0

I'm looking for help diagnosing an issue I'm having with Ubuntu 14.04 64bit.

I'm a relative newbie to all this, so I'm not really sure where to start.

Basically what happens is this:

  • computer boots up as normal

  • computer runs fine for a certain amount of time (normally an hour or so), whilst I work & browse the net.

  • Normally chrome (Version 39.0.2138.3 dev (64-bit)will crash, and all my other applications will freeze. This lasts about 30 seconds, then chrome will close and the other applications will be responsive again.

    P.S the fact it's normally google chrome is probably irrelevant - I have had this happen without opening chrome at all.

  • Other than using the applications I already have open, I can't do anything else. I can't open a new application (even using keyboard shortcuts), I can't close old ones, and I can't shut my computer down (the top right menu doesn't open and I can't get to terminal).

What I have attempted

Investigating with the virtual terminal

During the crash, I've tried to open a virtual terminal (ctrl-alt-f2), but when I try to log in, I get the error:

[4210.959605] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 5373856

gsmartcontrol disk scans on both SDD and HDD

Having seen the above, I thought my ssd (sda) must be failing, so I downloaded and ran gsmartcontrol and did the extended test on both my SSD and my HDD, and got no problems reported.

Memtest (Thanks @Rinzwind)

So far I've only had this running for 1.5 hours, which was enough to complete two test suites successfully with no failures. EDIT: Completed 9 hours last night with no errors.

I am not sure where to go from here though, are there some logs I can look into? Are my hard drives definitely okay if gsmartcontrol tells me they are?

Thoughts & help much appreciated.

Community
  • 1
Ed_
  • 141
  • Start chrome from commandline. Generally it will throw a notice just before crashing that might give some hints. 2. run memtest from the live dvd to check your memory modules (if crashes are random memory would be my 1st thing to check). Edit the question with the results :)
    • – Rinzwind Sep 09 '14 at 11:45
  • Thanks, I'll give that a go - I'll run memtest when I don't have to be working :) – Ed_ Sep 09 '14 at 12:35
  • So I ran memtest for an hour and a half (I'll run it overnight) and had no issues. I've also been running chrome from the terminal but the terminal closes very quickly after chrome does so I can't see what happens there.

    I also had an occasion where the PC crashed 45 mins after booting after just having steam and a game open... Bit stuck as to where to go next.

     – Ed_ Sep 09 '14 at 21:23
  • possible duplicate of how to interpret these errors from syslog – Eliah Kagan Sep 09 '14 at 21:52
  • I don't think this is a duplicate. Yes there is an error in common but the context is very different. – Ed_ Sep 09 '14 at 22:18