Kernel panic occurs randomly under normal use on Eee pc 901, Ubuntu 9.10 fully patched

[MrAuer]

About once to several times per day of normal use, my Eee pc 901 totally hangs ie. kernel panic. When this happens, I cannot even get into virtual terminals, system does not respond to SysRq magic keys either (ie, I cannot reboot with the SysRq keystrokes either). Only way to shut down is to hold down power button for several seconds.

There is no way to reproduce the bug reliably - it happens both with Compiz on (with greater frequency perhaps, dont know) and without it. Usually I am browsing the web and maybe listening to music on Audacious as the machine hangs - screen freezes, X stops responding (cannot restart X either, SysRq keys dont respond), and sound loops and keeps looping until the powerdown.

I have had similar crashes with Jaunty as well, and was told then to wait until Karmic for this to be probably fixed. It was then thought it might be something relating to the poor Intel video drivers under Jaunty. This happens completelly similarly under Karmic now. My Eee 701, on the other hand, works perfectly without such crashes.

I will attach the logs on the following post.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

The latest crash happened at 14.47 local time (the time in the logs).

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

I also turned on Apport now, if it might catch it the next time it happens...
On Jaunty, I never got an Apport report of the crash even when I had it running though, so Im not holding my breath. Any suggestions on how to further pinpoint the issue are welcome...

[jtniehof (jtniehof)]

Thanks for the report. Here are a few links to get started on hopefully getting a useable crashdump:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Capturing%20OOPs (particularly the link to the crashdump recipe)

If possible, you might also want to try working without wireless for awhile and see if that improves the situation.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

Ok, I think I can try the without wireless bit at least....I have access to wired network at home, and also use a 3G modem so I could easily try using it with the wlan disabled. I will try to report back in a few days when Ive had some time to test-use the laptop.

Ill report back if I get more data on it.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

I will install the crashdump tools as well.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

Now I got a similar crash with wlan disabled from BIOS, Apport and crashdump installed, apport did not generate any crash file, and when trying apport-retrace -s -R /var/crash/linux-image*.crash it says ERROR: "/var/crash/linux-image*.crash" is neither an existing report file nor a crash ID. So it didnt have time to do anything when the crash occurred? Probably around 20:10 time. Ill attach dmesg.

This time I was browsing web on 3G connection and listening to mp3s on Audacious as it happened. Description exactly as before.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

I suppose I could see if I could find a replacement memory stick cheaply and check if switching the memory has any effect on this - Ive not had reported errors on memory test though, but havent run them for extended periods. One would think that others would be reporting similar crashes if this was a common issue, as Eee 901s are widely used - and issues with the wlan toggle generating kernel panics were widely reported here too.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

I found a fitting memory module of 512 megs, and swapped that in for the 901. I will report back on whether that solves the issues, or if they seem to persist anyway after Ive used this for a while.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately.]

This bug was reported against the linux-meta package when it likely should have been reported against the linux package instead. We are automatically transitioning this to the linux kernel package so that the appropriate teams are notified and made aware of this issue.

If this bug really is a bug in the linux-meta package you can move it back to linux-meta and tag it kj-linux-meta, or contact us on the #ubuntu-kernel channel on the FreeNode IRC server. Thanks.

[MrAuer (mr-auer)]

After using the Eee 901 for a couple of days now since switching the memory, Ive not had crashes as yet. So it was probably a faulty memory stick and not a bug. Thanks in any case ;)

[jtniehof (jtniehof)]

Since it appears to be a hardware issue rather than a bug, I'll close this bug. Feel free to reopen it if the problem recurs. Good troubleshooting.