gnome?
Its KDE, and heres the RAM info:
CPU: Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
Speed: 1,399.96 MHz
Total memory (RAM): 490.4 MiB
Free memory: 6.8 MiB (+ 108.2 MiB Caches)
Free swap: 716.6 MiB
My best guess is that you hit a RAM limit and get a crash. 512 MB or less is really tight for a modern distro. I had the same experience when I was trying out a Live-CD on a legacy box.
The screen goes black, then back to the log in screen, where I have to enter my password to log in once again. At first I did think that this was an issue with X crashing due to a screensaver issue, but the screensaver and power management have been completely turned off now. I don’t know what it is…puzzling.
Got to say I concur with vodoo you even wrote
the log out typically occurs when I look at a page on Firefox with either a large image, or large amounts of information on a single page
What ram free at log in I suspect not a lot.
Yeah, I see. What puzzles me is that my desktop has the same amount of RAM, but it runs Suse 11.2 to perfection. Why is that so? Could it be that the speed of the RAM in the desktop is higher than in the laptop?
It could very well be a video card issue as well. What’s in the desktop, what’s in de lappy?
The laptop may very well share the video memory with the system’s…Cannot tell yet about the desktop.
BTW, If money is not the problem, and the motherboard accepts it, try upgrading it to 4GB RAM. AFAICS it will improve performance a lot.
I would look at comparing the free out put and things like top. It could be something as simple as one app not running on one but is on another.
If you google you’ll find better ways of tracking memory usage, I’ve seen errors in applets and people misreading the output from top. It gets a little technical that goes beyond what I care about.
I have to agree that you really are close to the bare minimum for ram. As for the whys it’ll take some poking and comparing i.e for example I’ve seen some complaints the kde4.4 has an increased memory footprint vs 4.3.
It has Intel integrated graphics chipset, 855 GM. The desktop has 845 GV from Intel and works great, but this laptop has pretty much the same as my Desktop, other than processor and HDD size. The desktop has a 2.6 GHz Celeron with 512 DDR and 80GB HDD this laptop has a 1.4 GHz Celeron M 512 DDR and 40GB HDD.
The Laptop (as per Konqueror):
CPU Information
Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
Speed: 1,399.84 MHz
Memory Information
Total memory (RAM): 490.4 MiB
Free memory: 10.4 MiB (+ 216.8 MiB Caches)
Free swap: 736.4 MiB
OS: Linux 2.6.31.12-0.1-default i686
Current user: j-dub@linux-vkyr
System: openSUSE 11.2 (i586)
KDE: 4.3.1 (KDE 4.3.1) “release 6”
Display Info
Vendor: Intel Corporation
Model: 855 GM
Driver: intel
how much swap do you have?
i’d guess you need to have at least 1 GB, and expect a LOT of
swapping (which mean SLOW, but less crashes from lack of RAM)
you can also simplify your desktop, turn off all the bells and
whistles…don’t try to run KDE or Gnome…you can try XFCE and LXDE
and some of the others…
now, i know that there are folks saying that Linux runs in less than
Windows so you can keep using your old hardware forever…and, you
can…but, not with the the most capable Linux on the
planet…instead, load up with Puppy Linux or one of the
others…here, see one of my previous posts:
http://tinyurl.com/ylf8zq9
–
palladium
Looking at the system monitor, X seems to be the only thing taking up RAM, varying from 30% to as high as 80%. So it may be RAM, but I don’t want to start spending money just yet, I want to determine the sure cause before buying new RAM. I found this computer in a trash can, believe it or not and it works great. Just need to figure out the cause of why the RAM is basically (as it appears in sys monitor) being eaten by X from time to time…
I’m actually surprised you said it runs fine on the desktop 
Presuming it really is like for like I would be inclined to think the intel chipsets might be the problem. You can find a variety of distros having problems based around the newer intel drivers, for some they are seeing problems for others they are seeing an improvement. A quick google regarding the chipset seems to imply that the drivers have moved on.
I noticed on one distro that had a leagcy driver some one was seeing improvements and stabilty with the later offerings now.
In regards to memory usage perhaps this’ll help but you may end up chasing red herrings. Virtual Threads: Understanding memory usage on Linux I’m more inclined to perhaps think it might be combination of chipset, driver, kernel and xorg version. As for bug shooting that it may involve some rather bleeding edge software.
haha…thats not a suprise to me at all with these intel chipsets. ubuntu gave me hell as well on the desktop…ubuntu 9.10 & intel graphics don’t mix at all. I have 2 distros here of 11.2…just curious if the one i am using now with kde 4.3.4 should be removed and i use 4.1.3? would it help any?
Mmm 4.1.3 I didn’t think was 11.2, but no KDE version isn’t really the change needed, it will be driver version with xorg. iirc the last version to contain the old intel driver was 11.
Again iirc you’re looking for i810 instead of intel but this is a few years ago(Also older xorg or patches to work with the newer one). Also even ubuntu’s latest offering seems to imply rolling back is no longer needed.
What you may find is rather than going back you go forward will be easier. But this will involve using things like factory to get a later xorg and driver and maybe even kernel then also playing around with those (mm what was it now) exa vs the other I think, and things like disabling or enabling KMS.
I’ve scratched out all I know about the intel fiasco thankfully its not something I’ve had a problem or experience with.
And what about Swap space, do both have the same amount of Swap? (Because as I see it, you need Swap).
Well…I just finished to install a fresh system with 11.3 distro. Gnome was installed but i decided to change it for KDE yesterday. Surprise! The system log me out too: black screen appear and login screen after. 1Go RAM in the system and 2Go swap space. Notice that i never received this kind of problem in Gnome.