5 ms·

> and I annoyingly frequently have had to reinstall the OS from scratch Is there a story behind that?

codetrotter 5y ago
One of the reasons is that the computer in question has a problem where suddenly everything completely freezes, and I have to forcibly reboot the computer with the hardware reset button. And sometimes after rebooting I find that files on the file system have become corrupted. Sometimes the machine will run for days without freezing up. Sometimes it can freeze up after just a couple of hours. Sometimes I am browsing the web when it happens. Sometimes I am writing code and compiling stuff when it happens. I think the longest uptime I have had on it after the problem started without it freezing has been maybe 8 days. It’s been like this for a long while. A couple of years at least. And when it freezes it’s not just the UI. It even stops responding to ping. A few months back someone suggested that it may be due to a faulty PSU. But even after changing the PSU to a new one, it still happens. And it’s been happening both with different Linux distros and with FreeBSD. My hardware is: - MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard - AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU - MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card - Crucial DDR4 2133Mhz 32GB ECC (2x16GB) CT2K16G4WFD8213 RAM I bought those components in March of 2018, according to the order history in my account on the store where I bought it. I don’t remember if I ever did run a memory test, but I will do so again anyways soon because I am suspecting that faulty RAM may be the reason. It just takes a long time to run a memory test on 32 GB of RAM and so whenever I think about needing to run it I don’t have time to do so at that moment. But as I am typing this I realize that I’ve got to go ahead and actually find time for running it soon. Another couple of ideas I’ve had is that maybe the graphics card or the nvidia drivers are to blame. Or that I may have damaged some component with static electricity at some point. Or maybe it’s a thermal issue. I most recently did a fresh install earlier today, and at the same time I switched out the SSD that was in it for another one. As far as I can remember though, I think I was having this kind of problem even before I was using the SSD that I switched out today. But I am not sure about that. So it could be that the SSD was the problem. But it may be a few days until it freezes again if it’s not the reason. Or it could happen in some hours. I’ve also tried to look for clues in /var/log/syslog but haven’t really known what to look for specifically. And since even pinging the machine stops working when it freezes I am not sure the system would even be able to write to any logs at the moment that it freezes, since it seems that at that point pretty much everything has stopped working. Currently I am running tail -F /var/log/syslog in a terminal in the hopes of either seeing something relevant frozen on screen, or in the surrounding output when I reboot the machine since I will then know which line of output I should begin looking in the vicinity of. But yeah, a memory test is the next thing I plan to do after that.
- d_tr 5y ago
  Some ideas just in case... - Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? So this could be a problem... They might also not be correctly configured, so check the UEFI settings. - Regarding the GPU, you could try lowering your PCIe mode to a slower one, especially if you are using a riser cable. - I have had overly bent SATA cables cause complete freezes every few hours on a brand new PC. I luckily got the hint quickly because the HDD LED was staying lit. - What about the quality of the power going into your PSU? - Have you tried rebooting more gracefully with the SysRq commands?
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    > Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? Correct. > So this could be a problem... They might also not be correctly configured, so check the UEFI settings. Most of the settings in UEFI that I can find about RAM are related to overclocking, and I am not using those features. But it may well be as you say that using ECC RAM with a non-ECC motherboard could cause problems. > I have had overly bent SATA cables cause complete freezes every few hours on a brand new PC. I luckily got the hint quickly because the HDD LED was staying lit. My SATA cables are cheap ones I bought off of eBay. I may try and replace them. > What about the quality of the power going into your PSU? The freezing has happened in all of the different places I have lived during this time, so I don’t so. Unless the power cord could be doing something, but the power cord looks fine on the outside at least. > Have you tried rebooting more gracefully with the SysRq commands? Going to try that in the future. Thank you.
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      > > Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? > Correct. I should also add to this for the record, that my mistake here was that when I bought the system, I checked to see that Ryzen 7 1700 supports ECC RAM, but that I was unaware that the motherboard also needed to support it in order for ECC to work. Someone in a sibling comment pointed me to some links and gave me some info about some UEFI settings to try along with some kernel boot arguments and I've applied these. Hopefully it will be enough to take care of the issue, or at least to improve the stability a bit. But if the system continues to be unstable then I will probably try and save up a bit of money to replace the RAM that I have with non-ECC RAM instead, or alternatively that I save up money for a new motherboard which supports both ECC RAM and my current CPU as well as being able to host a newer generation of Ryzen CPU that I can then buy further into the future. Also, I went to an electronics store today after reading your comment and bought a new SATA cable that I now use instead of the one that I had.

One of the reasons is that the computer in question has a problem where suddenly everything completely freezes, and I have to forcibly reboot the computer with the hardware reset button. And sometimes after rebooting I find that files on the file system have become corrupted. Sometimes the machine will run for days without freezing up. Sometimes it can freeze up after just a couple of hours. Sometimes I am browsing the web when it happens. Sometimes I am writing code and compiling stuff when it happens. I think the longest uptime I have had on it after the problem started without it freezing has been maybe 8 days. It’s been like this for a long while. A couple of years at least. And when it freezes it’s not just the UI. It even stops responding to ping. A few months back someone suggested that it may be due to a faulty PSU. But even after changing the PSU to a new one, it still happens. And it’s been happening both with different Linux distros and with FreeBSD. My hardware is: - MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard - AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU - MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card - Crucial DDR4 2133Mhz 32GB ECC (2x16GB) CT2K16G4WFD8213 RAM I bought those components in March of 2018, according to the order history in my account on the store where I bought it. I don’t remember if I ever did run a memory test, but I will do so again anyways soon because I am suspecting that faulty RAM may be the reason. It just takes a long time to run a memory test on 32 GB of RAM and so whenever I think about needing to run it I don’t have time to do so at that moment. But as I am typing this I realize that I’ve got to go ahead and actually find time for running it soon. Another couple of ideas I’ve had is that maybe the graphics card or the nvidia drivers are to blame. Or that I may have damaged some component with static electricity at some point. Or maybe it’s a thermal issue. I most recently did a fresh install earlier today, and at the same time I switched out the SSD that was in it for another one. As far as I can remember though, I think I was having this kind of problem even before I was using the SSD that I switched out today. But I am not sure about that. So it could be that the SSD was the problem. But it may be a few days until it freezes again if it’s not the reason. Or it could happen in some hours. I’ve also tried to look for clues in /var/log/syslog but haven’t really known what to look for specifically. And since even pinging the machine stops working when it freezes I am not sure the system would even be able to write to any logs at the moment that it freezes, since it seems that at that point pretty much everything has stopped working. Currently I am running tail -F /var/log/syslog in a terminal in the hopes of either seeing something relevant frozen on screen, or in the surrounding output when I reboot the machine since I will then know which line of output I should begin looking in the vicinity of. But yeah, a memory test is the next thing I plan to do after that.

d_tr 5y ago
Some ideas just in case... - Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? So this could be a problem... They might also not be correctly configured, so check the UEFI settings. - Regarding the GPU, you could try lowering your PCIe mode to a slower one, especially if you are using a riser cable. - I have had overly bent SATA cables cause complete freezes every few hours on a brand new PC. I luckily got the hint quickly because the HDD LED was staying lit. - What about the quality of the power going into your PSU? - Have you tried rebooting more gracefully with the SysRq commands?
- codetrotter 5y ago
  > Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? Correct. > So this could be a problem... They might also not be correctly configured, so check the UEFI settings. Most of the settings in UEFI that I can find about RAM are related to overclocking, and I am not using those features. But it may well be as you say that using ECC RAM with a non-ECC motherboard could cause problems. > I have had overly bent SATA cables cause complete freezes every few hours on a brand new PC. I luckily got the hint quickly because the HDD LED was staying lit. My SATA cables are cheap ones I bought off of eBay. I may try and replace them. > What about the quality of the power going into your PSU? The freezing has happened in all of the different places I have lived during this time, so I don’t so. Unless the power cord could be doing something, but the power cord looks fine on the outside at least. > Have you tried rebooting more gracefully with the SysRq commands? Going to try that in the future. Thank you.
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    > > Even if the RAM modules are not faulty, ECC is not officially supported by your CPU and motherboard, right? > Correct. I should also add to this for the record, that my mistake here was that when I bought the system, I checked to see that Ryzen 7 1700 supports ECC RAM, but that I was unaware that the motherboard also needed to support it in order for ECC to work. Someone in a sibling comment pointed me to some links and gave me some info about some UEFI settings to try along with some kernel boot arguments and I've applied these. Hopefully it will be enough to take care of the issue, or at least to improve the stability a bit. But if the system continues to be unstable then I will probably try and save up a bit of money to replace the RAM that I have with non-ECC RAM instead, or alternatively that I save up money for a new motherboard which supports both ECC RAM and my current CPU as well as being able to host a newer generation of Ryzen CPU that I can then buy further into the future. Also, I went to an electronics store today after reading your comment and bought a new SATA cable that I now use instead of the one that I had.