Crashing with Dell

Matthias Heiler heiler at gmx.de
Mon Aug 22 18:06:59 UTC 2005


Dennis_Drescher at sil.org writes:

> I've been using Ubuntu for a couple months now on both a Dell Precision 
> 330 and a Latitude D610. Off and on I've had problems with what I'll call 
> hard crashes. What I mean is that the machine completely locks up and will 
> not allow me to take it down by going into a shell. The only way to 
> recover is to power down. This obviously wreaks havoc on my file structure 
> and I have to run fsck often to fix the partitions. The Latitude, which is 
> running Ubuntu 5.0.4 (with the KDE desktop installed) locks up 
> infrequently and it is hard to predict. The Precision 330 locks up several 
> times a day. Sometimes while I'm typing or using the mouse, many times 
> just while it is sits idle.
> 
> I've used Linux for several years now and have never had such an unstable 
> system. 

Hi Dennis,

I had the same problem with D610 and Kubuntu.  Frequent,
non-deterministic hard crashes (complete "freezes").  The system was
unusable for serious work.

I invested quite some time trying to fix the problem:

* Tried various combinations of boot parameters (noapic, nolapic,
  acpi=on/off/bios, etc.)

* Tried various combinations of X server settings (dri on/off, different
  drivers)

* Tried working without ethernet/wireless with different ethernet driver
  (closed source from manufacturer).

All this did nothing to improve the situation.

* Tried getting the latest kernel 2.6.12.

This fixed the problem _almost_.  The crashes are almost gone: From
one crash every 2-3 hours of normal work to one crash every 1-2 weeks
of normal work.  This is usually tolerable for me, only for talks and
presentations I switch to Windows (where the machine runs stable).

So here's what to do: 

1.) Go to 

http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=linux-image-2.6.12&searchon=names&subword=1&version=breezy&release=all

and download the latest kernel package from breezy.  It's a .deb file.

2.) Now try installing the file

"su dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.12-whatever.deb"

This will fail, telling you that you need two or three additional
packages upgraded first.

3.) Get those packages from breezy (manual download using webbrowser)
  and install them using "su dpkg -i", then install linux-image.

You are set.

In addition, you might notice that your D610 produces a silent, but
annoying high-pitched sound when it's not under full load.  After a
while, I hated the machine for that.  You can fix this by saying

4.) "su emacs /boot/grub/menu.grub" (probably the names are slightly wrong:
    I don't have my notebook here right now)

and adding 

5.) "idle=halt" to the boot parameters you are using.  The
    high-pitched sound is gone.  heaven! :-)

Two things still need work on my machine: First, the not-so-frequent
freezes are still annoying.  Second, konqueror crashes much more often
than desirable.  This seems to be a software quality problem (too many
features, too little testing).

Hope this helped,

  Matthias






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