ramzswap and shutdown

[TaoTePuh]

I have the following phenomenon on my notebook:

If swap was used during work, I can not shutdown the computer. It hangs during shutdown - the screen still shows the FLWM - cursor and keyboard are frozen - sometimes the keyboard LED are flashing (but not always).

If ramzswap is disabled with boot code "nozswap" and so the "regular" swap partition is used (in my case: /dev/sda2), all works well.

Does this sound familiar?

[tinypoodle]

Could you be more exact about which LED is/are flashing?

[TaoTePuh]

Could you be more exact about which LED is/are flashing?

"Caps Lock" and "Scroll Lock"

[tinypoodle]

AFAIK, flashing CapsLock is indication for kernel panic.   

[TaoTePuh]

AFAIK, flashing CapsLock is indication for kernel panic.   

Kernel panic? Yikes! Maybe there is a HAL 9000 inside my notebook which is fighting against shut down? Am I in danger? Should I change my identity? Okay, call me Bowman ...

[Rich]

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

[TaoTePuh]

.. 2, 3, 4 : There is a flower within my warm heart, Daisy, Daisy ...

[Arslan S.]

i can verify exactly the same problem some times

[curaga]

Would help to have the dmesg output of it, if you can catch it.

[TaoTePuh]

How to debug a system while it shuts down?
How to fetch dmesg during this time?

I thought I could place a few lines (like "dmesg > /foo/bar") in /sbin/poweroff, but this is not a script ...


EDIT: I tried syslogd, unfortunately without success. The last line that was logged is:

Code: [Select]

Apr 12 22:49:49 (none) daemon.info init: starting pid 8513, tty '': '/etc/init.d/rc.shutdown'

[curaga]

For example ssh to the system from a different box, and if it hangs on shutdown, see if you can still get dmesg from the ssh session.

Or shutdown from the cli instead of X with a bootcode of "debug", then you should see any errors on the console.

[TaoTePuh]

For example ssh to the system from a different box, and if it hangs on shutdown, see if you can still get dmesg from the ssh session.

Or shutdown from the cli instead of X with a bootcode of "debug", then you should see any errors on the console.

ssh
The ssh session is closed very soon after the poweroff command. At this time, there's nothing important logged in dmesg.

cli
If ramzswap was used during work, I can not switch to the cli. The system hangs immediately after the click on "Exit to Prompt" (with flashing "Caps Lock" LED).

[curaga]

edit: Sorry, misread your post. You get a kernel panic just killing Xvesa? Does a VT switch also cause that?

If not, what happens if you kill Xvesa from a VT?

[tinypoodle]

Well, the way it sounds now the topic might be a bit misleading if the symptoms are not exclusively particular to system shutdown.

[TaoTePuh]

edit: Sorry, misread your post. You get a kernel panic just killing Xvesa? Does a VT switch also cause that?

If not, what happens if you kill Xvesa from a VT?

The VT way I did not understand.

But with killing Xorg and "sudo poweroff" I have a result. With some effort, I could create a "screen copy". Now I just need someone who speaks that language ...