Problems with my Ubuntu Box

[Neil Dugan]

David Whyte wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Sorry to those that frequent the IRC channel and who are likely sick
> of my and my problems by now.  I am posting in an email because I need
> to describe such a lot.  I hope you readon as I am sure there are
> knowledgable people who can help me.
> 
> A couple of weeks ago, I started having problems with my Ubuntu Breezy
> box hard-locking up, not responsing to mouse movement, keystroked, SSH
> or HTTP.  The only way to get the box alive again was a hard-reboot.
> The hardlockups only seem to occur when I want to use the box.  I.e.,
> I can view HTML from work fine, but when I get home and play, it might
> lockup.
> 
> At about (but not exactly from what I remember) the time it all
> started happening, two things had happened:
> 1) I had bought a UPS and plugged (only) the tower into it and
> compiled the mgt software for it.  This involved apt-getting a couple
> of dev libs.
> 2) Software Mgr pushed out a newer revision of my kernel upgrading
> from 2.6.12.9 to 1.6.12.10.
> 
> I immediately assumed the UPS was at fault, so unplugged its USB cable
> and removed the software I installed.  A day later and I got the
> hard-lockup.  I then decided it must be a problem with the kernel and
> after much research and debate, decided the only fix was to go to
> Dapper, which up-rev'd my kernel to 2.6.15.26.
> 
> Somehours after the Dapper install finsihed and I rebooted the issue
> occurred, so I did a memtest and let it run twice with no errors.
> This morning I used the PC fine after it had been on all night but
> within 10 minutes of leaving my house I got a phone call to say it had
> locked up.
> 
> This afternoon when I rebooted it, it didn't load up properly and I
> got the error message "Out of Scan Range' in a blue box.  Apparently,
> this could be caused when X doesn't recognise the monitor settings or
> something, but the monitor did not change.  A quick reboot and here I
> am now, but for how long.
> 
> At the same time, I have been getting the odd 'segfault' with my
> mythTV frontend which runs on this box.  Even with verbose logging,
> there no indication of what the error might be, and nothing has
> changed in regard to my mythTV installation.
> 
> I have come to the conclusion that this is a hardware fault, but I am
> unsure what it might be.  I was thinking this morning I should just
> take out each stick of RAM one by one and see if any of those are
> causing the fault, but with the 'out of range' message I got today, I
> am wandering if perhaps the Mobo is on its way out.  The problem with
> these 'tests' is it can soemtimes go a while without the lockup
> happening, but I guess this is the only way to find out.
> 
> For the record, it is a crappy GameDude bare-box PC I bought a couple
> of years ago, with:
> - Jetway V2DP Mobo
> - Sempron 2400 CPU
> - 1x256 generic ram
> - 1x512 genenric ram
> - 3x DVB-T tuners
> - 2x HDD.
> 
> I know this is a long email, but I really am at the end of my wits and
> with no idea on how to go forward.  Can anybody give me some advice?
> 
> Many many thanks,
> Whytey
> 
I would look into the HDD it might not be working fully, maybe boot of
the ubuntu LiveCD and give it a workout to see if it has trouble there.

I have had trouble similar where it would work sometimes but not others.

Regards Neil.