Unexpected freezes in Maverick

[NoOp]

On 11/29/2010 12:23 AM, Carsten Agger wrote:
> I'm using Maverick Meerkat on an old(-ish) MSI Megabook S271 with an old 
> Radeon Xpress graphics card onboard.
> 
> Recently (yesterday, or day before) the system has started freezing 
> unexpectedly - no cursor movement, no reaction to hotkey combinations, 
> nothing. Only pressing the power button helps.
> 
> It might be the mother board getting old/doing strange things, but 
> perhaps it might also be the system ...? It seems to be associated with 
> high system load, especially opening programs. After a reboot I can't 
> find anything suspicious in the logs.
> 
> Does anyone know how I continue from here in an attempt to diagnose the 
> problem? I'd really like to know if there's a kernel bug or something 
> that causes the freeze, as it's causing me to lose work right now.
>

My _guess_ would be video card/chipset issues. According to what I could
find, your system appears to be running an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150. Can
you verify by checking:

$ sudo lshw
or
$ lspci -nnvv | grep -A1 "VGA compatible controller"

Also:

1. What video drivers are you using?
- Check System|Administration|Additional Drivers
2. Check your logs
- Check your Xorg.0.log to see if there are errors there
[/var/log/Xorg.0.log +Xorg.0.log.old]
- Check your ~/.xsession-errors
3. Check launchpad to see if there are others reporting the same:
-
<https://launchpad.net/+search?field.text=ATI+Radeon+Xpress+1150+%2Bmaverick>
- <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati>
[enter: maverick +freeze
in the search bar]
4. Check your bios for temp shutdown warnings/notifications. If you are
getting a cpu thermal shutdown you may not see it in Ubuntu.
5. Have a look through these for suggestions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Quirks
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/KernelModeSetting
[Try turning off KMS]
6. Try running without any visual effects turned on
(System|Preferences|Appearance|Visual Effects: None