Re: [PLUG] Debian unstable locking up and corrupting filesystem

["Alan D. Salewski" <salewski@att.net>]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 04:20:27PM -0400, Alan D. Salewski spake thus:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 02:34:03PM -0400, David B. van Balen spake thus:
> > I've been having a recurring problem the past few weeks where my system will
> > suddenly lock up. If this happens while I'm at the computer, I'll be able to
> > move the mouse pointer around, but none of the apps will respond. If it
> > happens when I'm not around, I'll come back to a blank screen and the
> > computer won't respond at all. In all cases, there's nothing to do other
> > than a hard reboot, after which ext3 says it can't replay the journal and
> > I'll have various filesystem issues until I run an fsck. It happened again
> > yesterday, and now the system won't boot.After the grub menu, I get a bunch
> > of stuff like:
> > 
> > [   13.720864] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
> > [   13.720905] ata1.00: error: {UNC }
> > [   13.744497] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, secdtor 195523
> > 
> > followed by messages about not being able to mount /dev, /sys and /proc
> > because there's "No such file or directory" and I'll get dumped at a BusyBox
> > prompt (when I type "help" I don't see an option to run fsck, so I'll have
> > to see if I can figure out another way to run it).
> > 
> > In any case, I think this started happening shortly after Debian started
> > packaging my ati firmware drivers in non-free, or some such. I had been
> > getting errors at startup about not being able to load some firmware files,
> > so I finally installed the appropriate packages about a week ago and got rid
> > of the firmware error on startup. I figured that would fix the issue, but
> > obviously that wasn't the case.
> > 
> > Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing this?
> *snip*
> 
> I can't speak to the causes, but when it happens, have you tried logging
> into the machine from a remote host (say, via ssh)?
> 
> I've had problems with video drivers in the past that would lock up my X
> display in the way you describe (mouse pointer moves, but thing works),
                                                            ^
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s/thing/nothing/


> but have still been able to ssh into the machine to shut it down
> cleanly.
> 
> I'm sorry that that doesn't help you right now, but might be useful in
> the future...
> 
> -Al

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a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i                   salewski@att.net
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