[ale] Dealing with System Lock Up

[JD]

How much swap?  I found I had to double it on my netbook with 2G. 2G swap just
isn't enough with these huge browsers sucking all the system RAM.

Besides that, checking the /var/logs before rebooting would be good.


On 01/15/2015 11:20 AM, Gregory Beyer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been having a chronic problem with my system locking up, leaving me with no
> alternative but to Alt-SysRq+REISUB.
> 
> Better than finding ways to *respond* to this situation, I would really like to
> get to _root_ cause and solve it.   Where does the group suggest I look,
> post-reboot, to find out what caused the lockup?  There must be some clues
> logged somewhere.   I would appreciate any ideas.
> 
> I'm running Ubuntu 14.4, with MATE 1.8.1.   4 GB RAM,  300 GB + free disk.
> 
> Lockup seems to happen frequently when I find a Firefox pop-up stating: "A
> script has stopped running, do you want to stop or wait?"   Sometimes I can
> click stop, and get things going again, other times, the pointer will not move,
> mouse will not click.  Alt+tab won't swap windows - total system freeze.  On
> other occasions there is no FF pop-up symptom . . . system just freezes.
> 
> Ctrl+alt+backspace *should* kill my X session, but it has no effect, seems to be
> disabled (?)   I would like to re-enable this.    Can anyone suggest how?  
> 
> Likewise, Alt+sysreq+K *should* kill all processes, but again, this has no
> effect.  How can I re-enable?
> 
> I finally have to resort to alt+sysreq+REISUB which does work, BUT that is
> pretty much a hard boot, I loose all of my work not saved, and frankly, one
> should not have to use a three-finger salute on a linux PC  ala Windows to
> regain control.  Linux just should not be doing this.
> 
> Thanks very much for any ideas where to go from here!
>