[PLUG] system response lost

[Dale Snell]

On Sun, 2 Nov 2014 15:56:42 -0800
Denis Heidtmann <denis.heidtmann at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Denis Heidtmann
> <denis.heidtmann at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My wife was replying to an email when the typing suddenly stopped
> > producing any characters on the screen.  She had three windows open
> > in Firefox (gmail).  I opened a terminal (using the mouse) and
> > found that the response to the keyboard was the same: nothing.
> > Then it seemed that the response to the mouse was either
> > non-existent or very slow. I tapped the power button which
> > presented a window for shutting down. The return key worked; it
> > shut down.  A restart seems to have restored normal operation.
> The terminal displayed an open box at the prompt rather than a filled
> box. This indicates it did not have the focus, even though I clicked
> in the window.
> >
> > What logs might be of help in understanding what happened?  What
> > might I have done at the time to provide some clues?
> >
> > Running Ubuntu 12.04.  Replaced the keyboard a few days ago.

I can think of three things off the top of my head.

 1)  It could be Firefox devoting all of your system's resources to
running some script or other.  This happens to me every once in a
while.  Annoying as all get-out, but there's not much to be done
about it.  I tend to doubt this, since all three FF windows were
open to GMail.

 2)  Something, somewhere, is eating up all your stack space.
This can cause the symptoms you listed.  Adobe Reader will do this
quite happily.  I no longer use Adobe Reader.

 3)  It's a long shot, but it _might_ be the keyboard.  If it's
sending a constant stream of characters, spaces say, then it could
be interfering with your system's operation.  This happened to me
a couple of times.  Once was something resting on the keyboard.
The other time was caused by a stuck key.  That one resulted in me
buying a new keyboard.

Unfortunately, I don't think that there's going to be a log of
this anywhere.  The best thing I can think of is to install
GKrellM, a system monitor.  It is quite lightweight, so it doesn't
put much of a load on your system.  I have it running on my system
all the time.  Make sure that the CPU and swap graphs are enabled.
(The swap krells can help, but they just show how much swap is
being used.)  Add the "gkrelltop" plug-in, and set it to monitor
the top three processes.  Note that GKrellM probably won't catch
possibility #3.

You could also start a top(1) session in a terminal window and
just let it run.  My experience, though, is that top is a bigger
load on the system than GKrellM.  Plus, GKrellM gives you a lot
more information than top does.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth.  Remember, it's worth
everything you paid for it.  :-)

--Dale

-- 

Vir:  "I thought the purpose of filing these reports was to provide
accurate intelligence."
Londo:  "Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics."
    -- _Babylon 5_, episode "Point of No Return"
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