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Daily lock-ups with Debian derivs (knoppix, ubuntu)

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I set up a 281 frame animation in blender to run overnight.

PROBLEM:
When I came back to it the next morning, the system had these properites, all which weren't there last night.

  1. internet is very sluggish
  2. switching between windows is extremely slow
  3. I am unable to switch between desktop window frames
  4. I cannot load any new apps (infitesimally slow response from K menus)
  5. I cannot get a response to requests for shutdown.
  6. Only redress is power key.

This problem is preventing my working in linux. If anyone can give me any advice I will be eternally grateful. I appeal to this community for help, as perhaps you've seen this happen before.

FREQUENCY:
It happens:

  1. On one box (Aptiva Netvista 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM), a box where I once in my foggy recollection saw a MEMTEST failure (but not this week). It can happen no matter what apps are left running and especially even when I haven't run blender.
    • With Knoppix 5.01 (HDD install or live boot) perhaps 40% of the time.
    • With multiple versions of k/edu/ubuntu (HDD install, live boot). Ubuntu being much more egregious-- it happens every time I leave it alone for 1 h.
  2. If I remember correctly, "never" with SUSE 10.0 install on this box (but the USB response time is unacceptably slow, a feature confirmed by an expert in their forum).
  3. On another box (same model, different year, 1.5GB RAM):
    • With kubuntu 6.01 HDD install just one time, and it's the last straw.

DISTRO SWITCH ?
I am willing to switch distros (again-- I do it about every two weeks) if anyone can assure me that they had hardware that was prone to this type of problem and another distro fixed it. My unnegotiable principles for the distro are:

  1. atheros wifi driver built in. (SUSE 10.1 is out and pure Debian is out, right?)
  2. Rapid, smooth USB connection (SUSE 10.0 is out)
  3. povray and blender (v>2.3) installable form a pacakge management system of some level.

    4. My negotiable principles are:

  4. It ain't from Redmond
  5. free version avail to public on same terms as corporate. (But hey, I'll paypal them some bucks if they have such a high level of hardware competency).
  6. live CD.

POSSIBLE ADVICE:

  1. Switch distro to _________.
  2. You need to use the magic cheat code set of keystrokes to wake up the system and it is_____.
  3. You need to eschew ever using mode "X" of auto sleep/ auto hibernate / auto standby; eschew screen saver "X". (This advice gets me through my day job on a quirky WinXP laptop).
  4. Re-flash my bios. (A person in my local LUG suggested this, and I'm dubious, but if it were the solution, I'm going Vista).
  5. Eschew desktop environment "X".
  6. Switch physical memory.

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does it sleep?

Submitted by pinniped on Fri, 2006-08-18 02:58.

Do you allow those computers to go into hibernate/sleep mode? If so, that is probably the large part of your problem. Run in full power mode for a day or so to see if the same problems occur.

Personally I always disable 'sleep' etc. but if you really need it, you will have to ensure that at least the following happen:

> network interfaces taken down
> all relevant data stored to disk
> power down

and on wakeup

>restore data from disk
>bring up network interfaces, starting with 'lo'

Use google to learn more about the changes in the sleep/hibernate code over the past 6 months - been some big changes and you might be lucky enough to get a well-behaved system with a little work. The network stuff is actually one of the trickiest bits to handle, especially the loopback (lo) device since X and especially KDE make very heavy use of it. If it is not brought up on wakeup, your system will crawl like a one-legged rat carrying a bowling ball.

Knoppix and Ubuntu are built from the "unstable" branch - no telling what version of software and so on they actually have. The only good thing (with Ubuntu and some others) is that the system should happily take most software upgrades from 'sid' and you can also install other sid packages as you need them. With Knoppix - well, that's best left as a LiveCD rather than a system installed to HD. Even the Knoppix site discourages people from installing it to HD.

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Thanks kindly for the

Submitted by pterandon on Fri, 2006-08-18 09:46.

Thanks kindly for the consideration here. Your answer is the most well-informed answer I've received in many months of struggling with the box. I was sick enough to chuck it.

Quote:
The network stuff is actually one of the trickiest bits to handle, especially the loopback (lo) device since X and especially KDE make very heavy use of it. If it is not brought up on wakeup, your system will crawl like a one-legged rat carrying a bowling ball.

Wow! You know, it may have been worse in cases where I first did an internet access upon coming back to the box. So here's the question. How do I turn off the sleep setting(s) in KDE with a Debian derivative? A few months ago, I went down this tack, but using my limited common sense and menu-hunting I'll bet I didn't do it the right way. Especially if one can dial-in the exact sleep properties as you state in your note.

Ah, Knoppix! I like it so much, I wish they would take their desktop prowess seriously. Among the numerous services, it picks out all the cool apps for a newbie. (Once while installing some kinda BSD version, I wanted "all" the apps and it choked.)

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Have a look at the

Submitted by pinniped on Sun, 2006-08-20 17:51.

Have a look at the documentation for this package:

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/hibernate

The decent suspend code is in the much later 2.6 kernels though; I'm pretty sure the 2.6.8 that shipped with Sarge isn't good enough. Note that the long description states "can optionally resume network..." this means that it will not bring up the network without some tweaking. That probably means the loopback device as well, even though the loopback is essential for operation.

So check out the requirements of the hibernate package and see if it does the job for you. You'll probably also need to dig up and read other articles about the kernel's suspend mechanisms.

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Re. Daily lockups with Debian derivs...

Submitted by lizard on Tue, 2006-09-12 08:48.

...just spent more time than I'd like to admit to tracking down a similar problem. In my case Ubuntu (2.6.17.6) was hanging in similar circumstances. I traced the problem to a buggy apic (advanced programmable interrupt controller) which appears to be particular to Netvista motherboards. Following the recommended netwidsom of adding boot parameters "noapic nolapic" didn't help, so I recompiled the kernel with "Local APIC support on uniprocessors" disabled (make menuconfig).
I'm new to Linux but found the instructions in http://www.falkotimme.com/howtos/debian_kernel2.6_compile/ pretty straightforward. Hope this helps.
ff

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