Hardy beta - laptop randomly freezes with caps & scroll lock leds blinking

[kastyk]

Hello from Poland :)

Problem:
My laptop, Dell Inspiron 8200, randomly freezes with caps & scroll lock LEDs blinking.

Symptoms:
Caps lock and scroll lock LED blink, no response from _any_ key or key combination (also those found @ https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash). "Freezes" mean: no response from touchpad & keybord; no changes on screen, no changes of speed of fans, no HDD LED activity. It happens randomly, sometimes after 20 min., sometimes after couple of hours of work. I observed, that is happen more often during increased network activity (in example: when ktorrent works in background, however lock-ups happen also without ktorrent running). It has never happened before, when Gutsy Gibbon Kubuntu stable release was installed.

Operating system & commonly used programs:

- Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 beta release up-to-date as 23.03.2008
- manually configured network, knetworkmanager in system tray
- kmix in system tray
- gkrellm with "i8k", "wireless" and "x86" plugins
- synaptic, firefox, konsole, claws-mail, ktorrent (I don't see any connection between lock-ups and used/launched programs)
- nvidia-glx installed and configured by launching "nvidia-xconfig" program, driver works fine.

Tell me, please, what kind of information can I provide to help to solve this problem - I'll try to do my best.

Computer system:
Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, service tag: DLX9H11
1024 MB of RAM in 2 modules (checked recently overnight with memtest86+, no errors)
New Seagate 80GB ATA HDD drive (here some info from hdparm:
        Model Number: ST980815A
        Serial Number: 5LY9AXRB
        Firmware Revision: 3.ALD)
2200 MHz Pentium 4-M processor
Average temperatures (according to gkrellm with i8k kernel module and hddtemp, in Celsius degrees):
     processor: 55-60,
     THM: 50-55,
     /dev/sda: 40-45.

Output of "lspci -v":
sentex@palony:~$ lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
        Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 32
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=32
        I/O behind bridge: 0000c000-0000cfff
        Memory behind bridge: fc000000-fdffffff
        Prefetchable memory behind bridge: d8000000-e7ffffff

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Latitude C640
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at bf80 [size=32]

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Unknown device 4541
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at bf20 [size=32]

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=10, sec-latency=32
        I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000ffff
        Memory behind bridge: f4000000-fbffffff

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Latitude C640
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1]
        I/O ports at 0170 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 0374 [size=1]
        I/O ports at bfa0 [size=16]
        Memory at 50000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Cirrus Logic Crystal WMD Audio Codec
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 5
        I/O ports at d800 [size=256]
        I/O ports at dc80 [size=64]

00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
        Subsystem: Conexant MD56ORD V.92 MDC Modem
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5
        I/O ports at d400 [size=256]
        I/O ports at dc00 [size=128]

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 440 Go] (rev a3) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 00d4
        Flags: bus master, VGA palette snoop, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 248, IRQ 11
        Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        Memory at dff80000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=512K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at d8000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 00d4
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
        Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Bus: primary=02, secondary=03, subordinate=06, sec-latency=176
        Memory window 0: f4000000-f7fff000 (prefetchable)
        Memory window 1: 54000000-57fff000
        I/O window 0: 0000e000-0000e0ff
        I/O window 1: 0000e400-0000e4ff
        16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 00d4
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
        Memory at f8001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Bus: primary=02, secondary=07, subordinate=0a, sec-latency=176
        Memory window 0: 58000000-5bfff000 (prefetchable)
        Memory window 1: 5c000000-5ffff000
        I/O window 0: 0000e800-0000e8ff
        I/O window 1: 0000ec00-0000ecff
        16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

02:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI4451 IEEE-1394 Controller (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 00d4
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        Memory at f8fff800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
        Memory at f8ff8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

02:03.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
        Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Unknown device e933
        Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        Memory at f8ff0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

RaLink controller works fine OOTB.

Regards, Janusz Kastyk

[Mark Mandel (mark-mandel)]

I also have exactly the same issue!

I outlined the issue I had here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4584283#post4584283
And also found people with similar issues here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=702557

I have a Dell XPS M1710

To copy and paste details from my post:
1) Only ever happens when my wireless is on. I have an Intel 4965AGN card.
2) It is more likely to happen if the computer sits idle, especially if there is no internet connectivity. If I leave something running like IM, it tends to happen less.
3) Sometimes it happens during non-idle periods, i.e. like just now when all I was doing was writing this post in firefox.
4) Once a freeze occurs, only a hard reboot will save it
5) I have found that if I reboot, and then allow ubuntu to reload, and then reboot again, it is less likely to occur.
6) It is very random, sometimes it can not happen for 2 days, then it will happen 5 time during the day.
7) This will sound very strange, but it seems more likely to occur in the evening.... I don't know why that is.

Next time I have a crash, I will include the syslog, and syslog.0 files if they will help.

[Mark Mandel (mark-mandel)]

Just had another crash, I'm attaching pretty much everything I can think of:

Steps:
1) Crash happened, blinking caps and scrollock
2) Shut down Ubuntu via holding down the power off button
3) Rebooted
4) Copied dmesg, dmesg.0, kern.log, kern.log.0, syslog, and syslog.0 to a separate folder for review

Hopefully this can give you guys something to work from.

[David Burke (bufke)]

This happens to me as well. I am using Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I am rather certain it only happens with my wifi card in.

The card is:
Belkin F5D9010

Ubuntu detects the card as:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T
RaLink RT2600 802.11 MIMO

I believe I'm using this driver:
rt61pci

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

I have this and have a ralink card...

[Barrakketh (barrakketh)]

This has been happening to me as well. The card is detected as:

Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
Subsystem: Linksys WMP54G ver 4.1

The driver I'm using is rt61pci (I would usually use Ralink's driver, but it is broken by kernel shipped with Hardy).

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I'm having this same problem, and I also have a Ralink card. Its an RT61 card...I think this may be related to our network cards...

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

Fixed for me by removing my rt61 wifi card...

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

I'm having this same problem: Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (2.6.24-12-generic) using both Gnome and KDE4
I using a D-Link Pc-card (DWL-G630)... for me the problem does not depend on if i using an open access point (like www.fon.com) without any decryption or if I using WPA or WEP.

SYMPTOMS:
Random hanging leaving [Caps lock] and [Scroll lock] LED-blinking and the screen and mouse are frozen...
...only way out is to reboot by unplugging batteries and power adapter.

I previously used the same LapTop (Dell Latitude C810) with 7.10 without any problem...
Differences between my old 7.10 installation vs. my new 8.04 beta installation:
- With 7.10 i used wired-LAN, now with 8.04 beta i using WiFi-card

LEDS:
- Num_lock OFF
- Caps_lock BLINKING
- Scroll_lock BLINKING

HW:
- Dell Latitude C810 (1GHz, 512MB and build in 32Mb Nvidia graphics)
- D-Link DWL-G630 (pc-card Wifi adapter)
...I have run memory-check without any errors.

WHAT IS TRIGGING THIS SYSTEM TO FREEZE?:
I do not know! The last two times is happened was when I:
1. Only having a console running "sudo apt-get install kde4"
2. Only having FireFox 3 Beta 4 running with 6 tabs
...it might could have something to do with current workload of the PC or network??

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

It definetly appears to be caused by high network activity. Its only happened to my while using Bittorrent.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

It definitely appears to be caused by high network activity. Its only happened to my while using Bittorrent.

[Mark Mandel (mark-mandel)]

@quadomatic

You see that's funny, because I don't generally get it during high network traffic, I get it more when things are idle, and then I go to do something over the network.

I'm tempted to think it's NetworkManager, as this is happening across cards.

If I start getting the crashes regularly again, I may try converting from NetworkManager to something like wicd, and see if that makes a difference.

[Barrakketh (barrakketh)]

@Mark

I'm not using NetworkManager and have that problem. My wireless adapter is configured through the interfaces file.

It might be a bug that is present in the driver that may or may not be fixed in the kernel that is shipped with Hardy. The driver developers mention on the project's main page that:

[quote][...]two days ago, January 24th, Linux Kernel 2.6.24 was released. This is the first mainline kernel that includes (sadly a somewhat buggy) rt2x00 release.[/quote]

The driver included in Hardy is version 2.0.10, the current version is 2.0.14.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

@Barrakketh

Has anyone tried updating?

I've never liked NetworkManager...it caused me issues in Gutsy as well.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

@Barrakketh

What rt2x00 driver is installed in Hardy? The only one I know of is from SerialMonkey and for RT61 its at v1.1.0-b2.

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I wouldn't mind trying ndiswrapper. It worked with Gutsy.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

I assume everyone here is using the NVIDIA binary driver. Do these random lockups also happen when you use the (no 3D) nv driver?

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

@Sitsofe Wheeler

I'm using ATI fglrx (wow I'm out of place...), so I'm not of the belief that Nvidia drivers are causing this problem.

[Barrakketh (barrakketh)]

@quadomatic

The v1.1.10-b2 drivers are the legacy rt61 drivers that are based off of what Ralink provides. They don't support wpa_supplicant, so there is no way that I will be using them.

The rt2x00 drivers (that includes the rt61pci driver that we're having a problem with) is part of the wireless-dev tree of the kernel. Instructions for retrieving them from the git repository can be found at http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rt2x00_GIT_instructions

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

Alright, I'll try updating with these and let you all know how it goes.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

Apparently the command:
cg clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ivd/rt2x00.git/

doesn't work. It says that there are no files to search.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I'm going to give ndiswrapper a shot

[Barrakketh (barrakketh)]

It didn't work because cogito isn't installed.

The functionality is also available in git, so:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ivd/rt2x00.git/

would have worked.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I wish I had known that. I tried installing the rt61 driver via ndiswrapper following this guide:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=564419

And now I can't connect to my router! I'm not sure how to remove ndiswrapper and put back the old driver either. I tried removing the drivers I had blacklisted from the blacklist, removed the driver from ndiswrapper, and uninstalled ndiswrapper, and I still can't get it to work.

Can someone tell me how to remove ndiswrapper and put back the old connection so I can install the new driver?

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

Same issue here, entirely different sounding hardware. Running NetworkManager. Your symptoms are identical to mine. I have not found any pattern here, although increased network usage sounds like a good guess. Running a system monitor applet on my panel set to measure system load average, and have observed on a few occasions the load jumping off the chart (13 or so!) before the system entirely freezes. Usually freezes about a second after the load spikes upwards. Unfortunately, I have not been able to confirm this consistently since the crash is so inconsistent itself.

Alt+SysRQ+1 then Alt+SysRQ+t do nothing. Mind you, my log is being spammed with an error message about wireless encryption (thanks, Netgear!), but I am fairly certain it achieved nothing. (Feel free to show otherwise).

# lspci -v

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 1517
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
 I/O behind bridge: 00009000-00009fff
 Memory behind bridge: f7e00000-fdefffff
 Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000bdf00000-00000000ddefffff
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Contoller #4 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 1517
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 I/O ports at e080 [size=32]

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 1517
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
 I/O ports at e000 [size=32]

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 1517
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
 Memory at febff400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 1339
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
 Memory at febf8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=0
 Memory behind bridge: fdf00000-fdffffff
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal deco...

[kastyk (kastyk35)]

Hi, that's me again :)

Couple of thoutghts about increased network activity: freezes occur _always_ during increased network activity. Examples: using of ktorrent, downloading large files or updating system (either with synaptic or aptitude). Network is manually configured by editing /etc/network/interfaces file, knetworkmanager's running. Previously, in Gutsy Gibbon, I was using compiled driver from RaLink website for my RT61 card, maybe current - like Barrakketh said - "buggy" kernel driver causes the crashes?

Computer can work couple of hours when net activity is low-to-medium. I don't use any kind of encryption, I haven't seen any unexpected load values before crush. Everything else is running fine.

Regards, Janusz.

[kastyk (kastyk35)]

A little update: a crush has happened just by clicking a link in firefox browser. Bad luck I quess ;/

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

Alright, I managed to get this buggy internet connection back after that fiasco with ndiswrapper.

I'm going to give the updated version of this driver a shot.

Anyone else try?

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

Hopefully it doesn't crash while I'm trying to get connected to the git repository...

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I think this driver isn't bad because of straight up high network usage...I think its related to the amount of incoming and outgoing connections that are going on at once. I've only had it crash while using Bittorrent. This git repository is using 300kbs of bandwidth (maxed out) and I've had no crashes...this isn't uncommon for me to go without hard-locks in times like this either.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I'm confused on the branch part here:

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rt2x00_GIT_instructions

What branch should I put in to get the updated rt61 driver?

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I updated the driver (I think). I'm downloading stuff on BitTorrent and I've yet to crash.

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

I'm not sure if its because of the kernel update or because I updated my wireless driver from the git repositories, but it certainly seems like my hard lockups are gone.

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

New updated kernel did not solve this problem!

The "[Caps lock] + [Scroll lock] death-blinking-LED with frozen-screen" -syndrome remains after updated my Notebook PC with the latest 8.04 Beta kernel "2.6.24-14-generic".

There is NO problem at all when running via the build in wired-LAN. But as soon as I switch back to wireless-LAN myPC will freeze within 20minutes. I switching between Wireless-LAN and Wired-LAN using nm-applet 0.6.6 from http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/ the default panel-toolbar in 8.04 Beta.

SYMPTOMS:
Random hanging leaving [Caps lock] and [Scroll lock] LED-blinking and the screen and mouse are frozen...
...only way out is to reboot by unplugging batteries and power adapter.

LEDS:
- Num_lock OFF
- Caps_lock BLINKING
- Scroll_lock BLINKING

HW Notebook PC:
- Dell Latitude C810 (1GHz, 512MB and build in 32Mb Nvidia graphics)
- D-Link DWL-G630 (pc-card Wifi adapter)

WHAT IS TRIGGING THIS SYSTEM TO FREEZE?:
- Wireless LAN!!!

[kastyk (kastyk35)]

I confirm: latest update (as of 5 march 2008) did not solve the problem.

@ quadomatic:
Good to hear that there's a way to solve this problem. It's gonna be probably only one way, if maintainers won't fix that until stable release.

@Skull:
You should be able to reboot by pressing Power Button for over 4 seconds.

Regards,
Janusz Kastyk

[quadomatic (quadomatic)]

Oh crap, I got a hard lock overnight :(

New theory: I was running bittorrent, so I would say its caused by heavy network usage while your computer is idle...at least that's how it is now, since I had been running bittorrent heavily all day yesterday, while I was at my computer, and I was fine.

[modprobe (modprobe)]

I confirm this bug. Painfully random freezes with:

AMD Athlon-M 2600+
ndiswrapper + SMCWUSBT-G2 wireless USB dongle

Note: It happens every time (range 10min to 1 day into the session) ONLY when my USB hid mouse is used. When I unplug it, and use Synaptics pad instead, I NEVER experience a freeze.

Guess: dbus, kernel?

My LEDs do NOT blink when a freeze occurs.

Recent kernel update did NOT solve it.

[modprobe (modprobe)]

forgot.

there are NEVER any traces of this lock-up left in ANY of the system logs. search me! according to the system, everything is perfect.

a riddle to solve. could they please appoint anyone to investigate the bug?

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

If you are receiving issues while you are using any binary only bits (e.g. NVIDIA/ATI binary drivers, ndiswrapper etc) many folks will be extremely reluctant to investigate any issues your system is having (because they could lie in a binary only piece).

jaarik:
If you are using ndiswrapper I think you will have to see if you can find/file different bug report. While the hardware might be the same, your driver is different to that of other people in this bug report and as such while the outcome (crash) might be the same the cause may very well be different. Just for the record complete lock ups (where even sysrq doesn't work) are almost always kernel level bugs, X or broken hardware related issues. A userspace program like dbus is effectively unable to cause an issue like this.

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

Regarding "using NVIDIA/ATI binary drivers" - I have not enable the Nvidia-hw-graphic-binary (only used the default graphics drivers that comes with 8.04 Beta).

Regarding: "Could they please appoint anyone to investigate the bug" - I do not know how this community works, but is there any "official way" for 8.04 Beta to report incidents and to escalate incidents like this?

[kastyk (kastyk35)]

To Skull
_This_ is an official bug report, opened by me. I think it's being watched, but just look how many bug reports are opened each day. Ubuntu needs an army of developers to solve every and each one, so ones are more important, other ones are less.

To Sitsofe Wheeler:
I am using binary Nvidia driver for my Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go 64MB card, provided by nvidia-glx package from Ubuntu Hardy repos. That or other way, I can hardly connect lock-ups when Ktorrent or Azureus is running with Nvidia driver. Recently I even installed Nexuiz to check how my card is doing... It was doing pretty good :) No freezes during play.

I think there is important _how_many_ connection is made. Recently, during everyday use of my laptop, when only firefox-2 with couple of tabs, claws-mail and amarok is running, I didn't have *any* lock-ups. When I launch Ktorrent or Azureus machine freezes withi 5-10 min.

Just an idea: is it safe to shut down Network Manager at all? As I said previously, my network settings are configured manually in /etc/network/interfaces file.

[Mark Mandel (mark-mandel)]

If someone could point our how I could help provide extra logs for this bug, or anything along those lines, I'd be more than happy to provide the extra information.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Guys - this bug report is going to get difficult for people to triage because of the number of people 'confirming' the same symptoms. The symptoms you are all describing could have multiple causes The more people post (and the more hardware permutations are thrown in), the more difficult it is going to become to solve.

I've had a look through this report, and I can summarize the following:

5 of you with these symptoms are using a Ralink card (rt61pci driver?) - kastyk, David Burke, Nick Russell, Barrakketh and quadomatic. Both David Burke and Nick Russell have pretty much confirmed that the issue goes away when removing the wireless card. Could the other three do something similar and post the findings please? If you all report the same, then this points to an issue with the Ralink driver you are using, which should be covered by this bug report.

This means that other people should probably open up a new bug report, and post exact details of the hardware (output of lspci -vvnn, uname -a etc...)

Mark Mandel - you are not using the Ralink chipset, so if this bug report points to Ralink you might be better off opening a new report. I notice you have NVIDIA graphics. Could you disable the NVIDIA binary driver to see if it goes away? I see from your logs that you are also running VMWare. Does the issue go away if you stop the VMWare modules from loading (I'm not sure of the best way to do this other than uninstalling VMWare).

Dylan McCall - you say yourself that you have entirely different hardware, so your crash may not be connected. You also state that you see a jump in load before the crash. How do you know that this is not a crashing Xorg as opposed to a hard lock? You say Alt+SysRq+1 and Alt+SysRq+t do nothing, but then I don't think you would see any effect if Xorg has crashed. Are you absolutely certain that your machine is completely unresponsive? Can you try Alt+SysRq+REISUB after the crash to see if the machine reboots?

jaarik - Again, you have identified a different pattern to other people here. You claim it only happens when your USB hid mouse is used, and you say the LED's on your keyboard don't blink. As I said to Dylan, are you absolutely sure this is a hard freeze and not a crashing Xorg? If you have a spare box, can you still SSH in to the crashed machine?

I'm not saying that you definately aren't all affected by the same issue, but from having a glance through, I think there could be multiple issues here. As this bug report grows and grows, its going to get more difficult for developers to solve.

For other people wanting to add 'me too' on this report, please bare in mind that although your symptoms are the same, it may not be the same issue.

[Benoit Malet (benoit-malet)]

Happens also with my Ralink based WiFi PCI card (see lspci -vv output)

Happens really fast when I set transfer rate to 54Mbps (sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M)

Happens more often when transferring on a Samba share.

Will try to put as many documentation as possible. Do not hesitate to ask for more ...

Regards,
Benoît

[Mark Mandel (mark-mandel)]

Chris Coulson - Thanks for the feedback.

The nice thing is, I can 100% without a doubt say it's the wireless card. The reason being, that at my previous job, I would be plugged into network through a cable, and my wireless would be turned off.
In this state, I never had a hard crash for over 6 months.

Working from home (as I tend to do now), I use wireless all day, and the only time I have a hard crash is when it is on.

So I'm happy to play around with things, to see if it's an issue with the combination, but it is definitely got to do with the wireless card being on.

[Benoit Malet (benoit-malet)]

Seems that it's a bug that has already been corrected upstream, but the correction won't be available in 2.6.24 ...

Maybe that for the release for Hardy it might prove useful to blacklist these modules and to use legacy driver ... I'll try this later this day and report here ...

Regards,
Benoît

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Mark - No probs!

As you have concluded it is related to your wireless card, and you are using an Intel chipset (please correct me if I'm wrong), it might be worth you opening a new bug report, as your problem is likely to be unrelated to the original reporters problem (who is using a Ralink chipset). As Benoit has pointed out, a crash in the Ralink driver has been identified and fixed upstream, so I think you are better off opening a new report now this has been confirmed.

I'm going to mark this report as a duplicate of bug 194650, which means that people experiencing a crash who aren't using the rt61pci driver should open a new report, as there problem is not related to the original reporters issue. The report needs to contain detailed information about the hardware (output of sudo lspci -vvnn, uname -r etc) and should contain any output from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash.

Please comment if you feel this is wrong decision.

[kastyk (kastyk35)]

Hello Chris :)

I've seen bug report #194650 before I opened this one. A reason for opening new report was simple: I observed little different symptoms. Most important was: I could (and I still can) work hours connected to my WLAN and lock-ups occur almost always only during heavy network activity. I said "almost", because once or twice lock-up also happened just after clicking a link in firefox or konqueror.

Since yesterday my laptop is connected to router via cable and LAN NIC. I disabled completely wireless card in system by shutting down wlan0 interface and removing rt61pci module. I launched *both* ktorrent and azureus having couple of files up-and-downloading, I am using firefox, claws-mail and wget together and my laptop did'n freeze 'till now, so I am almost sure that lock-ups were caused by rt61pci driver for my RaLink WLAN mini-PCI card.

You wrote previously:
"(...)the issue goes away when removing the wireless card. Could the other three do something similar and post the findings please? (...)"

That's why I posted here and if you thing that's the same bug as you found in #194650 report, marking my one as duplicate is OK.
Regards,
Janusz Kastyk

[Rupert (rupert-everweb)]

I have the same issue (system frozen with capslock and scrolllock flashing). I did some research a month or so ago and found some pointers to GLX so I disabled screensavers and shutdown at night. Last night I left the system on but doing nothing - the only apps open were Eclipse and Terminal - no email, no torrent, or other network apps (however, the update manager was on and reports updates available now). When I switched on the monitor I was greeted by the now-familiar 'snow' (looks like a crappy TV signal) on the screen and flashing lights on the keyboard. Time to hit reset.

I don't have the RT61 card - but I suspect there is a family resemblance:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 369c
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
        I/O ports at d800 [size=256]
        Memory at f9fff000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Expansion ROM at f9fc0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

I've got the same issue, ever few minutes it locks up and I cant move my mouse for a few seconds or the screen just totally locks up with the caps- and scroll-lock blinking.

I'm running 64 bit hardy on a dell laptop d830

[tradeking (dozieuzoma)]

I have the SAME problem. My system freezes every half hour or so and every button freezes, even the start button. I have to plug everything out... even the battery to restart. Mozilla freezes as well and shuts down intermittently. When it freezes the caps button flashes on and off repeatedly. PLEASE HELP!!! Here's a print out of the lspci -v.

dozie@dozie-laptop:~$ lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 96
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=80
 Memory behind bridge: d1000000-d1ffffff
 Prefetchable memory behind bridge: e0000000-efffffff

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
 I/O ports at 1cc0 [size=32]

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
 I/O ports at 1ce0 [size=32]

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
 I/O ports at 2000 [size=32]

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 20
 Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=06, sec-latency=32
 I/O behind bridge: 00003000-00003fff
 Memory behind bridge: d2000000-d23fffff

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
 I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8]
 I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1]
 I/O ports at 0170 [size=8]
 I/O ports at 0374 [size=1]
 I/O ports at 2040 [size=16]
 Memory at 50000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NX9500
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 I/O ports at 1400 [size=256]
 I/O ports at 1c80 [size=64]
 Memory at d0000c00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
 Memory at d0000800 (32-bit, non-prefetchab...

[tradeking (dozieuzoma)]

My computer is an hp zd7000 and I use a wireless card to access the internet.

[Lupick (lupick)]

Same issue for me

Hardy "stable" + MSI US54SE usb wireless card

Maybe using backport repo something could change??

L.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Could everyone here who is running a Ralink card please install the linux-backports-modules package for their kernel from the repositories, and test with the updated driver.

For some reason, Robert Citek changed the duplicate link on this bug for no apparent reason, and didn't leave any comment at all. In the meantime, I'm restoring the link with the original report tracking the confirmed issue with the Ralink driver.

[Robert Citek (robert-citek)]

@ Chris
> For some reason, Robert Citek changed the duplicate link on this bug for no apparent reason, and didn't leave any comment at all. In the meantime, I'm restoring the link with the original report tracking the confirmed issue with the Ralink driver.

Sorry about that. Must have thought I was modifying a different bug. Thanks for restoring it. - Robert

[Cippa Lippa (l-cademartiri)]

sorry guys but here I just had my first freeze with caps lock and scroll lock blinking and I am using arch linux.

it has nothing to do with the old kernel or a ubuntu problem.

my laptop is a dell latitute d830

[robsstartrek (robs-startrek)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/309003

this is the main bug report right? yes its a problem for linux wireless stuff effects that and usb hard drive like iomega 1tb drive I think with laptops , I use toshiba x205 sli1 laptop and get this flashing freaze of the caps lock problem

last happen when viewing youtube site

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This is getting out of hand. I thought we established earlier that the crash reported in this bug report was due to a Ralink wireless card (rt61pci driver). Anyone else experiencing a similar symptom who doesn't use the rt61pci driver, please open a new bug report.