Some suggestions for troubleshooting Linux.

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Contents

Notes

General

• Confirm that you are not out of disk space -- use df on various partitions.

• Confirm your memory is ok -- run memtest86.

• Make sure memory is properly seated.

• Make sure cooling is good (fans clean, ventilation holes not blocked, etc.)

• If you get an error like "device busy" you can try running lsof (LiSt Open Files) to see if you can find which file is keeping the device busy.

• Cultivate helpful mindsets. (Starting a list, explain more later, maybe.)
  • If something does not occur in Linux, think about whether it could be because of a permission problem.
  • Look for the appropriate log files (Linux has them, Windows typically does not).
  • Suspect msec.

Instability

• Check top (and observe)

From Todd Lyons (Re: [expert] Bug.... maybe maybe not.; 1 Jul 2002):

1. 'killall artsd' (assuming you're running KDE, you won't be able to share /dev/dsp anymore)

1. Any Western Digital hard drives?

1. 'dmesg' Look for any kind of errors accessing the hard drive.

1. 'hdparm -t /dev/hda' or whatever your hard drive is. Do it right

after bootup, and do it when it starts to slow down, and do it when it's barely crawling.

1. If you ssh to it from another box, is it strange there as well

(trying to rule out the display as a culprit).

From Damain G. (Re: [newbie] Sudden Logouts of KDE: 22 Jul 2002):

> well I think it happens after 5 minutes of logging in. It only happens when
> KDE is idle and when I am logged in the Virtual Terminal (ctrl alt f1). In
> KDE 2.2.2, after log outs, the xwin restarts but with KDE 3.0.2, after that
> log out, the Xwin crashes, when I execute startx, it prompts for no window
> to start or something like that, so I had no choice but to reboot my system.

ok, then do this:

go into /tmp, find any file or directory containing X11, qt, kde, mcop, ksock or mcop in their names and delete them all. the same in ~/tmp for all of your users.

( you will probably have to do this from outside X )

and then see if it happens again.

See:

• Linux hardware stability guide, Part 1: CPU and memory troubleshooting; Daniel Robbins; March 2001 --
• Linux hardware stability guide, Part 2: Drivers, IRQs, and PCI latency ; Daniel Robbins; July 2001 --

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Resources

See ResourceRecommendations. Feel free to add additional resources to these lists, but please follow the guidelines on ResourceRecommendations including ResourceRecommendations#Guidelines_for_Rating_Resources.

Recommended

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Recommended for Specific Needs

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Recommended by Others

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No Recommendation

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Not Recommended

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Contributors

• () RandyKramer - 23 Jul 2002
• <If you edit this page: add your name here; move this to the next line; and include your comment marker (initials), if you have created one, in parenthesis before your WikiName.>

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