Linux keep freezing on me, Linux experts please help

[Yoyo77]

I installed RedHat 7.1 on my IBM Laptop. I use it mainly for my programming assignments. I'm new to Linux , the more I use it the more I like it. The problem is, Linux freezes on me, I'm not doing anything intense , just running text editors and opening a few terminals. I decided to reinstall it and see if that will stop the problem. After the fresh install it was running fine for a few days. Today I encounter the freezes problem again, I was running emacs and attemp to resize the size of the text editor and it froze. I reboot and try to resize again and again it froze. Any advice on fixing this problem would really help. Thanks.
Hardware wise it is a
IBM T20
600mhz cpu
128 ram
running dual boot with win2k on the same harddrive

Thanks for any help

 

[n0cmonkey]

IS linux freezing or just X? Why not try to upgrade to a newer version of Linux? What all have you upgraded so far?

 

[Yoyo77]

It appears the whole Linux froze, not just the X window. My mouse dont work, the keyboard also does not work when this happen. I didnt do any upgrade at all. I dont want to upgrade to a newer verison of Linux, because Redhat 7.1 is the only one I have. And I'm on dialup so it took awhile to download that. I aslo done some reading on the different Linux and came to the conclusion Redhat is the one that would suit the best for me. I would like to stick with it, but if it keep freezing , I guess I have no choice but look into other verisons.

 

[mcveigh]

will it freeze if X isn't running? try using it with out a GUI for a little while. This might help narrow it down.

 

[clockhar]

Let me ask you this: You said your new to Linux. So, I assume you have windows dual booting (2000, 98, ME, etc.). Do any of those OS's have any "problems"? i.e. it may be a hardware problem, since you said you reinstalled Linux
While we're talking about reinstalling ... did you format your linux partition? I hope?

 

[Yoyo77]

I'm running Win2k at the same comp, and it is very solid, no problems at all. I dont think my Linux problem is from hardware. Although my build in modem and sound card does not seem to be working, but that is fine, I can live without sound and no net acess, since I only boot into linux to do my programming and uses the GNU compiler.

I think I made the freezing problem sounded a little worse that it actually is. My linux doesnt always freeze on me, I mean I dont encounter this everytime I use it, but it does happen more than just once or twice.

Here is the exact situation that crashed it today. I had the emacs text editor open along with the gedit text editor and a few of those small applet, the ones that came with redhat(laptop batter meter, clock, etc..) running on the background. When I try to resize the emacs editor to be smaller so I can see fit both the emac eidtor and gedit editor , it froze on me. I restart my machine, thinking that it was a random crash, so I decide to attemp the same thing again, so I try resizing again under the same condition and it froze again. I didnt want to try a 3rd time since I was pressing for time to do my program. Maybe I should give it another try later.
Also I have 128mb ram right now, could the crash be caused by lack of memory, would adding another 128 help?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Try not using X or using a different WM/DE. It sounds like the problem is with X and not with Linux itself. Also, what video chipset is in that laptop? You should look into upgrading (ie, PATCHING) your system as soon as you can.

 

[manly]

128 MB RAM is adequate unless you're doing Java programming.

One likely cause of freezes is a device driver, but it's hard to determine which one.

If you'd like I'll mail you CDRs of Red Hat 7.2 no charge, although your version should work reliably if you're "up2date".

There are a bunch of vendors that sell cheap copies of the free distros if you wanted to sample the major ones.

 

[Dreadogg]

Im also new to linux but could this accually be related to having to small of a swap file or bad installation?

Edit: My swap file is set to 512 MB which seems to be working just fine and that is double my ram! Last time one of my good buddies installed RedHat for me and it was very unstable and I know he set the swap file to be very small because of lack of space on my drive! I always figured this was the reason, although i could be very wrong considering I've only been using linux for the last week!

 

[stirling]

I don't know if you're using kde or not, but I've had the same problem.
It seems that if kde2.(something) loads the arts server when you're sound card isn't configured, it will lock. ctrl-alt-backspace is futile. Disable loading of arts in the settings until you can recompile your kernel with sound card support.
Come to think of it, I've also had X lock up when I was swapping between a PS/2 and USB mouse and forgot to change XF86Config.
Anyway, hope that helps. And /var/log/XFree86.0.log should provide some insight into what went wrong.

 

[Armitage]

<< Im also new to linux but could this accually be related to having to small of a swap file or bad installation? >>



This is a good point.
128MB of ram is kind of marginal for RH 7.1 if you're using one of the big desktop environments (KDE, Gnome), and the early 2.4 kernels have some serious VM issues.

Are you sure it is completely freezing, or is it just enduring a major swap storm? Do you hear alot of disk access? My PPro200 with 128MB had big problems with early 2.4 kernels if I did anything even moderately memory intensive.

Things I would try:
- Try using a lighter weight desktop environment
- Upgrade to the current kernel (at least 2.4.17)
- upgrade xfree86
- get more memory
-increase your swap space. For early 2.4 kernels, try at least 2x your physical ram
Note that you can do this without reformatting. see man on mkswap, swapon, etc.

 

[Yoyo77]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I'm running Gnome and my swap size is 128mb only so maybe I should up it to 256.
One newbie question is how do I do the upgrade(patch) that you guy speak off. I'm assuming I have to download some kind of patch. Where can I get them? And can I download it with my win2k and then transfer to linux since my modem driver is not working, or do I must connect under linux for the patch to work?

 

[Armitage]

<< Thanks for all the help guys.

I'm running Gnome and my swap size is 128mb only so maybe I should up it to 256.
One newbie question is how do I do the upgrade(patch) that you guy speak off. I'm assuming I have to download some kind of patch. Where can I get them? And can I download it with my win2k and then transfer to linux since my modem driver is not working, or do I must connect under linux for the patch to work? >>



You can use rpm to upgrade most stuff on a redhat box, even the kernel now I think.
Just go to redhat and look for updates/upgrades for your version, or go to www.rpmfind.net for the latest & greatest.

You should be able to download under windows. Just make sure it downloads the files in binary mode.

 

[nuttervm]

i have a few comments/answers for you.

128 mb ram is more than enough, you do not need to upgrade. i have a mandrake box running on a ppro 180 and 64 mb ram, i used to have a p133 with 32mb ram running kde as well. while they weren't speed demons they worked very well with no crashes. the 2.4x kernel will be fine for what you're doing.

i agree you might want to try a different window manager. nocmonkey will tell you to use blackbox because it has very little overhead and does its job pretty well (esp for machines with low resources). if you're coding only, you can use a console only login, and then press alt-functionkey to switch between consoles. it allows you 6 consoles i think f1 through f6 will work.

to update your software on a redhat machine run the up2date utility. it can be run from the command line or gui. it inspects which packages you have installed and looks to see if there are new versions available, and if you want, installs them. i reccomend not upgrading your kernel this way if you dont have to. bad things can happen. (btw, mandrake has a similar utility called urpmi which is better. you might try installing that on your redhat box and see if it works... i've never tried it though)