Fedora 7 screen freeze

[Karl Larsen <k5di zianet com>]

	Here is top from my old computer:
top - 08:51:03 up  3:04,  1 user,  load average: 0.06, 0.08, 0.17
Tasks: 127 total,   1 running, 124 sleeping,   0 stopped,   2 zombie
Cpu(s):  7.5%us,  3.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 88.6%id,  0.0%wa,  0.1%hi,  0.0%si, 
0.0%st
Mem:    482776k total,   475472k used,     7304k free,    29076k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,   163588k cached

As you can see I have just 500kb of RAM and a pentium cpu that never 
seems to be used much on a percentage basis. When my computer went into 
a sudden freeze it was surprising. The curser would sit in one place for 
20 seconds and then move quick to another. I wanted to run top and see 
what was happening. But it was impossible.

	Just before I had the problem I wanted to yum install filename and it 
started out and then died. Then the freeze and I looked at the hard 
drive light and it was on solid. This means it was using the swap 
partition on the hard drive. My HD's are not fast.

	I rebooted and then read /var/log/messages and found this was happening 
while I had a frozen screen:

Jul 23 19:10:20 k5di NetworkManager: <info>  Updating allowed wireless 
network lists.
Jul 23 19:10:20 k5di NetworkManager: <WARN>  nm_dbus_get_networks_cb(): 
error received: org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo.NoNetworks - There 
are no wireless networks stored..
Jul 23 19:10:20 k5di pcscd: winscard.c:219:SCardConnect() Reader E-Gate 
0 0 Not Found
Jul 23 19:10:20 k5di last message repeated 4 times
Jul 23 19:10:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 194.88.2.60
Jul 23 19:10:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:10:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 195.197.239.163
Jul 23 19:10:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:10:38 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 192.36.143.150
Jul 23 19:10:38 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:11:36 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 194.88.2.60
Jul 23 19:11:36 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:11:36 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 195.197.239.163
Jul 23 19:11:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:11:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 192.36.143.150
Jul 23 19:11:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:12:36 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 194.88.2.60
Jul 23 19:12:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:12:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 195.197.239.163
Jul 23 19:12:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:12:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 192.36.143.150
Jul 23 19:12:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 194.88.2.60
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 195.197.239.163
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd[1883]: Cannot find existing interface for 
address 192.36.143.150
Jul 23 19:13:37 k5di ntpd_initres[1894]: ntpd indicates no data available!
Jul 23 19:14:35 k5di ntpd[1883]: Listening on interface #4 eth0, 
fe80::250:2cff:fea8:69f3#123 Enabled
Jul 23 19:14:35 k5di ntpd[1883]: Listening on interface #5 eth0, 
192.168.0.2#123 Enabled
Jul 23 19:19:23 k5di ntpd[1883]: synchronized to 194.88.2.60, stratum 3
Jul 23 19:19:23 k5di ntpd[1883]: kernel time sync status change 0001

	I looked up man ntpd and it is the software that sets the clock time in 
your computer. It is complaining that it can't get to the internet! I 
saw that NetworkManager was looking for a WiFi source of the Internet 
which has NEVER existed on this computer. While NM has the Internet from 
eth0 turned off ntpd has gone wild about this and the yum install was 
stopped and the freeze occured.

	I need help to understand this. It isn't this that used up all the RAM. 
But this tells me NM was doing stupid things which did not help the 
situation.


--

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.