KDE: Cycle on for 2 seconds. Off for 2 seconds.

Sounds to me like a hardware issue. Check the memory first.
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This is a non-typical issue... i.e. I never heard it before. Solving it may require some trial and error, but I could mae the following suggestions:

1. Check if BIOS is set to PnP OS. If so, set PnP OS to 'no'
2. In grub screen, type 'irqpoll' to add this to the boot line. See if the problem keeps occurring.
3. Reset the nvidia driver to the open source nv driver and check if this works better
4. See if it happens in the root account as well, or if it is only the user account
5. Maybe the no sound issue is related. Does KDE give an error about the sound system? If so, there could be an IRQ conflict.
6. Open a console and issue the command 'top'. Any process taking up all CPU cycles? What is the outcome of the command 'free'?

Please start here and get back to us to see if there are other issues.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

I have experienced this issue - in fact i get it now - which is no surprise considering the sort of messing around i do on my install! It is tricky to tie down - symptoms i have is a periodic lag of 1-2 seconds where everything freezes - letters typed appear after the lag - very annoying - and most certainly caused by video driver-xserver problem. You say you *haven't* installed the proprietary Nvidia driver which is interesting - so perhaps a starting point - as is checking the /var/logs - xorg.log in particular for any clues...

Thanks for all the replies. It's good to be a part of such a helpful community.

I changed the Bios from auto to manual.
Rebooted, added irqpoll to the boot line.

No difference as a regular user. *But* the problem does goes away when I'm root. I did not try the root account until after I'd made the above changes.

I had already looked at top before posting here. And I couldn't see a correlation between a process using CPU cycles and the freezes.

I've tried a lot of things to try to make sound work. I've tweaked alsamixer multiple times. Kmix has been useless because there are no mixers to choose from in the kmix window. So I can't get off the dime there.

I'm using an Audigy card and the system recognizes it as such.

I was wrong in my earlier post about the video driver. In trying to figure out how to change the driver to the "nv" open source driver, as suggested, I discovered in "xorg.conf" that I was already using the "nv" driver. I changed "nv" to "nvidia", hoping that would change it over to the nvidia driver. Don't know if that's the way to do that or not. But it didn't make any difference upon restarting the xsession.

That the freeze problem goes away for root seems significant. Could it be a permissions problem somehow?

Still haven't tried downloading the proprietary drivers from Nvidia. Thought I'd get some feedback on the above first.

Again, thanks for all the help.

Number one there was a bug in KDE , the kdeinit-kdesktop.so file needs to be replaced with updated one if youre running the first release. I dont remember if the 6.01 disks had the fix or not i assume so.

If that fixes your stutter you will i think need to choose the legacy nvidia driver from Mepis controll center, the system will do it for you in the video panel by checking legacy & apply > ok.

Just check the wiki or search this site for particulars on both subjects. You will find Mepis very friendly with nvidia cards and in general. Have fun!

jim

Man! Jim, we're talking record-breaking response time for a post. I think I'm going to like it here.

But I came back here first to report what just happened.

I had gone into the package manager to see if my ssh daemon was installed. When I looked down at the little aquarium widget the fish were swimming freely which means KDE wasn't freezing anymore. (That's been a good visual clue for me because the fish stop when KDE freezes.)

Wow! It appeared the system had fixed itself magically overnight.

Then when I closed the package manager, they started stopping in their tracks again.

So there's something to mull over there. Still not sure what it means. But it seems to suggest again that root doesn't have this problem.

Now, Jim. I tried doing as you suggested, going into the video panel to change the drivers. Only problem is, I don't have a "video" panel in "kcontrol", which is what I presume you were talking about. There I have a "Display" panel but nothing there references my video card. Only my monitor. As a matter of fact, and I have looked and looked, there is no way I can see to tweak my video card settings in KDE. My only recourse so far has been to edit xorg.conf from the command line.

I'll go search the wiki as you suggested. I'm posting this now for posterity's sake in case someone else finds themselves in the same situation I am now.

Thanks again.

Upon starting an Xsession as root, I heard the sign on music.

So there's something about the user account that is mucking up both the video and the sound.

Wondering did you install dvd 6.01 from dvd or 6.0 standard 700 meg iso? If it says 6.0 you will likely need to change the -kdedesktop.so file for other reasons like screen savers etc. & may have impact on other things on some systems i dont know for sure. But if youre running 6.0 standard cd download i recommend you replace that file.

Video tweaks are accessed by little gears in kicker panel im not in 6.0 right now so cant give you exact directions from memory. Hang in there you have found the best so forget the rest & enjoy.

jim

Many thanks go out to, Jim, who pointed me in the right direction.

Part of my problem in tracking this down is being new to the Mepis environment. Just a few minutes ago I finally noticed the "Mepis Utilities" icon in "System Configuration (Settings)/System Administration". There I found the place to remove the tick for "nv(xorg)" video driver and change it to "nvidia(legacy)".

That did the trick. Now I have a smooth operating KDE environment.

Now I'm down to trying to fix the sound problem.

Thanks everyone.

Last issue out of the way. Now I'm happy with Mepis.

I made my normal user a member of the "audio" group. Now sound is working for him.

Hallelujah.

Glad you solved your problems. I wish all people would have so much patience

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This will be a quick post because this is the 5th time I've tried to get something in before the system locks up ... my latest problem after supposedly fixing the intermitten freeze and sound problems. This all started happening after I rebooted.

None of this makes any sense to me. This is my second attempt at the Ubuntu/Debian world and I'm about to dump it again.

I'm open to suggestions. I might try reinstalling the system one more time but that will just about be it for me. But before I bail, I really would like to understand just what the heck is going on.

Gotta go while I can ... will check in tomorrow from, sigh, windows.

You did check the memory, right?
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Here's the output from free:

07:55 PM:krb@rosie:~:free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1034072 337412 696660 0 13528 181552
-/+ buffers/cache: 142332 891740
Swap: 1261060 0 1261060

I have one gig installed.

I'll run a memory check from the mepis boot disk later.

Better run ...

The intermittent locks are an Nvidia driver thing. It happens on some machines with the 3d driver installed.

The fix in many case:
add "Option" "NvAGP" "0" to 'device' section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

cheers

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Just my 2 cents.

I also have a system with a Geforce 4 MX 440 on which I just installed 6.04 beta 4

Nvidia says to use the legacy driver with that card, so I did.

Bad move. Although the video looked OK and had acceleration, the network wasn't coming up on boot and trying to run Mepis Network Assistant (or any of the other Mepis Assistants, I discovered) resulted in a hard lockup requiring use of the reset button. I had to manually change the driver back to nv to get the Network Assistant running.

Once I had the network sorted, I decided to try the new Nvidia driver instead of the legacy one.

Surprise! It works perfectly, even though it supposedly doesn't support that card.

Worth a try...

2 steps up and 1 step back.

I'm posting from my Windows laptop.

Have tried several combinations and still can't get to the promised land of both audio and a smoothly operating KDE environment.

First thing tonight, I added

"Option" "NvAGP" "0"

to the 'device' section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

No joy. Nothing has changed.

I have discovered that, without a doubt, I never get sound with the "nv" driver. Only with the Nvidia(Legacy) driver do I get sound.

But I still cannot get KDE to operate smoothly without going into Synaptic Package Manager. Otherwise, it's still herky-jerky. I've tried going into "Mepis Utilities" but KDE remains herky-jerky there. So something about the Synaptic Package Manager makes the system work correctly.

Go figure.

Last night I tried the Nvidia(New) driver once but lost X altogether. Haven't tried it tonight.

So where to now? Should I try to download the proprietary drivers from Nvidia and try them?

Is there anyone else out there with a smoothly operating KDE environment using a GEForce MX440 8x card?

Oh yes. No lockups yet tonight. But I haven't opened Firefox yet. All my lockups last night happened while I was trying to post here with Firefox.

Once again, thanks for all your help.

I'm determined to lick this problem. Nothing like a good night's sleep to make you come back fighting!!

Been reading all the posts and this thing is in my mind like ive been here before , then a thought about a long exchange a while back with unexplained issues like this popped in. So i have to ask are you using rewritable disks to burn your isos on? If so try a cdr and have your burning program check the written data for correctness.

Course you will have to save your goodies & reinstall. May not be your problem just a thought. What bugs me is that root seems to be fine. Another thought is add a new user & see if it has the same problem. Shots in the dark but maybe it will help.

jim

i've got a stick of ram in this machine which has a problem but has tested out fine with memtest86.
I've not heard of this before, and will run memtest86 overnight on it, but to make this play up I run googleearth in software emulation and can reliably crash the machine.

Hallelujah!!

Jim, you may have been shooting in the dark but you hit a bullseye!

The problem was in the user.

I added another user using "adduser" and noticed all the different groups he was automatically added to. (Recall the solution to my lack of sound problem: I had to add my user to the "audio" group.) Logging in as the new user revealed none of the problems I was having as the default user I defined during the initial setup process!!!

That appears to have been the problem: When you add a default user during the setup process, he evidently doesn't get all the permissions/isn't added to all the groups, he's supposed to be added to. At least, mine didn't.

So I "deluser"ed my default user, maintaining the home directory and his files, then "adduser"ed him back to the system. Logged back in and voila -- both sound and a smooth running KDE environment!!

Now. I'm finding it hard to believe that the setup process doesn't deliver the proper permissions to the default user. I'd be interested in knowing if other people who have had the problems I've had are suffering for the same reason I did.

Whatever the case, I'm a happy camper now and hopefully this long torturous thread will help some other poor unlucky soul who finds him or herself in the same predicament I found myself in.

Hello, Mepis! It's good to be here ... finally!!!

Great and finally is the word! But im thinking you have a bad install disk, very unusual that happening. All it takes is a dropped stitch in the burn. Fortunately K3B will handle that in future and it will verify integrity. Have some fun now you earned it.

jim

I should probably make it absolutely clear that the default user I chose during the Mepis install was the same user I was using on this computer while I was running Mandriva. After Mepis created the user, I copied over the files from my Mandriva backup.

Perhaps there was something in the old user files that managed to corrupt this "new" user I was creating in Mepis.

Just a thought.

I think it's better to copy /home and then Install MEPIS using the option "preserve home" that way MEPIS will overwrite the kde stuff that needs to be overwritten (at least that's how I had success doing that kind of stuff: keeping /home from other distros).
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Im convinced you are both right on , its not only logical the proof is pretty much evident as the system seems fine since. Also i will take it as a lesson and try to keep it in mind in future. Glad you reposted with that info might explain a lot of strangeness thats puzzling.

jim

I have/had the same problem with the aquarium thingy freezing up ..... I am able to post OK, etc, to the forums I visit, but the freezup in the aquarium just bugged me so I removed it from the panel. I also have the problem with the sound, so I will have to find out how to check the permissions for the sound and the groups that my user is in. I haven't used Mepis much for the past couple of years, 2004 was great, but Mepis Pro crashed and burned so I lost interest. Since Mepis went to the Ubuntus, I only gave it a half-hearted try on 6.0. It crashed my whold HDD, so I've had nothing to do with it, but a friend convinced me that if I wiped my whole HDD and made it all 1's and 0's, I could then re-install Mepis 6.0 and everything would be fine. It's working now, other than the aquarium freezup and sound problem. I don't use any fancy video or sound cards, just the built-in SiS stuff that came with it, so I wonder why mine only has the aquarium problem as far as freezups, unlike the others on this thread. My box is an HP Pavilion a1203w, AMD Semperon 3000+ Processor, 512 Mb ram, Video card SiS 1039:6330 (vesa driver,16Mb vid ram) Sound card SiS i810_audio. I downloaded the ISO from Mepis, verified the MD5sums at the CLI and burned with CDrecord at 4x. I always seem to get glitches in my Ubuntu and Ubuntu derives, but this time Mepis (same CD as before) is working and hasn't crashed yet. I don't know what the hard drive could have had to do with it, but it seems to have made a great deal of difference. As far as the sound problem, I have no trouble getting sound with a live CD, but once I installed, there's no sound at all.

Read my saga carefully. I address all of the issues you bring up here.

The "aquarium freezeup" is not the problem. It's indicative of a deeper problem. So removing it did nothing cure your ills.

I'm pretty sure my problem stemmed from creating a default user during installation that had the exact same username as the default user I had on my old Mandriva install. Then I copied all those old files on top of what Mepis had installed.

Not a good idea.

I'd suggest you "deluser theuserhavingproblems" and then add him back. "deluser" will not destroy the data files in the /home directory. When you "adduser theuserhavingproblems", Mepis will overwrite all necessary settings and put the new user into all the proper groups.

It's a 30 second fix and I strongly encourage you to try that first.

Good luck.

OK, I'll give it a shot. A couple more things, before I head off to do that tho;

As I said above, my whole HDD was 1's and 0's, no other distros, no /home, no data of any kind to interfere or cause any kind of confusion!

I shut down the Mepis 6.0 so as to try out a live CD from Sidux for a while ... I did NOT try to install anything, just wanted to see their newest live release .... now when I try to login as the user, I get an error message that says it can't log me in and that I should check my settings. Dunno what happened, but I have no problem logging into root. By the Bye, when I log in to root, the aquarium is not freezing up; so I believe, as you said, it must be in the user account.

Now, I'm off to deluser and create another one. Thanks .... BBS!

Us old fogeys want to learn this stuff too, gimme a break!

That seems to work, there's no hitch in the gitalong for the auarium now ... we'll see......

Us old fogeys want to learn this stuff too, gimme a break!

Glad to hear that fixed it for you.

I think I have a clue as to why sometimes users lose membership to some of the key groups.

There's a bigtime "gotcha" with using "usermod" to add a group to a user. You *MUST* use the "-a" switch to "append" else you will replace all your groups with the single group you're trying to add. This little gotcha plagued me for years until I finally *carefully* read the man pages for that command.

So if you want to add a group to a user using "usermod", the correct syntax is:

usermod -G newgroup -a username

If you happen to use:

usermod -G newgroup username

"username" will only belong to the sole group "newgroup".

A safer way to do this is with "adduser":

adduser username newgroup

That will safely *append* newgroup to username's list of groups.