[ltp] re: XFree86 locking and crashing on T40 with RedHat 9.0

[Mark Litwack]

Has anyone found the cause of this problem?

I'm also seeing these X lockups on my T40 with RH9, upgraded
to kernel 2.4.21.  I see about a crash or two a day.

Memtest86 is coming up clean.  I've also noticed that I will
occasionally get a segmentation fault when trying to run an
everyday program (perl, ls, etc...).  Once the program gets
a segmentation fault it will forever give a segmentation
fault until a reboot.

My theory is that memory is getting corrupted by either a
misbehaving routine somewhere or a very intermittent
hardware problem.  Sometimes the memory for the disk cache
for an executable gets nailed and I get segmentation faults.

If this is right, I'm cringing just thinking about what bits
are getting flipped in random files when dirty cache pages
get written back to disk.

Any hints on how to begin tracking this down?

Thanks,

-mark



On 16 Jul 2003 19:22:24 -0400, Neil Weisenfeld wrote:
> Several people (myself included) have had random X crashes attributed to
> bad memory shipped with their T40's.  I'd suggest running memtest86 from
> www.memtest86.com just to be sure.  I was going crazy with kernel
> compile crashes, X crashes, the clock applet crashing, etc., etc.  A
> replacement memory module from IBM did the trick.
> 
> This was not a transient problem in that I never had Memtest86 make it
> through a pass without a lot of errors cropping up somewhere in the mix
> and related to the second 512MB module.  If memtest comes up clean, then
> you should look elsewhere.  Certainly make sure that you have the latest
> errata kernel from RedHat.  What shipped originally w/ 9.0 was not
> ideal.
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Neil  
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 19:39, otisg wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have a T40 (one of those Centrino TPs) with RedHat 9.0 on it
> > (not sure what the exact kernel version is, I am not on that
> > machine now, but it's one of the 2.4 kernels, maybe 2.4-18 or
> > -19 or some such).
> > 
> > I have 2 big problems with Linux on this machine.
> > 
> > 1. X sometimes locks up.  I can't even ALT-Backspace out of
> > XFree86.  I have to reboot the whole machine.  This seems to
> > happen randomly.
> > I have noticed that the little CAPS LOCK status light at the
> > bottom of the LCD starts blinking every time X locks up like
> > this.
> > 
> > 2. X sometimes just crashes randomly.  This sucks, but at least
> > that doesn't require a reboot.  I can't check which version of
> > XFree86 this is, but it s whichever version ships with RH 9.0.
> > 
> > Has anyone seen this on their T40s or similar ThinkPads?
> > Has anyone been able to solve these problems?
> > 
> > I use this TP for work, and this is decreasing my productivity,
> > and is very annoying, as you can imagine. :(
> > 
> > Thank you,
> > Otis
> > 
> > 
> > ________________________________________________
> > Get your own "800" number
> > Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more
> > http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag

hat you have the latest
> errata kernel from RedHat.  What shipped originally w/ 9.0 was not
> ideal.
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Neil  
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 19:39, otisg wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have a T40 (one of those Centrino TPs) with RedHat 9.0 on it
> > (not sure what the exact kernel version is, I am not on that
> > machine now, but it's one of the 2.4 kernels, maybe 2.4-18 or
> > -19 or some such).
> > 
> > I have 2 big problems with Linux on this machine.
> > 
> > 1. X sometimes locks up.  I can't even ALT-Backspace out of
> > XFree86.  I have to reboot the whole machine.  This seems to
> > happen randomly.
> > I have noticed that the little CAPS LOCK status light at the
> > bottom of the LCD starts blinking every time X locks up like
> > this.
> > 
> > 2. X sometimes just crashes randomly.  This sucks, but at least
> > that doesn't require a reboot.  I can't check which version of
> > XFree86 this is, but it s whichever version ships with RH 9.0.
> > 
> > Has anyone seen this on their T40s or similar ThinkPads?
> > Has anyone been able to solve these problems?
> > 
> > I use this TP for work, and this is decreasing my productivity,
> > and is very annoying, as you can imagine. :(
> > 
> > Thank you,
> > Otis
> > 
> > 
> > ________________________________________________
> > Get your own "800" number
> > Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more
> > http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag