OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Applications => Topic started by: David Graser on June 16, 2021, 06:18:00 pm

Title: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 16, 2021, 06:18:00 pm
I noticed and have had these problems for some time.  It must be the programs.

PMview with multiple instances and working with lots of graphics sometimes hangs the system requiring a hard shutdown.

This also occurs with FM/2.  Sometimes when I open an archive file and start to drag a file to add to the archive, the system locks up requiring another hard boot.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: roberto on June 16, 2021, 06:28:04 pm
There is a new version of FM2, 2.50, which is very recent.
saludos
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on June 16, 2021, 07:25:55 pm
David,

The biggest increase in stability I encountered was when I made the move from HPFS386 to JFS. Not that inherently there is anything wrong with HPFS386, but I was running over 12 separate partitions (due to the 64G limit) and that just seemed to make things very lock-up prone.

I am now running 7 partitions, of which 2 are small maintenance ones and have very few, if any, lock-ups that appear to co-incide with any sort of disk access.

What configuration are you running with?
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 16, 2021, 10:55:01 pm
PMview with multiple instances and working with lots of graphics sometimes hangs the system requiring a hard shutdown.
That sounds like a shared memory problem (with a small chance for failing hardware). How and do you check shared memory and which apps do you have loaded "high"?

This also occurs with FM/2.  Sometimes when I open an archive file and start to drag a file to add to the archive, the system locks up requiring another hard boot.
That's not a memory eater. But it accesses disks that may have failures.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 16, 2021, 10:59:39 pm
I noticed and have had these problems for some time.  It must be the programs.

PMview with multiple instances and working with lots of graphics sometimes hangs the system requiring a hard shutdown.

This also occurs with FM/2.  Sometimes when I open an archive file and start to drag a file to add to the archive, the system locks up requiring another hard boot.

What software are you running ?

Do you load big programs such as Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird at the same time ?

When the system locks up can you press CTRL ALT DEL ?
Or CTRL ALT F10 twice or is it completely dead ?


Best regards,

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 17, 2021, 12:43:18 am
I noticed and have had these problems for some time.  It must be the programs.

PMview with multiple instances and working with lots of graphics sometimes hangs the system requiring a hard shutdown.

This also occurs with FM/2.  Sometimes when I open an archive file and start to drag a file to add to the archive, the system locks up requiring another hard boot.

What software are you running ?

Do you load big programs such as Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird at the same time ?

When the system locks up can you press CTRL ALT DEL ?
Or CTRL ALT F10 twice or is it completely dead ?


Best regards,

Roderick Klein
For sure these 3 programs are running: multiple instances of PMView, Iconview, FM2, and sometime Firefox. I usually have a USB drive plugged in.  At times I can go to Top and shut down what i think are the problem programs and go back to the WPS.  The mouse will not move requiring a hard boot.  At other times, it I am unable to go to TOP and must do a hard boot next.  With the USB drive in, I am fairly sure, a hard boot is required.  The USB drive may be a large part of it.  I cannot tell you how may graphics files I have lost because of this.

It seems like the more graphics are in the root directory on the FAT32 drive, the greater the risk for a hang.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 17, 2021, 01:48:01 am
I'd suggest not directly using the USB drive, but rather working on your hard drive and afterwards copying them to the USB drive, or if they're on the USB drive to begin with, copy to HD, do work,and copy back.
The FAT32 driver isn't the best and also it is not a good idea putting them in the root directory, IIRC, there are limitations that aren't there if using a subdirectory.
Run mem /v at a prompt to get an idea of your memory situation.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 17, 2021, 03:33:21 am
Yes, I believe there is a limit to the number of files in the root directory before the fat32 drive becomes unstable.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 18, 2021, 03:15:38 pm
I noticed and have had these problems for some time.  It must be the programs.

PMview with multiple instances and working with lots of graphics sometimes hangs the system requiring a hard shutdown.

This also occurs with FM/2.  Sometimes when I open an archive file and start to drag a file to add to the archive, the system locks up requiring another hard boot.

What software are you running ?

Do you load big programs such as Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird at the same time ?

When the system locks up can you press CTRL ALT DEL ?
Or CTRL ALT F10 twice or is it completely dead ?


Best regards,

Roderick Klein
For sure these 3 programs are running: multiple instances of PMView, Iconview, FM2, and sometime Firefox. I usually have a USB drive plugged in.  At times I can go to Top and shut down what i think are the problem programs and go back to the WPS.  The mouse will not move requiring a hard boot.  At other times, it I am unable to go to TOP and must do a hard boot next.  With the USB drive in, I am fairly sure, a hard boot is required.  The USB drive may be a large part of it.  I cannot tell you how may graphics files I have lost because of this.

It seems like the more graphics are in the root directory on the FAT32 drive, the greater the risk for a hang.

What version of the FAT 32 driver are you running ? The one that came with ArcaOS ? If so what version of ArcaOS are you running ?
There have been numerous fixes to the fat 32 driver.


Roderick
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 20, 2021, 03:47:59 am
the arcaOS version.

What is weird is that when it would crash, and check disk was run under windows, the same first few icons were always recovered.  Any new or recent pics were lost.  This was true for every crash.

Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 20, 2021, 04:59:10 am
Are you sure the drive doesn't have problems and is on the way to death?
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 20, 2021, 06:20:22 am
Dave, it did happen.  That may have been it.  This was over months it had been doing this. what is weird is that at the end, after formatting fat32, windows had no problem reading the drive.  However, Arca could not, so needless to say, it is not used any more.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Tom on June 20, 2021, 12:34:20 pm
the arcaOS version.

What is weird is that when it would crash, and check disk was run under windows, the same first few icons were always recovered.  Any new or recent pics were lost.  This was true for every crash.

Your screenshot indicates that you use FAT32 version 5.0.2, but on AN's website the newer version 5.0.3 is available.
Does that make a difference?
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 20, 2021, 05:29:56 pm
Dave, it did happen.  That may have been it.  This was over months it had been doing this. what is weird is that at the end, after formatting fat32, windows had no problem reading the drive.  However, Arca could not, so needless to say, it is not used any more.

This was really recent? A drive with subtle problems can produce most of your symptoms and especially with FAT/FAT32, which are really simple file systems, might not be noticed.
The same with sticks. I have a couple now from testing AOS install that act weird. One seems perfect but won't boot into the installer for example.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Doug Clark on June 21, 2021, 07:35:26 am
Dave,

I have experienced problems in the past with PMView hanging up my system.   I think it is in conjunction with other stuff happening but it doesn't happen often enough for me to be able to pin down.

However I have another suggestion.  If these problems revolve around  a USB drive  it might possibly be your USB port.  I had been having issues with what appeared to be my keyboard: a single press of the key would generate 10 - 20 keys, one key would just spontaneously repeat  (appear to be stuck) until a reboot, etc.  The problems would come and go until a couple days ago the keyboard became unusable.  The problem turned out to be fixed by plugging the keyboard into a different USB port on the same machine.

As for the USB thumb drive:  my daughter had a USB thumb drive that stopped working on her Macbook.  She brought it over to my house and plugged it in to my wife's Macbook and it would not work.  But when I plugged it into my PC I could read the drive.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on June 21, 2021, 03:34:53 pm
I notice you never answered this question from Roderick:

When the system has hung, does it respond to CTRL ALT F10 twice

I remember it as Ctrl-Alt-Num Lock twice.

It's supposed to start a system dump.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: David Graser on June 22, 2021, 12:59:48 am
I notice you never answered this question from Roderick:

When the system has hung, does it respond to CTRL ALT F10 twice

I remember it as Ctrl-Alt-Num Lock twice.

It's supposed to start a system dump.

I always used CTRL ALT DEL numerous times and it did not work.  I did not know about the CTRL ALT F10 twice.

I ditched the USB drive and use a new one.  I now limit the number of files on the FAT32 root directory.  I also copy all my work to my RAM drives and switch to them.  So far, the system is very stable when working.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Greg Pringle on June 23, 2021, 11:59:38 pm
I notice you never answered this question from Roderick:

When the system has hung, does it respond to CTRL ALT F10 twice

I remember it as Ctrl-Alt-Num Lock twice.

It's supposed to start a system dump.

The CTRL ALT F10 x2 in Linux breaks out of the graphical shell which can be done from a VM.

The other one, CTRL ALT Num x2 is an OS/2 version.
Title: Re: hard hangs
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 24, 2021, 03:21:57 am
They both do the same thing on OS/2, trigger a system dump if setup to do so, or if not, just a reboot without closing anything so chkdsk time after. Still tells you how locked up the system is.