System Freeze and my Fix

Have been dealing with a system freeze after about 11 minutes from
reboot, for several weeks. My path to a fix is in this paragraph
(keeping it short for the simply curious): Ran 'xload' and 'top', in
one window and kept that window on the active display (run with a KVM
switch so don't watch things on this machine often). At first, the
display didn't show any hints except that 'xload' took off like a
rocket but everything else was frozen. Curiously, the video display
remained working for a long time after the freeze but the kbd and
mouse were dead. Finally, I moved the 'top' sampling rate to 1.5
seconds and it showed 'xload' reaching for the sky as a process
involving 'beagle' took 8% of the CPU before the system froze. This
'beagle' process hadn't even been in view of my 'top' display before
this and most processes were hitting at a top of 4% occasionally.
Eight percent was most unusual. So, I deinstalled the 'beagle' bunch
of software. Things have been mellow since.

I'm running openSUSE 11.0 (64), having upped this from 10.2 because of
the problems which started while using that version. Since I have
another box smoothly running 11.0 and 'beagle', next to it, I didn't
suspect that 'beagle' was a problem. The problem machine does run a
bbs using mysql, so that is a significant difference.

Precurser to this was a view of 'xload' with an unusual looking
minimum load. It was down in the mud, but not on the floor, like my
other machines. That minimum load increased abruptly one day until I
felt that my software was broken so upped to 11.0 from 10.2. That
cured the immediate problem, for a while.

Perhaps I have a HD going bad, though I hope not for two reasons.
One, we just plain don't like to lose one of those things, and Two,
they are Seagates with 5 yr warranties and not much over a year old.
But, to fix a problem for 'a while' with a software change? This
looks suspiciously like hardware degradation though. Did replace the
PS with a more beafy one early on, but no symtoms changed.

Have lost two MB's this year due to failed electrolytics (they're
swollen and leaking, so obvious failures). This MB is from a
different source but might still be victum of the bad lot of
capaciters that went out a year or two ago. Usually though, my
experience says a failed capacitor will not degrade but promptly fail.

For what it's worth. There's my way of getting this machine back up.
It seems to have worked for me, so far. Hopefully someone can find
this of use to get their machine going again.

Cheers

bitbucket.TakeThisOut@linkline.com wrote:
> Have been dealing with a system freeze after about 11 minutes from
> reboot, for several weeks. My path to a fix is in this paragraph
> (keeping it short for the simply curious): Ran 'xload' and 'top', in
> one window and kept that window on the active display (run with a KVM
> switch so don't watch things on this machine often). At first, the
> display didn't show any hints except that 'xload' took off like a
> rocket but everything else was frozen. Curiously, the video display
> remained working for a long time after the freeze but the kbd and
> mouse were dead. Finally, I moved the 'top' sampling rate to 1.5
> seconds and it showed 'xload' reaching for the sky as a process
> involving 'beagle' took 8% of the CPU before the system froze. This
> 'beagle' process hadn't even been in view of my 'top' display before
> this and most processes were hitting at a top of 4% occasionally.
> Eight percent was most unusual. So, I deinstalled the 'beagle' bunch
> of software. Things have been mellow since.

Thanks for the feedback

houghi
--
Remind me to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The
theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit
of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. -- Heinlein