Ubuntu getting locked up

[Markus Schönhaber]

20.03.2010 12:28, Chuck Kuecker:

> I have a strange thing going on with my system. Three times now, Ubuntu
> has gotten locked up somehow such that I cannot open a terminal window
> or restart or reboot the system. I cannot stop the X-windows either. I
> am running Ubuntu 9.10 with all the latest updates.
> 
> So, I kill power and restart.

Don't do that - unless nothing else helps. Among the things you could
try are:
- Provided you have sshd running on the machine and another computer in
your network, try to log in via ssh and reboot,
- Try rebooting via SysRq. Generally pressing and holding Ctrl+Alt and
then PrintScr, R, E, I, S, U, B (Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring)
should do a clean reboot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

> One other thing I noticed - whether it makes any difference, I am
> running the 'engine' screen saver that shows animated IC engines. Lately
> it has been very slow, although there is not much going on when I look
> at CPU usage on the system monitor. The last time after I ran fsck and
> rebooted, the screen saver ran at normal speed. Perhaps a clue.
> 
> Has anyone seen this kind of scenario? I am wondering if the build
> script is somehow breaking something. It's a version of ltib provided by
> Freescale for their embedded processor running Linux.

I have rarely had lock-ups of Linux machines. But when one occurred,
almost always the (proprietary) graphics driver was to blame. Might be
the source of your problem, too.
You should check the Xorg logs, syslog etc. Maybe you'll find additional
information about the root cause of the problem.

-- 
Regards
  mks