On 2013-06-18 14:03, Jape Person wrote: > On 06/18/2013 10:31 AM, Chris Purves wrote: >> On 2013-06-18 10:20, Rob Owens wrote: >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: "Chris Purves" <ch...@northfolk.ca> >>>> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org >>>> Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:59:07 AM >>>> Subject: systems hangs every few days >>>> >>>> After upgrading to wheezy, I get a system hang every one or two days >>>> where the system becomes completely unresponsive and I need do a >>>> cold boot. >>>> >>> That sounds a lot like bad RAM. Run MEMTEST86 on it. I'm not sure if the >>> debian install cds contain that, but Knoppix usually has that as a boot >>> option. The full test could take more than a day. If you're lucky, it'll >>> find an error in the first 10 minutes. >>> >> >> I ran memtest86 already for about 20 minutes without error. (I forgot to >> mention that in original post). I will run it overnight tonight to see if >> anything else pops up. >> >> I am skeptical that it's bad RAM since the problem occurred after upgrading >> and I would have expected some kernel panic errors in the logs or something >> like that, although I suppose bad RAM can manifest itself in different ways. > > One thing I noted in your first message, Chris, was that it usually happens > when > a cron job is running. I immediately thought of two possibilities: > > 1. One or more of the cron jobs are running a process that is "tickling" a > driver that doesn't work as well with the newer kernel as it did with the > previous one. > > 2. A scheduled job is doing something CPU-intensive that could be making the > system overheat. (I suppose load caused by a given job might be worse under > wheezy than it was under squeeze.) >
I looked more closely at the syslog just before the system hangs, and not always, but often the last line is a cron job calling a script that I wrote which uses phantomjs to log into the web GUI of my router to see if the IP address has been changed. I started running the script in a loop and twice after about 300 iterations the system would freeze up. I removed that script and have since reached an uptime of 8 days. Interestingly, phantomjs is one of two packages that couldn't upgrade to wheezy. I'm still using the squeeze install. I have no idea how that could be the cause. I'll report back in a few weeks to confirm if things are still running properly. -- Chris Purves Visit my blog: http://chris.northfolk.ca "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." - Sir Isaac Newton -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51d47584.40...@northfolk.ca
