xfce4.2 freezes

[Erik Harrison]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 23:12:06 -0700, Scott Horowitz
<scott at theskyiscrape.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestions. Stephen, I tried everything you listed but
> it still ended up freezing.
> 
> My distro is Arch Linux - again, never had a problem with it or xfce4.2
> until I rebooted. The only packages I've updated recently were dbus,
> gail, curl, and openoffice. I've been browsing the Arch forums, mailing
> list, and bugs report hoping that I'm not alone in this, but I look to
> be. I've tried fluxbox and gnome and both have worked btw.
> 
> I'm on a Compaq Presario 2105US laptop - AMD 1800+ XP, 1gb of ram, ati
> radeon mobility U1.. nothing real unique. I'm actually going to be
> switching to a different laptop early this week, maybe I should just see
> if this problem persists through my transfer (I'm planning on taking the
> hard drive from this laptop and putting it into the other one). I guess
> that'll be a test for if it's a hardware problem. I just have a hard
> time believing that since Xfce seems to be the only software giving me
> problems.
> 
> And why the heck won't ctrl-alt-f1 work? It works when I'm in fluxbox.
> Damn I hate computers sometimes ;P

Ctrl+alt+f1 doesn't work because either X is locked up, or the kernel
is locked up. It could be caught in a resource loop, or it could be a
hard lockup.

Is the ssh daemon running? If it is, can you ssh into the box? If you
can, we'll know if it's a kernel or an X/Xfce thing, and you can run
top to point to the spinning process. If you can't, then either the
system is so locked that ssh times out, or (more likely, considering
the symptoms) the kernel's locked up.

If this only happens when you run Xfce, it may point to a memory
problem. Xfce is more memory intensive than, say, fluxbox, and it may
cause RAM to fritz, and you get a hard lockup.

> 
> Scott
> 
> Net Llama! wrote:
> > Which distro are you running?  What kind of hardware is this?  This sounds
> > alot like a hardware problem (likely bad RAM).
> >
> > On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Scott Horowitz wrote:
> >
> >>I've still gotten nowhere with this. Running xfce as root gives the same
> >>result. Even if I just try to run xfce4-panel from a console in fluxbox
> >>everything freezes up, and neither ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-f1 do
> >>anything. I tried having top running before I call xfce4-panel but that
> >>wasn't any help.
> >>
> >>I'm really out of ideas at this point. Nobody has any suggestions about
> >>troubleshooting this? I suppose I can try compiling from source as a
> >>last resort..
> >>
> >>Scott
> >>
> >>Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> >>
> >>>Scott,
> >>>
> >>>When that happens, please switch to a console (using Ctrl+Alt+F1) and do
> >>>a top to identify which process is looping.
> >>>
> >>>TIA
> >>>Olivier.
> >>>
> >>>On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 14:16 -0700, Scott Horowitz wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I don't know if I should be posting this here or on my distro's mailing
> >>>>list.. but basically, I rebooted and now xfce freezes when starting up.
> >>>>It had been working just fine until today. I use startxfce4,
> >>>>xfce-session starts, I see the session splash - and then it gets to
> >>>>"Loading desktop settings" and it's dead. Although the cpu is definitely
> >>>>doing something because my laptop fan goes into its highest speed.. but
> >>>>I've let it work for 5+ minutes with no activity. And I can't
> >>>>ctl-alt-backspace or anything, I have to physically restart.
> >>>>
> >>>>I've deleting my .cache, I'm renamed my .config to .config.bak, I've
> >>>>uninstalled and reinstalled the Xfce4 group, and I'm still in the same
> >>>>situation.
> >>>>
> >>>>I've also tried replacing startxfce4 with:
> >>>>exec xfdesktop
> >>>>and that seems to work (unless xfdesktop is supposed to give me a
> >>>>background or a right-click? because I don't get those but I can
> >>>>ctrl-alt-backspace out of X)
> >>>>
> >>>>If I instead use:
> >>>>xftaskbar4 &
> >>>>exec xfdesktop
> >>>>I get a blank taskbar at the top and then it's again frozen. Have to
> >>>>physically restart.
> >>>>
> >>>>Any ideas? How can I diagnose this problem? Thanks in advance..
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>Xfce mailing list
> >>>Xfce at xfce.org
> >>>http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce
> >>>http://www.xfce.org
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> 
> --
> -Scott Horowitz
> http://www.theskyiscrape.com
> _______________________________________________
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> Xfce at xfce.org
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> http://www.xfce.org
> 


-- 
CAPS LOCK: ITS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
-Erik