[wplug] Machine is locking up without a trace

[Scott F. Kiesling]

Just as a follow-up:

I thought I'd see how things go with a Knoppix CD.
Everything went fine, until I configured the net. Then I
locked up. For some reason I popped out the pcmcia network
card, and MAGIC -- unfrozen.

I am now on the trail of figuring out what the actual
problem is here. Since it happened with Knoppix, I figure
it's hardware. I think I have another PCMCIA card that I can
use to see if that's the problem, otherwise it's whatever
part(s) connect with that. Any suggestions are welcome,
but at least there's a lead at this point, and I seem to be
able to fix it by ejecting the card and re-inserting it.

Thanks for all your help. Still don't know what that
"atkbd.c" thing is. 

SFK

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 04:14:54PM -0500, Carl Benedict wrote:
> From: Carl Benedict <cbenedic at pittsburghtechs.com>
> Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:14:54 -0500
> To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
> Subject: Re: [wplug] Machine is locking up without a trace
> 
> On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 15:13, Scott F. Kiesling wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 02:33:01PM -0500, Ryan W. Frenz wrote:
> > > From: "Ryan W. Frenz" <rfrenz at gmail.com>
> > > Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 14:33:01 -0500
> > > To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
> > > Subject: Re: [wplug] Machine is locking up without a trace
> > > 
> > > > Any chance it's related to
> > > > Power Management?  That age is a prime candidate for that period of time
> > > > when things weren't really stable from a HW / PM standpoint (like the
> > > > Intel GX chipset perhaps?)
> > > 
> > > I had a similar problem on an IBM laptop of similar age...and it ended
> > > up being ACPI -- I just disabled it and didn't lock up again.  In my
> > > experience APM has been much more stable, at least w.r.t. IBMs.
> > > 
> > 
> > Thanks already for all the usual excellent help, which will
> > take me a while to follow. 
> > 
> > In the meantime, I looked in the logs for some ACPI stuff, but did find this
> > right before the second time this happened:
> > 
> > 	atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program, like
> > 	XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly
> > 
> > I googled 'atkbd ACK' and got a lot of kernel hacking things
> > I didn't really understand, like this:
> > 
> > http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2003-10/5413.html
> > 
> > I'd appreciate knowing if this is something to ignore.
> > 
> 
> This could be the problem.  The thread you pointed to is saying that
> after a similar message, their system would lock up waiting for X to
> translate that keycode.  Although the page title says it was kernel
> 2.6.0-test9.
> 
> Can you correlate this lockup to a specific keypress or situation?  Are
> there any more similar messages in your log file?  Seeing how you are in
> the Dept. of Linguistics, does this happen when you are using a
> particular input method for another language?  Or maybe you are using a
> non-standard keyboard? I've had some trouble recently with Korean input
> methods or glyph rendering killing my X session completely under kernel
> 2.6.6.
> 
> A google for the specific error message in quotes returned quite a few
> results.  I don't see anything relevant yet though.
> 
> > Any idea if rebuilding with a new kernel might help, or
> > hurt?
> > 
> > SFK
> 
> -- 
> Carl Benedict
> Pittsburgh Techs
> Main:  724-741-0233
> http://www.pittsburghtechs.com
> cbenedic at pittsburghtechs.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> wplug mailing list
> wplug at wplug.org
> http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug

-- 
Scott F. Kiesling

Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Pittsburgh
    
2816 Cathedral of Learning     Phone: 1-412-624-5916
Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA       Fax: 1-412-624-6130

kiesling at pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~kiesling/skpage.html
http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu