A almost hard lock in Ubuntu 12.04.

[ortermagic]

When you lockup can you press [Ctrl][Alt][F2]? I can and it will take you to a prompt where you can login and then type

Thank you for that tip Irv. Next time a lockdown/up happens happens I will try it. Do I have to enter the command using sudo as if I were doing it in a terminal?
I must admit I struggle with commands due to the fact that my 68 year old memory tends to drop out a bit these days. I will let you know how I get on with that as and when it occurs.
So far (after innumerable force quits) I have not noticed any damage, may be I've been lucky, I had two instances today, but at the moment all's well.

I'm not sure how to post a selected quote

[blortuga]

Instrumentation and logging can often be a big help.

If you're a conky user, you can set it up to monitor cpu and temperature, and things like that. but then you would need to keep your desktop clear so you can see the monitors' state when it hangs.

Another useful tool is sysstat. (usualy more useful for things like server monitoring).

Install it thusly:
sudo apt-get install sysstat

sudo crontab -e
add the following:
*/5 * * * * /usr/lib/sysstat/sa1
0 * * * * /usr/lib/sysstat/sa2 -A

(there are other ways to collect data with sar)
and save the file.

Cron will fire off the sysstat task every 5 minutes to dump system information into /var/log/sysstat/sa*

You can go into /var/log/sysstat, and run the command: sar to get the cpu utilization over the time period that has been logged.

sar -f
will give you information for a specific date range, (which you can determine by looking at the /var/log/sysstat/* file dates).

sar -m ALL
will give you power-management information; (fans, temp, cpu freq, etc.)

sar -I ALL
will give you Interrupt information;

Either of these might be helpful in diagnosing. Though a 5-minute capture window may be too coarse to give you enough information to go by (the problem may occur too quickly between captures to be logged). It's probably not going to write state to disk after the hang, if it's a complete freeze. But if there's a situation that builds up prior to the hang, you might be able to spot the trend.

Another thing you might try doing is running sshd, and trying to remote login (ssh) to your system AFTER the freeze, and verify whether it's just the display and video that are frozen, or if it's the whole thing. (similar to ctrl-alt-f2).

[krishna.988]

@IRV Did you have this issue ocuuring in Old releases of ubuntu? If not stick with the old release 11.10 or something..

[irv]

Thank you for that tip Irv. Next time a lockdown/up happens happens I will try it. Do I have to enter the command using sudo as if I were doing it in a terminal?
I must admit I struggle with commands due to the fact that my 68 year old memory tends to drop out a bit these days. I will let you know how I get on with that as and when it occurs.
So far (after innumerable force quits) I have not noticed any damage, may be I've been lucky, I had two instances today, but at the moment all's well.

I'm not sure how to post a selected quote

Yes you need to use sudo to shutdown. I have powered off a few time but there is always that chance that something not close and cause problems.
A side note: my 74 year old mind isn't as sharp as it use to be.

To post a quote just select the text you want to quote and then click on the quote icon.

Attachment 224527
I started this post last night, but my Internet went down. It has been up and down all day today. So I just went to bed and finish it this morning. So Good morning world.

[ortermagic]

@Irv, Thanks a lot Sir, It surely is weird that it's only since precise came along that this happens. I've now subscribed to this post so I can keep an eye on it.

@Blortuga, I have noted your comments and will see if I can set up a diagnostic tool, it seems like a good idea, however I have never come across the sysstat app you have indicated seems to me there's another massive(for me)learning curve therein but I am so curious that I will probably try it.
I have heard of and looked into conky, never tried it. I will do some research to see if I can find out how to get sysstat going. I have a problem in that on boot I get a text banner for a few seconds informing me that the temp sensor is 'unreliable' which might be problematic for me.

@Irv ...there I was thinking I was one of the grandpas pogoing around with the kid's,
Seems your problem is my problem and my problem is your'n, lol

@Krishna, I don't want to revert to an earlier distro since I have gotten quite fond of Unity.

[irv]

I also like Unity and really like the release of Ubuntu 12.04.
Let me give you some advice on conky. here is a nice Tutorial
ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1010741&page=1
And here is another:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1771033
You will most likely have to change some of the script to fit your system.
Here is my conky running on my desktop. It monitors my system so it might help me see what might be happening when it locks. The only problem I am having now is my system is not locked up for over 3 days now.
conky.jpg
I am even back to using Firefox an Chrome.
I have had some kernel updates lately and maybe, just maybe something got fixed. Keeping my fingers crossed.
EDIT: I changed my desktop wall paper so my conky colors would match better, and besides it is getting on to fall.
conky2.jpg

[irv]

It been awhile since I posted an update. It been 5+ days since a lockup. I have been using three different browser. Chrome, FF, and Opera. Been watching videos in all three with no issues. I am starting to believe my lockup problem has gone away. I will give it another week and if it doesn't lockup I will mark this thread solved. I had it marked solved ones but had to remove it. Only time will tell.

[ortermagic]

Hi I am back ...problem with lockup persists, most recently I applied Irv's technique to shut down after lockup whilst watching a streamed football match, when I entered my sudo id details it locked and presented me with the following information...

[13924.224114] radeon 0000:01:00.0: gpu lockup cp stall for more than 10020 m sec

Does that mean anything to any one?
Prior to this instance I haven't had too many lockups in the last few days.

[RedRat]

Hi I am back ...problem with lockup persists, most recently I applied Irv's technique to shut down after lockup whilst watching a streamed football match, when I entered my sudo id details it locked and presented me with the following information...

[13924.224114] radeon 0000:01:00.0: gpu lockup cp stall for more than 10020 m sec

Does that mean anything to any one?
Prior to this instance I haven't had too many lockups in the last few days.

That sound like a graphics driver problem. If you can, try replacing your graphics card from a friend and see if that happens. How old is your graphics card? They still make the Radeon?

[ortermagic]

That sound like a graphics driver problem. If you can, try replacing your graphics card from a friend and see if that happens. How old is your graphics card? They still make the Radeon?

Thanks for the input Red...I have a reasonably competent graphics card (i think), it's a sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1gb 256 bit. At the moment I am using the open source driver, because the proprietary one does not work properly on my system. Today I stripped the graphics card down and reseated the processor on it, I have just got it running again, It seems to be a totally random lockup sometimes it occurs when there is very little load at other times it might happen when i've got a lot going on? I will have to wait till it happens again.I will also have to study all the previous posts again, in case I missed something.
I will get conky working when I have more time and apply @Blortugas suggestion to install sysstat, asap