ubuntu on lap top locking up

[unix1adm]

Ok several time now I have seen some strangeness with Ubuntu

I was in Mozilla reading a forum and the system just locked up witha blinking A., The one that indicates caps lock was just blinking and the mouse would not move. I had to power off the system.

Also I noticed that If I leave it for a while from time to time it is like there is a process taking up the cpu and wont release it. It takes for ever to do anything and the shutdown command takes for ever to come up. I end up powering off with the button.

Any ideas?

[D-cat]

Is this a lap top? I'm just thinking the system could be overheating.

[unix1adm]

yes its a laptop on a table top. so that is not the issue... seems to be sporatic.. like a process is hanging up

[scrarfussi]

i used too have this problem but it was a graphics issue the wrong graphics driver had this problem alot with the via chipset

[D-cat]

yes its a laptop on a table top. so that is not the issue

Actually, it is laptops that are afflicted by this. It's not a circulation issue, but rather a (intentional?) bug in the BIOS system on some laptops that doesn't report the correct cpu temperature, then the cooling fan doesn't turn on until the CPU is already overheating.

Different computers do different things when the CPU overheats; some wail an alarm, some do things to your keyboard status lights, but eventually the system will slow to a crawl in an attempted thermal management, and if that doesn't work, it'll just shut off (or lock up trying)

See my other recent post on the matter:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sus...tml#post668268

Scrarfussi could be right as well. I'd do the acpi=off thing first, since over heating could kill the computer. If I'm wrong and its another hardware issue as suggested by scrarfussi, then no harm will be done; in that event, post the output of lspci and grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf and we'll try to track it down.

[unix1adm]

I am uisng an IBM R51 if that helps...

root@cj454-lt:/boot/grub# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller (rev 81)
03:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
03:00.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

No entry returns.

Thanx for the help.

My LT has been on all day today and no issues so far.

[D-cat]

Well, I'm glad the laptop is doing good so far.

However, grep having no return is not a good thing, it means your X server is running more or less in an equivlent of a safe mode.

First thing to try is a auto-guided reconfiguration of the X server:

Since you have no issue logging in as root, I'll give the instructions that way:

init 3 # Will bring down the X server, start single user mode

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg # reconfigure's the X server, rebuild xorg.conf

init 5 # bring back up the X server

see if any of that helps. Even so, you will only get generic ATI drivers at first, but after this if sucessful you'll be able to get the full 3D drivers through the hardware manager.

[unix1adm]

I did this but it did nto bring th einterface down. I issued init 3 in a cmd window but nothing happend. I then issued the dpkg command as above and it went through some menues etc and asked for a bunch of defautls. I left th edefaults alone. Then i issued init 5 and nothing happends. I am guessing my xserver was suppose to change but it did not. I am going to reboot and see what happens.

root@cj454-lt:~# init 3
root@cj454-lt:~# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
xserver-xorg postinst warning: overwriting possibly-customised configuration
file; backup in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.20090216074812
root@cj454-lt:~# init 5
root@cj454-lt:~#

[unix1adm]

Well when i gto the grep I still do not get anything back. So that did not work.

anything else..

Thax for the help by the way

[D-cat]

Here we go. Please post the contents of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf .