My first Linux crash!

[root.veg]

Yes, I finally did it. I finally had my first proper Linux crash, after about 2.5 years of running it.

When I say proper, I mean I'm discounting the two times I got X to crash because I changed XF86Config without knowing what the hell I was doing. That was just me being stupid. :)

So it happened like this, on my up-to-date Debian stable machine:

1) started Quake 3 from an xterm window in Window Maker

2) swapped to a text console with ctrl-alt-F1

3) started a cd playing (Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Home", btw) with "cdcd play"

4) changed the cd volume using setmixer

5) by this time, I knew Q3 had started, cos I heard the Id logo sound. Then I tried to switch back to X using ctrl-alt-F7. and...

6) BOOM! a screen full of gibberish (not even recognisable ASCII characters) in console mode, no response to the keyboard.

7) couldn't kill the X-server with ctrl-alt-backspace, couldn't swap to different virtual consoles. but...

8) ctrl-alt-delete still managed to give me a safe reboot. How cool is that? :)

[hard candy]

At least it wasn't blue.

[MartinB]

2.5 years without a crash? You're lucky... Mine crashes quite often (well, "quite often" means "hardly ever" if you compare to Windows). I got up just this morning and found the Rubiks Cube screensaver was frozen. Nothing worked, couldn't switch terminals, reboot or anything... Had to hit the reset button.

[OTP]

Up until about a month ago i have been running windows for the past... 6-8 years.... i guess. But it only crashed about once a week! Not bad if you think about it. And they were mostly just small things that you could use CAD to fix the problem. Oh and on top of that i ran IE... So HAH! Im really proud of my win 98 system! Oh my family still runs it. They dont understand this linux jibberish. Dumb normals! Well just wanting to express my pride about my win 98 system. \/\/007!

[hammer123]

can you reproduce the crash?
if so you need to do a bug report

[OTP]

lol... i want to see it happen! Sounds like it would be a fun crash to watch. Get a video camera and record it! Then put the movie up for sale! Or just put it on kazaa or eMule so we could all download it and make the RIAA have a fit! No seriously if you do it ill download it.

[irlandes]

I have also had "linux" crashes, though most of them are application crashes, of course.

However, I have a Dell dual-boot XP/Drake9.1 system. Before I made the switch almost 100%, I was getting an average of 6 XP crashes every day. So, the three crashes in linux in 9 months aren't worth noting.

I use my Windows partition for storing stuff, and once in a while use XP to download something on my kid's cable system, since it is tricky to write FAT from ext3. Virtually every time I use XP for a chore, I have to use CTRL+ALT+DELETE and start over.

By the way, does CRTL+ALT+SYSREQ still work in linux?

And, most of us have noted that a hard shutdown does not cause permanent problems on ext3 filesystems. I have had to reinstall completely on ext2 when it shut down unexpectedly.

[mart_man00]

heh, the easiest way for me to get a crash is to try gnome.

After prasing QT so much GTK hates me....

[Trogdor]

I am staring at about 20 different crashed computers a day. Windows 3.1, NT, Linux, Amiga, BeOS. They cycle every five seconds. On a completely unrelated note, I use the BSOD screensaver with xscreensaver.

:P

[hammer123]

never had a linux crash. gaim and xine crash constantly (apparently gxine is stable, I'm trying it today for the first time). You can crash openoffice.org (OOo) if you try to export 1 of its spread sheets as a pdf (very very bad when it does not automatically back up docs and I'm working on my final project). Never had a M$ Winblowz X'P crash either though. Never had any apps in it crash nearly as much in it except Half-Life and its mods. Linux wins the stability war in servers but at the desktop level it needs work.

[root.veg]

Glad I entertained you all.

Haven't been able to duplicate the crash. I'm always playing CDs from a virtual console while gaming in X-window, and it never gave me any trouble before, and I've been able to do it since. Maybe it depends on the exact moment you press ctrl-alt-F7?

Ah well, roll on the next 2 years... (hopefully without a reboot :) )

[AndrewLubinus89]

I don't think I have ever crashed. I have done some hard reboots but they are generally my fault (I screw up the initrd so it locks up on boot). Of course kde screws up every once in a while and when I use konqueror in flux it screws up. But then I don't remember crashing in xp either.

[deathadder]

I've never had any crashes in Linux that I havent caused :) I on the other hand have had XP crash, once or twice though nothing like 98 when it was on my machine :)

[rocketpcguy]

my one seemed to crash, the state like you said, until i used some of the other machines to log into my one and kill x without rebooting.
never knew about alt+sysrq then, dunno if it works

[terribleRobbo]

Umm... I was trying to get an Atheros-chipset 11g card working in an old P133 box (with both madwifi and linuxant), and whenever I tried to give the card an ESSID or and IP, the whole machine would lock... No keyboard, ssh, ping, nada.

I'm pretty sure it was a power issue... The thing conked out from lack of power when we had the Soundblaster 16 in there, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were just hardware.

[Malikith]

Hehe, I came to linux back in 2002 in may, I tried out Mandrake 9.1 and had a few crashes with that, but not as many with windows, then I left linux for a few months then I got a few new parts for my comp and decided to try Fendora linux, put it in, and i'm pleased, no crashes so far except for things that I did that screwed something up, but thats the great thing about linux, if somethings screwed up, its 99.9% of the time something you did.

[u3mike]

I've only seen two crashes, both where due to a bug in some software that was brought out by the 2.6 kernel and a combination of some other beta software, but its been fixed so no worries :D Also both times my computer recovered just fine(thank god were not in the darkages with the ext2 FS ;) )

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by irlandes
By the way, does CRTL+ALT+SYSREQ still work in linux? If you turn it on when you compile your kernel, yes (under kernel debugging, it's the Magic SysRq Key option -- you probably need to turn on "prompt for development options" before you can see it, too).

I've got it turned on on every single one of my machines... just in case.

[MB[DK]]

I always wonder what people are doing that makes their windows so unstable. I've been running XP since it came out, never crashed on me.

[sharth]

Even if you do all that, (which I had something close to that happen to me once, everything local stopped responding), sshd still happened to work :)

so... You probably could've killed X, and then tried to restart it, and see what you get. Although i dunno how you would restart a trashed terminal (crtl+alt+f1 type)

[sclebo05]

i don't think i have ever had a legitamate linux crash. usuallly if something breaks it is because i am messing with (learning) it.

i am still impressed with it, truly magical OS sometimes

[OTP]

I'll tell you why windows crashes a lot. It's user error. Most people who are not computer literate go out and buy these stupid $799 or $699 computers and think they are something and try to run big games or programs that needs better performance and they dont know what they are doing and just mess the whole thing up. And then they blaim it on "viruses" and its actually there fault! I hate it when people blame it on viruses and they dont even know what a virus is. .... Thats why so many bad things happens to windows.

[sporkit]

Originally posted by root.veg
Yes, I finally did it. I finally had my first proper Linux crash, after about 2.5 years of running it.


thats pretty surprising. do you consider the system locking up from other programs a crash?

i view linux as a rock solid server operating system, but to say that the OS itself is mature enough to be a stable gaming platform is a little naive.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by sporkit150
but to say that the OS itself is mature enough to be a stable gaming platform is a little naive. It's stable enough to be my gaming platform of choice...

*shrug*

[OTP]

Linux may not support many games that are out there. But it sure as heck does a good job running them when you get it working. Linux is a stable OS for games if you know what you are doing setting everything up.

[knute]

Originally posted by OTP
I'll tell you why windows crashes a lot. It's user error. Most people who are not computer literate go out and buy these stupid $799 or $699 computers and think they are something and try to run big games or programs that needs better performance and they dont know what they are doing and just mess the whole thing up. And then they blaim it on "viruses" and its actually there fault! I hate it when people blame it on viruses and they dont even know what a virus is. .... Thats why so many bad things happens to windows.

You know what OTP? You are absolutely right!
It IS user error.

Don't you just hate it when they go out and have the odacity to think that some of these huge programs that they pay good money for are actually supposed to work?!?!?

God! I hate that! People actually thinking the Internet Explorer and gdi.exe are ACTUALLY supposed to work right! What are they thinking?!?! :D

[lagitus]

I've had a situation where the keyboard won't respond a few times mostly due to X crashes. Every time I've been able to either ssh in or hit the power button which will on my system trigger a normal shutdown.

I've only had the kernel crash twice (not counting misconfigured bootups). Both occurred while installing a gentoo system using the live CD. I was browsing with links on console 4, had top running on nr. 3, compiling in a chroot on nr.1 and it crashed a few minutes after enabling swap on console 2. The system had plenty of memory so the install did succeed on the third time when I didn't use swap. The crashes might have been caused by something else too.

[MB[DK]]

Originally posted by knute
gdi.exe are ACTUALLY supposed to work right! What are they thinking?!?! :D

That they do? Mine work just fine, what did you do to yours?

[sclebo05]

i fix windows machines all day, every day. take it from me, windows can find all sorts of ways to destroy itself. many are (in my opinion) file system errors that just 'happen' and the next thing you know a critical file is corrupted.

[rocketpcguy]

sclebo05: exactly, it happens with me too. with tech-support, it's just "re-install windows", but they never tell me why. i have all the updated virus scanner and firewalls and updates.
most people never gets these. maybe i'm doing something wrong.

[happybunny]

hey

I, too, am a MS convert. Well, I'm on my way anyway.

Just wanted to add that I manage about 200 MS Windows 2000 servers and I have had uptimes of nearly 400 days.

It is the apps that cause the crashes these days.

MS has come along way from regular crashes.

HOWEVER: Microsofts BIGGEST issue that they can't seem to get it through their arogent heads that it is that the patches, oh god the patches, which come out weekly FORCE me to reboot.

So its not the crashes anymore, but their inability to 1. Write an OS that doesn't need huge patches, and 2. Write patches that don't require reboots.

Anyway

[hammer123]

Definitely a problem if you want to run your server with a 1 year uptime. Also a problem if you can't resist the temptation to boot into linux instead of windows when grub comes up.

[gommo]

Originally posted by MartinB
2.5 years without a crash? You're lucky... Mine crashes quite often (well, "quite often" means "hardly ever" if you compare to Windows)..

I'm a Linux Fan but also use Windows XP heavily. I've been running it since it's come out and I have only had it crash once! I've had far more problems getting things going on Linux than windows these days.

My big gripe with Microsoft in general is their pricing. Personally I find that their products such as Windows XP are as good (crash wise) than linux.

Maybe people don't ensure they are running all the proper drivers for their windows box, which also goes the same for their Linux boxes I suppose.

[terribleRobbo]

Umm... No offence, but my XP box, for the last two weeks running, has crashed daily... I think it's the file-descriptor problem (as in, SMB borks, it doesn't recognise neither shares nor the 'Run' entry in the Start menu), and we gradually lose all the icons, the 'Start' text on the start button disappears, etc.
Then it just reboots (we have it set to reboot on fatal error, or what-have-you).
Yes, we have done the mandatory scan for viruses and adware.

It also reminds me of the time when I kicked up a process' priority up a notch in 2k, and it killed the virtual memory (as in, set it to 0), crashed the system, and pretty much made it unbootable, even in 'Safe Mode'.

Which is nice.

Guess why I use Linux? :D

[lagitus]

2000 and XP are stable as long as you have the right software or almost no software and you use it carefully. My XPeriences have always been very crashy.

[sclebo05]

also worth mentioning: counter-strike on my XP box crashes very often when connecting to an internet game. counter-strike through wine on my linux box never crashes.

:cool: I dont know........

[root.veg]

yeah, when a friend of mine was lodging in my house, we used to play Quake3 on the LAN. My box (running Debian) has a significantly worse spec than his (running Win2000), yet

1) The game ran smoother if my box ran the server.

2) Timelimit generally had to be < 10 min, because his box constantly had windows popping up in the background, making Q3 hang. And there was apparently no way of stopping it. I can't believe people put up with that!

[gommo]

I suppose its different people and how they use it. All the developers here at my work develop on WinXP and 2000 and we never have issues. We *****ed and moaned about the Win95 98 days but 2000 and xp have been great!

While I think more people should try Linux to avoid having to spend hundreds on their OS, I also think many Linux users should keep up to date with windows as its no where as bad as they make out.

I mean, Microsoft is the richest software company in the world and they didn't get that why by selling crap software or by holding a gun at people and making them buy it. They tend to market products at the right time, that are right for people 'right now'. Not that that means they are the best products but they are the best for the majority of users. My opinion, and its just mine so you can ignore it.

I use winXP and visual studio to develop in on most personel projects and I find nothing comes close.
Here at work though, I use XWin32 to remotly use 2 different linux machines where I do most my work, using vi and Kdevelop.

I use whats best for a particular job. My home network is administered via a linux box that I use for a webserver, CVS server etc.. Nothing on windows comes close to being easily able to configure things via scripts etcc, than Linux. I love that about Linux, its almost simple to get servers etc.. running when you know what your doing.

I use my XP box for developing (games) and running games as nothing comes close on Linux I think. It has heaps of potential but sadly publishers are going to give money to companies that develop for the big platforms, and they are PS2, XBOx and PC (DirectX). Personally I find DirectX is now much more mature than OpenGL for games. That sadly leaves Linux users to the few OpenGL engines (Lucky ID still do them) and WINE. Meaning it will be awhile, I think, before Linux games are popular. Which is unfortunate as bwkaz said, it is a rock solid OS for gaming.

[tecknophreak]

I managed to crash my machine the other day. Of course it was completely my fault. I had a process running SCHED_FIFO at priority max. After I rebooted my machine when it wouldn't do anything, I noticed that the program never went to sleep, thus alway eating all the CPU. :(

[cybertron]

My biggest complaint about XP is that it doesn't handle tweaking very well. If you start changing anything with the system settings, things start to go south in a hurry. Even if you do simple little things, like tweaking the registry so that Windows doesn't freeze for 15 minutes when you try to delete a large broken avi file, all of these little things seem to add up to disaster for XP. I also had it crash randomly on me one day not long after I had just re-installed it fresh (after a reformat). It's been running well lately because it's been splitting time with Linux and I'm tweaking that instead of XP. I actually do like XP okay, but I have difficulty believing the argument that XP is just as stable as Linux. Maybe for certain things, but definitely not for others. Like a lot of people have said, if Linux crashes it's usually something you did, so you can fix it. For me, Windows is often the opposite. Just my two cents on the subject.

[mborrill]

Originally posted by MB[DK]
I always wonder what people are doing that makes their windows so unstable. I've been running XP since it came out, never crashed on me.

Same with me Havent had XP crash once

[DruManiac]

the DVD-Rom on my compaq aramada laptop just stopped working, i think its time was up at last after a year and a half... and i had WinME at that time, i could install any OS coz i needed a cd or dvd rom =) so i used WinME for two years without any proper crash!!! and i dont remember how but i how mandrake crashed in two days =) but it was a hardware problem, so its not mandrakes fault ......

[DruManiac]

Originally posted by mborrill
Same with me Havent had XP crash once

man they just install stupid demo-programs with loads of adware, accept everything explorer wants to install even without reading what it wants to install =) , they play with registry or system settings curiously(thinking they can develop their knowledge) so they **** up the whole system up side down =), i only use windows to play games and for photshop =) here is the list of the things i install on windows:
-games,
-direct x
-nvidia drivers
-photoshop
-3d smax
=)

[terribleRobbo]

Flippin' eck, 2k died in the arse again.

I was going from full-screen to normal in the DivX player, and... Everything just slowed down. I had a screen of white (the player dying), so I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up task manager, and it hung. Nothing responded (except the mouse. There's class for you). I went away and came back, and... it's still dead, no matter how many times I try to get to the task manager. :(

I run a tight ship - I don't tend to install anything other than the necessary (with the except being the DivX player here, of course)... Heck, I didn't install winamp until yesterday. Hence I doubt it's me installing adware.

[cybertron]

man they just install stupid demo-programs with loads of adware, accept everything explorer wants to install even without reading what it wants to install =)

Whoa, I work at a help desk, so I'm cleaning up after people who install too much junk :-) I know better :-P Honestly, I think there's a lot of luck that goes into getting Windows to work. It's kind of like Linux in that if you happen to get hardware and everything that meshes well you'll be okay, but the problem is that unlike Linux you can't just go try another distro and find one that does work. I think part of my problem might be the stupid Intel SpeedStep thing (which would be great if it worked right all the time). My computer rarely runs at it's full speed even when it's under heavy load, and it often throttles down to around half speed, sometimes even when I'm watching DVD's (which makes playback awful). Anyway, I congratulate you if Windows is stable for you, and I feel your pain if not.