Odd machine behaviour

Sat Dec 1 00:12:23 UTC 2012

On 11/30/2012 10:26 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

> On 30 November 2012 01:15, Phil Dobbin <bukowskiscat at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a AMD Athlon 2GHz box with 2 GB's of RAM running Debian Wheezy
>> with all the latest patches pulled in from the repos. It runs fine
>> (after the initial glitches with Gnome 3 which settled down about a
>> month ago) but it has a nasty habit of just "dying". By dying I mean,
>> I'll be logged into it from another machine using Byobu with tmux as the
>> backend & I'll get a broken pipe error message & sure enough, when I
>> cross the other side of the room, the screens gone blank (it's running X
>> Windows) & the keyboard & mouse are completely unresponsive.
>>
>> I can see that the mouse still has life (it's an optical one) & with it
>> being on a KVM switch, the light still shows activity on the switch &
>> the computer tower itself has a green LED showing it's running & if I
>> strain, I can still hear it running.
> 
> This is a bit beyond my level of expertise, but a couple of ideas:
> 
> * attach an actual physical keyboard to the flakey machine, and then
> either or both of:
> 
> * enable X-clobbering and see if Ctrl-Alt-Backspace terminates X.org
> and drops you to a console, in which case, you know it's still running
> & it might be a graphics-related issue
> 
> * try the Linux system-reset key combination - if it works, that will
> tell you if the kernel is still responsive
> 
> If the keyboard is USB then you can have multiple ones. I suggest a
> local connection in case the issue is KVM-related; indeed, IIWY & if
> possible, I'd remove the KVM for testing purposes.

I've already had her off the KVM: no difference (the reason she's on a
KVM in the first place is where she is situated is my workbench for new
machine installs & maintenance; it's easier than unplugging the VGA plug
on this particular monitor. I think it was designed by a sadist).

So she actually has a keyboard & mouse attached (PS2) & a minimal Gnome
desktop running. Unfortunately, the USB ports have been removed from the
machine as they were no longer working so it's just a PS2 interface. I
remotely log in 'cause I'm lazy; saves me walking across the room.

Strangely enough, whatever key combination I use, I can't access the
BIOS (&, believe me, I've tried 'em all). Also she boots like a rocket
so there's virtually no BIOS boot screen.

No key combinations work at all. First thing I did was try dropping into
a console. No luck. Keyboard completely unresponsive but as I've said
whether on KVM or off, the optical mouse is still lit up & I can hear
the machine running (also there's a message on reboot saying filesystem
was not cleanly unmounted when I pulled the plug so she was still live).

This is the message that spewed forth just before last she "died":

181 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    0.939731 ] PM: Hibernation image
not present or could not be loaded.
182 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.258177 ] libata version 3.00
loaded.
183 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.258754 ] pata_via
0000:00:0f.1: version 0.3.4
184 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.278189 ] sata_via
0000:00:0f.0: version 2.6
185 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.899079 ] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]
Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
186 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.907358 ] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached
scsi CD-ROM sr0
187 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    1.911121 ] sr 1:0:1:0: Attached
scsi CD-ROM sr1
188 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    3.304232 ] PM: Hibernation image
partition 254:1 present
189 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    3.304235 ] PM: Looking for
hibernation image.
190 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    3.304565 ] PM: Image not found
(code -22)
191 Nov 22 18:16:48 wheezy kernel: [    3.304568 ] PM: Hibernation image
not present or could not be loaded.

That's from /var/log/debug. Clutching at straws methinks I am.

I'll take your suggestion of X Clobbering (I'll Google it for more
details) & see if I can get a console. If I'm able to get a console, I
should be able to figure it out.

Thanks to everybody for all their help & suggestions.

Cheers,

  Phil...

-- 
currently (ab)using
CentOS 5.8 & 6.3, Debian Squeeze & Wheezy, Fedora Beefy & Spherical, OS
X Snow Leopard & Ubuntu Precise & Quantal
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