On Friday 12 August 2005 21:54, Alan Boyd wrote:
> We've just got a whizzy new HP data station to replace our old SGI O2. It
> came with Topspin and, of course, the Topspin Plot Editor.
>
> Among other difficulties, there is a condition, apparently originating from
> use of the TPE, where the computer seems to slow down to an almost complete
> halt. It is unresponsive to mouse clicks or keyboard entries, and windows
> either don't move or move only after several tens of seconds, and then the
> windows underneath don't redraw. The effects are not confined to TPE, but
> may also be seen in the main program and in the behaviour of the Linux
> (KDE) desktop.
>
> All you can do is to wait, usually 5 to 10 minutes, for some semblance of
> action to return, and then quit TPE, and sometimes even Topspin, and try
> again.
Dear Dr. Boyd,
I had the same problem not long ago. The cause of the problem was a bad
disk drive. This is quite easy to check: become root and look for error
messages in the system log file /var/log/messages:
grep sda /var/log/messages* (if it is an SCSI disk: sda=disk1 sdb=disk2, ...)
grep hda /var/log/messages* (if it is an IDE disk: hda=disk1, hdb=disk2, ...)
On my system this check gave out the following error message (in fact a
lot of them):
/var/log/messages:Jul 27 09:20:30 tiger kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekCom4plete Error }
/var/log/messages:Jul 27 09:20:30 tiger kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=63, sector=56
/var/log/messages:Jul 27 09:20:30 tiger kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 56
/var/log/messages:Jul 27 09:20:30 tiger kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 7
This disk contained bad sectors, and each time the data in these sectors
were accessed the whole system froze.
Also it would be interesting to record the CPU usage during system freeze.
Just run the 'KDE System Guard' (in "System Tools") and watch the "CPU Load".
best regards
Andreas Hünnebeck
-- ======================================================================... ... Andreas C. M. Huennebeck . * . . Software Engineer . . . . Bruker BioSpin GmbH B R U K E R D-76287 Rheinstetten, Germany . . . . Tel : +49 (721) 5161-444 . * . . Fax : +49 (721) 5161-480 ... ... email: Andreas.Huennebeck@bruker.de GPG-Key: http://www.bruker.de/~ah/public_keys/ah.asc PGP-Key: http://www.bruker.de/~ah/public_keys/pgp_ah.asc =======================================================================
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