Mandrake 9.1 GUI Problems

I've experienced a problem that is rather strange. I'll try to describe it as best as I can. It's happened twice so far with several weeks to a month between them. It's usually after the system has been left idle for a while but not consistant.
When I move the mouse and the monitor turns back on, I can not access any programs especially any that are run as root. Konqueror, Mandrake Control Center and such. When I click on them it gives me the watch for a mouse pointer for a while then it goes away with the app appearing to die.
The desktop icons are all gone. Floppy, CD, the second data drive and any documents that should be there. All gone. This happened both times.
This time it was a bit worse. The GUI crashed. It tried to restart and gets to initializing services and hangs a bit then goes to a blue screen and sits there. It tries to restart after a while but stops in the same place. I managed to get it to another screen like command line, ctrl +alt+F* keys, but I could not read anything. It was like garbage. I blindly logged in as root and typed in shutdown command. It did shutdown and reboot.
When the system came up it did not report any errors at all. I could not read anything during the shutdown. Sorry.
I did notice the first time it did this that during the shutdown it said some systems were not mounted. I did not understand why they were not. I have never unmounted any hard drive.
If I recall correctly I am using ext3 file system. I have a root partition, a swap partition and a /usr partition if that helps.
It return to normal after I reboot the system. No problems. Everything seems to work fine.
Any body ran into this or have any commands that I can run if it happens again and I can get a terminal to work?

Any ideas at all. mdwatts, help out here if you can. This is weird. It's 'weirder' than me.

:confused: :confused: :confused: :D

Oh, if you need more info let me know. I'll post what you need just let me know how to get it. Really bad cloud here so I may be in the dark for a while if the lights go out. I'll be back though.

That is a strange one that I've never seen here before. Are you sure you are not making this up? :p

All I can think of right now is to check all of your system logfiles for any kind of error.

/var/log/XFree86.0.log

/var/log/messages and other system logfiles in /var/log

/home/<user>/.xsession-errors

Only happened twice so far and weeks or months between the two? Were those two times the only ones that you left the system idle for a extended period or have you left the system idle at other times and did not have this problem?

Ok, for the record I rarely shut the system down. I don't usually even logout. It had been running for about a week 24/7. Monitor cuts off after thirty minutes.
I did find some errors that were about the time I had problems in the /var/log/messages. I attached the file. It would be hard to read in the post. There were two parts that had errors. I seperated by a blank line, but there is also a time difference of a few seconds.
I didn't see anything else that looked suspicious in the other files.
I also checked to make sure the drives are not set in BIOS or power management to spin down when idle.
Oh, I'm not making this up. I want a stable and solid system. That's why I use Linux instead of windoze.

I'm feeling froggy again. Been looking at installing gentoo. I plan to have Redhat, Mandrake of course, Gentoo and maybe a couple others. I want to get really good so I can help like you do. :D
Any ideas?

BTW: How you doing? Hope you are well and happy! My old neck is better. Still no Doc yet. I hate the arguement about the need to go to hospital. I hate the place. :eek: Thanks!

Here's the file. I pointed it to it but it didn't post it. Oh well, here it is.

It hasn't done it again yet. But curious to see if anybody knows what causes it or what to do if it does it again. I can't figure this out. Error message in previous post as file.

Any ideas???

Mostly, BUMP

:D :D :D :D

Sorry as I must have missed your reply to my previous post as a few days ago (Thursday) I wasn't feeling well and didn't spend any time here at JL.

Is agpgart normally loaded at all times and somehow it unloads and then cannot load again due to those messages in your system log?

Some here suggest changing

Option "NvAGP" "#"

in the Device section of your X config to another valid number such as '3'.

For those devfsd errors, since I have little knowledge/experience with devfs and unless another member can help, I would suggest trying G4L for those error messages.

I don't know what'agpgart' is. I dunno. :confused:

I looked for "NvAGP" in my XFCongig-4 file. Nothing even close.

What's that about '3'? Where's that go? :confused:

I'm headed to google/linux. "I'll be back".

You need any more confusing info? he he he

:D :D :confused: :confused:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by dalek

You need any more confusing info? he he he

---

Just a bit more to give me an excuse to totally ignore your questions in future. :D

I guess I should ask... do you have a Nvidia video card? If not, you can try adding

alias char-major-10-175 agpgart
options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

to /etc/modules.conf

I did a post on that one. I do have a NVIDIA video card. The driver seems to be working fine. I get the NVIDIA screen when x starts.

I did notice one thing though. This may have nothing to do with anything but. When I goto logout, it flashes the text login then goes right back into x. If I go right back to logout, of x, it goes to the screen where I can choose reboot, halt etc. Now that I think about it, this weird thing happens after I logout which is rare. I change desktops sometimes.

I did find some info with google. No fixes though. I just got through cleaning my rifle, maybe that will fix it. Hear that puter, bullet and brain. he he he he.

You keep answering my dumb question though. OK! I need lots of training on this thing so I can help too.

Any ideas? Do I still need to change the module file? What is agpgart? I'm assuming something to do with video. Want me to shutdown this rig and see what errors it generates?



:D :D :D

AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is a bus system mainly used to connect graphics cards to the rest of the system.

Add

Option "NvAGP" "3"

to your X config. The Nvidia Linux driver readme has explainations for each of those values (0-3).

Also add those two lines to /etc/modules.conf unless they already exist. If you do add them, run

depmod -ae

after (as root).

I hope I'll be back.

Ready! Yep, vi is still installed.

Get set! Changing files. . . Done

GO! "I hope this works." from movie D.A.R.Y.L.

:D :D :D :D

warning: My hostname smoker is not a fully qualified name - set myhostname or mydomain in /etc/postfix/main.cf

That's the only error I could find in the Mandrake Control Center log file. I like the name smoker. Do I have to register that name for it to like it?

I thought I fixed that when I followed the advise in another post. I think I went through linuxconf and "hostname smoker" from root. Is that wrong? Looked in the file main.cf and found this:
#myhostname = host.domain.tld
#myhostname = virtual.domain.tld
That's not smoker and it's commented out.

Thanks mdwatts. Got that problem fixed, just found another in the process.

Going googling. . . .

:D :D :D :D

I found out why there was no error. The clock screwed up AGAIN. :mad: I was looking at the wrong time stamp.

I still get the agpgart error. I went and read the manual and added some stuff to the XF86Config-4 file, had to use 'vi' to fix the thing then. Here's the error:

Sep 3 22:21:32 smoker kernel: 0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module 1.0-4496 Wed Jul 16 19:03:09 PDT 2003
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker postfix: postalias: warning: My hostname smoker is not a fully qualified name - set myhostname or mydomain in /etc/postfix/main.cf
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker postfix: postalias: fatal: config variable inet_interfaces: host not found: smoker
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: agpgart: unsupported bridge
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: agpgart: no supported devices found.
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.13mdk/kernel/drivers/char/agp/agpgart.o.gz: init_module: No such device
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker insmod: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters. You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker modprobe: modprobe: insmod agpgart failed
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: 0: NVRM: AGPGART: unable to retrieve symbol table
Sep 3 22:21:33 smoker kernel: spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.

Here's dmesg:

0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module 1.0-4496 Wed Jul 16 19:03:09 PDT 2003
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: unsupported bridge
agpgart: no supported devices found.
0: NVRM: AGPGART: unable to retrieve symbol table
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.

I went and loaded the agpgart driver from NVIDIA. No help. I'm going to do some more reading. G/L was not much help either.

Anybody got any more ideas? :confused: :confused: :confused:

:D :D