Seemingly Random Crash on Intrepid

[suicidepills]

[edit] I've bolded the important bits since I seem to have rambled a bit. [/edit]

Hey guys,

I'm relatively new to linux. I've been messing with Ubuntu on an on-again-off-again basis for the last few major releases, but ended up going back to Windows each time.

After installing Intrepid on my Asus X59SL (using Wubi from Windows 7), I was pleasantly surprised to find that nearly everything worked out of the box. Even the restricted ATI drivers seemed to work pretty well. I noticed some minor problems such as my video getting dodgy when previewing screensavers and my webcam being upside down, but I didn't mind these things for the most part. I figured I could just fix them later or ignore them.

However, I have been experiencing seemingly random crashes. I'll be doing something (sometimes as simple as chatting on AIM using Pidgin), leave my computer for a moment, and when I come back my computer is completely unresponsive. The most annoying part is that the crashes don't seem to be consistent. I can't figure out what I was doing that caused the crash.

My first guess would be that it's the video drivers causing the crash. I tried using the full desktop effects as well as the "pared down" version, but since the crashes are random, I will just have to revert to the open-source video driver and use my computer until it crashes again (if it does).

Is this an issue that anyone else is having? Is there anything that I could do to see what caused the crash? As I said, I'm pretty new to linux, so I'm not really even sure where to look to get decent debugging information.

Aside from the random crashes (and a few other minor and probably fixable issues) I am loving linux.

Thanks for your help!

-sp

[werner]

I changed my video resolution from 16 to 24 depth one day. All of a sudden...random crashes! For some reason, 24 bit was causing this. Since I did'nt really see much difference between 16 and 24, I just went back to 16. Check the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file for any hints.

[suicidepills]

How can i check/change my bit depth? Also, I'm not really sure what I should be looking for in my Xorg.0.log... Can you offer any guidance?

Thanks for your reply!

[D-cat]

Checking the log:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i depth

Editing the xorg.conf:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

look for the following section:

Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
...
EndSection

Change the DefaultDepth to 16 , save the file (Ctrl+x , y), then log out to restart the X server.

[suicidepills]

Thanks D-cat. I'll give that a try.

Werner: How often were you experiencing crashes? I can sometimes use my computer all day without it crashing. As I said, the crashes seem to be completely random and do not happen very often. Maybe twice a week?

[suicidepills]

It seems that my xorg.conf file is getting reset when i restart...

I edited the file using the instructions that you gave me. After saving the file, I exited all of the programs that I had open and pressed ctrl-alt-backspace to restart the x server. The GNOME application and task bars went away and my desktop image was left on the screen.

After a few moments of this, I realized that my machine had hung or something so I turned it off using the power button. After restarting, I checked my Xorg.0.log again to see if the changes had been kept. Unfortunately, they had not. It still shows my bit depth as 24.

Any ideas?

Thanks again for your help!!

[werner]

[QUOTE=Werner: How often were you experiencing crashes?[/QUOTE]

My problem was much worse - sometimes 2 crashes per day. I am using debian testing on my laptop. I find getting Xorg configured properly on a laptop challenging. Laptops seem a bit more fussy. Also - this is an old laptop, P3 with 128Megs RAM.

You could try:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg.

Try to change the depth from there if you can. Good luck!