Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I am getting frequent crashes on my SL5 laptop;  the only data I
> have is that a couple of indicator lights are flashing.  Such
> crashes were rare with SL4.4 before I converted the machine. 
> Sometimes, the crashes are while I am using the laptop, but more
> often they occur between 1 and 4 am (most of my cron.daily jobs
> kick off at 4am).  Often, the machine is logged in with a few
> browser windows up and apps windows open.
> 
> What can I do to log the crashes, so I can tell the state of
> the machine and see what is running when the crash occurs?  I'm
> not a coder, so crash dumps will probably be too hard to use
> without a lot of additional study.  I can write a script that
> dumps a "ps" and a "free" into a date-named file in a log directory
> every minute or so, but there is probably a more intelligent way.

"crash" is a multipurpose term & has a range of meanings. I take it in 
this case that the system declines to respond to you, that there's 
nothing on the screen.

Since the times you point out (when you're using it, maybe 4:00 am) are 
times when it's busy, hardware is one suspicion.

It's also possible you don't have enough RAM & they system's simply 
thrashing. How much did you say? What's the disk light doing?

You might edit /etc/sysconfig/syslog so as to make syslogd write "marks" 
to the system log every so often: this will give some idea of when thigs 
go awry.

If you have another system handy, you could also configure syslogd on 
the laptop to log to the other system (doesn't preclude existing logs, 
doesn't do bad things if the other system's not listening, but do 
specify IP address and not hostname). Make sure the other system is 
configured to listen, it's not by default.

Does a quick press of the power switch cause it to shut down properly? 
Note, if it's thrashing this might take an hour or more. Be patient. 
Note, if the disk light is not hard on, then the system's not thrashing.


-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
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