freezing

[jmadero]

Hi All,

I installed Ubuntu on my girlfriends Toshiba Satellite A135. She loves it but is having an issue with freezing. It happens when she opens some things (it's not consistent at all, she told me last week that it froze three times in the morning, twice trying to open Firefox, another opening Thunderbird). She just had it freeze up again opening up a pdf. Any ideas what would cause it to freeze like this? She keeps having to hard shut down and that's typically not a good idea. Thanks all

[Themer]

instead of a hard shutdown, try "Alt + Printscreen + R + S + E + I + U + B". It's a little better because of how it tries to unmount some things and finalize some stuff.

Anyways, sounds like could the motherboard possibly be going? they fail differently sometimes - sometimes all just BANG, sometimes slow and painful like this... Same possible concept for the hard drive, etc....

[jmadero]

I think it's unlikely that it's a hardware issue....she has Vista installed also just for kicks and giggles (basically when Ubuntu acts up) and it never fails in Vista (but it does take up 35% of 2 gigs of RAM on boot and continues to eat away at resources and look ugly like Vista does). Thanks for the advice on how to try to unmount things before. Any other advice would be appreciated

[daark.child]

You could always try other distros if the problem persists.

[Jonathan183]

Struggling to think what this could be ... are they all web access issues ... browser + email + pdf on the web? You should be able to set response to ctrl+alt+del to shutdown (equivalent of init 0) which may be a bit less of a shock than the power button (but that's treating the symptoms not the cause).
Ed: I guess you have already checked out sites like this.

[Themer]

I think it's unlikely that it's a hardware issue....she has Vista installed also just for kicks and giggles (basically when Ubuntu acts up) and it never fails in Vista (but it does take up 35% of 2 gigs of RAM on boot and continues to eat away at resources and look ugly like Vista does). Thanks for the advice on how to try to unmount things before. Any other advice would be appreciated

OK, well if it's not a hardware problem, which your right if it's not acting up in Vista, it shouldn't act up in anything

I don't get why these problems happen... I mean, a computer is a computer, why should any particular laptop be a problem!?

Is whatever you are using to connect to the internet (the part inside the computer, whatever it is) generally compatible with Linux?; google it to try and find out I guess...

[jmadero]

So I'm convinced that it is something with this model and Gutsy. There are several other people that I've found complaining that with this model and Gutsy it randomly freezes, Switching to another distro is a possibility but she really likes Ubuntu, she's not too tech savvy and likes being comfortable with a system....I'm also not to comfortable with many other distros (I've used FC for a year or so and Knoppix every once in awhile). I would prefer fixing the problem over switching distros but last resort I'll try another one.

Here is another form that I found with a similar complaint:

gutsy freezes randomly toshiba satellite - Ubuntu Forums


Obviously didn't seem to get too far. When I have access to the system again (tomorrow), I'll do the lscpi | grep VGA to see if I get anything that gets a step closer to the issue.....

Just for a side question...is there any brand that only puts linux friendly hardware in their system? It seems like each brand has at least one or two parts in it that are made by manufacturers that don't like open source.

[i92guboj]

I think it's unlikely that it's a hardware issue....she has Vista installed also just for kicks and giggles (basically when Ubuntu acts up) and it never fails in Vista (but it does take up 35% of 2 gigs of RAM on boot and continues to eat away at resources and look ugly like Vista does). Thanks for the advice on how to try to unmount things before. Any other advice would be appreciated

You should never discard a hardware problem that quick.

And much less on a laptop, where overheating is so much times an important issue. You should check a number of things, even if it works ok in vista.

In first place, there might be a problem with your fans or something like that, maybe your distribution is not configured to dynamically adjust your cpu frequency when it is idle, and that is overheating your laptop. I can be a ram problem as well. Linux handles memory on a very different way than windows does, and it always try to fill the ram because free ram is a waste. The approach is so much different than the way that windows does the things, so, you should really check your temperatures with mbmon or something similar, and after that, use memtest86 to check your ram. Lots of livecds ship it as a boot option.

[Themer]

A lot of the heat on a laptop radiates out through the keyboard though, but it all sounds reasonable now that you mention it...

[jmadero]

A question then...I have issues thinking it's heat because last week she turned the computer on after having it off overnight, it froze right when she tried to open firefox. The problem really does seem to be linked with opening software, it never just freezes out of nowhere, as of now it's frozen opening three things, firefox, thunderbird & a pdf. Maybe I am way off track but I would imagine that if it were a heating issue or RAM issue that there would be random problems all the time but as of now it's locked about 10 times in two weeks and every time has been linked to opening one of those pieces of software. I have used it to run OpenOffice, Opera, terminals (obviously), kmymoney2, pidgin, etc and never frozen with those.....