system freezes on high CPU load

Bug #311035 reported by Daniele
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
linux (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

It happened a few times now, when there's a process that requires high CPU usage after about a minute the system freezes completely. I see activity on hdd and hear the cpu working at full load, but the system does not respond to any command. The mouse freezes and if I try to move it I can only see some little movements after a while. No response to commands keyboard shortcuts to restart X server or to change to other consoles or Alt-Sys magic combinations.
It seems to only happen when both CPUs are at full load. (I think there is a priority on processes so the system doesn't freeze)
It happened the first time during a compiling, some time after giving the command "make".
Then it happened again during a bad command (too much high parameter in "change tempo" dialog) in Audacity.
Now it happened again loading a virtual Linux machine in VirtualBox, just after (virtual) login. Well, this time I was also playing music in Amarok, and downloading a torrent from Transmission! ;) But I always have at least these two applications running along a virtual machine, and other times it didn't froze!
Anyway, these are my specs:

Hardware:
Asus a6jc laptop with Intel Centrino Core Duo T2500 @ 2,00 GHz
RAM 1024 Mb
Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 - 512 Mb dedicated

OS:
lsb_release:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Release: 8.10

uname:
Linux daniele 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Fri Dec 19 16:29:52 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Revision history for this message
dave b. (d+b) wrote :

Hi i recommend you check the system temperature. The laptop might be overheating and then automatically shutting down. Additionally (to the below), you might want to try disabling / turning off cpu frequency scaling.

----------------
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it without more information.

Please include the following additional information, if you have not already done so (pay attention to lspci's additional options), as required by the Ubuntu Kernel Team:
1. Please include the output of the command "uname -a" in your next response. It should be one, long line of text which includes the exact kernel version you're running, as well as the CPU architecture.
2. Please run the command "dmesg > dmesg.log" after a fresh boot and attach the resulting file "dmesg.log" to this bug report.
3. Please run the command "sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log" and attach the resulting file "lspci-vvnn.log" to this bug report.

For your reference, the full description of procedures for kernel-related bug reports is available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies Thanks in advance!

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee) wrote :

Hi Daniele,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid.

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 311035

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

tags: added: needs-kernel-logs
tags: added: needs-upstream-testing
tags: added: kj-triage
Changed in linux (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Daniele (rizzo-dani) wrote :

Since then I switched to Ubuntu Karmic.
I'm closing the report 'cause it never happened again

Changed in linux (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
tags: removed: high kj-triage load needs-kernel-logs needs-upstream-testing
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