Kubuntu System Hangs!

[Kenneth Jacker]

  >> PROBLEM:  my system occasionally "hangs"

  mh> I experienced similar problems (seemingly random hard freezes) with
  mh> kubuntu-5.04 and relatively new Dell hardware.

Mine is a Dell as well ... bought it, maybe, 3-4 years ago.

Similar in age to yours?

  mh> It turned out that the kernel did not properly support the SATA
  mh> drives at that time.

That might be it.  However, why would it have worked fine with
Debian/sarge?  Can't remember exactly which SMP kernel, but it was
definitely later in the 2.6.x series ...

Does Ubuntu/Kubuntu maintain their own kernels or just use those
from Debian?

  mh> The fix was to use some suitable kernel parameters (namely,
  mh> "pci=bios idle=halt") ...

Could you translate those?  Maybe I should try booting with them?

  mh> .. and to use always the latest kernel (2.6.12 works perfect for me).

As I mentioned already, I was using the 2.6.12-10-686-smp kernel.  I'd
guess that's pretty much up-to-date, no?

  mh> In your case I would first check if the problem disappears if
  mh> you use a non-SMP kernel.

The machine "hung" again last Thursday morning.  I rebooted, and it
kept running until yesterday afternoon (about three days) and became
unusable again.

So, I came in to my office last night and rebooted with the non-SMP
kernel (2.6.12-10-686).  We'll see if that makes any difference ...


Thanks, Matthias, for your ideas.  Anyone else know how I can
determine just what is causing this (very undesirable) behavior?

It is hard to fix something if you don't know what is broken!

  -Kenneth