Hardy Freeze/Lockup with kernel 2.6.24-16-generic up to 2.6.24-19-generic
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
linux (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Hi
I am experiencing complete lockup of my system at seemingly random intervals. The time from system start to crash, varies from minutes to hours. Applications running are completely varied. System, processor, memory, swap, and network load (no wireless, only LAN) are also completely varied. The screen freezes and there is no response to any keyboard or mouse input. Keyboard status lights are as before the crash (not flashing, etc) and optical sensor on mouse stays at same intensity (normally dims or brightens depending on whether in use or not). Both are USB, and unplugging and reconnecting leaves them without power. The only way to recover is by holding the chassis power button in. Restart is normal with no noticeable BIOS faults.
The only thing which seems to happen in every crash, is that the crash takes place during a low-level of disk activity. The disk activity fails to register on the task-bar system monitor that I set up (why is that?). The disk activity lasts several seconds at a time and seems to occur every couple of minutes regardless of whether the machine is in use or not. The machine doesn't't crash every time this happens. The activity sound is different to that of the rapid clicking sound when the disk is reading and writing in multiple locations (ie opening an app or saving a document etc). The sound is more of a low background buzz, similar to when defragmenting a drive in windows or running long disk checks. I have no idea what is accessing the drive during this time. The disk activity continues for at least a few seconds after the freeze.
I cannot make the computer crash or reproduce the fault. There are also no crash reports in any of the suggested locations. The machine is fully updated and has been through every kernel and package released, including those in Hardy proposed. I have tried changing what BIOS settings are changeable.
Odd things I've noticed:
During startup there is a considerable delay while "HALD" loads. The Ubuntu splash screen progress bar stops, and after a few seconds changes to a text output. A few seconds later it marks HALD as "OK" and continues loading.
During one crash I had system monitor open and 4 instances of the "hald-addon-stor" process were visible on the list (there are more because of card reader but list was sorted for CPU activity). During the disk activity mentioned the processes changed rapidly from sleeping to uninteruptable 3 times and then everything froze. The machine crashed again a few minutes later, but process list was sorted alphabetically and hald seemed to stay sleeping.
Gutsy was completely stable on the same system, although it was on an IDE drive rather than SATA. However, the Heron Live-CD would crash even if both drives were disconnected. The Heron install is a clean install from the alternate install CD, not an upgrade.
Things I'm still going to try:
Removing pci modem card (not currently in use anyway).
Removing pci TV tuner and video capture card (also not currently in use).
Downgrading from latest "Vista" BIOS to last released "XP" BIOS.
Trying latest kernel in kernel-ppa
Downgrading to Gutsy kernel.
System specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz
1 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB Hard Disk SATA2
MSI MS-7301 Motherboard
Onboard VIA LAN, Sound and Firewire
Motorola MSP2900-W(M) modem
Asustek TV-7131/FM Hybrid TV Tuner (with video capture)
Nvidia 8600 GT 256MB RAM
I have different hardware to Bug #204996 and others, hence the new report. Anyway, I see that Bug #204996 is marked as fix released against Intrepid. I had no intention of upgrading to Intrepid and wanted to stay with a LTS release. Is there a fix for Hardy users, and if kernels 25 and 26 do solve the problem, will they ever be released for Hardy?
Thanks,
Dave
Forgot to mention that I have also tried removing the Nvidia drivers and disabling Compiz. Tried Kubuntu Heron before the final clean install of Ubuntu Heron, but it crashed more frequently.
Thanks,
Dave