[PLUG] Three laptop hangs in 24 hours

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Tue Jun 20 15:50:26 UTC 2006


Normally, my linux laptop goes weeks between reboots (thought it
is often closed and suspended).  In the last 24 hours, it has
gone into system freeze three times (once while trying to use
audacity, once while coming out of suspend, and once while web
surfing this morning).  No evidence left in /var/log/*

I am running really old Redhat 9 with an updated 2.4 kernel (why?
long story).

I suspect the problem is related to enabling the serial port in
the BIOS (the only major change in the last couple of days).   
However, I was hearing passing comments about lockups from Eric
Wilhelm at Advanced Topics last night, and I believe Michael
Rassmussen was having problems recently.  So before I assume that
the problem is the serial port, I am wondering if there are others
who have been seeing a sudden increase in hangs.  If this is 
general, it might indicate some subtle new security problem.

Q1) Has anyone else seen a recent unexplained increase in system hangs?

It would also be handy to load a tool that can monitor the laptop
and save more log information about the system freeze.  Even if
turning off the serial port fixes this, I want to know *why*.

Q2) Can anyone suggest a better tool to monitor system freezes?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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