Graphic mode freezes

[ptihackers]

Hi All,
I just got 2 RPi model B, installed the latest raspian (2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.zip). The text mode is stable. But the graphic mode (startx) is not stable . Each time I use Scratch or Midori, after about 10 mins the RPi freezes; I think it is the graphic mode. I even tried to use a USB hub to plug the keyboard and the mouse in case they were drawing too much power. Any help will be appreciated.
Thx.

[ShiftPlusOne]

Hello, I moved this to the troubleshooting subforum, where people should be more able to help you.

[ptihackers]

Hi ShiftPlusOne,
I plan to demo the Pi in West Africa this week; it will be good if I find a way to make the graphic mode stable.
For many years I was looking for a mini computer for kids. The Pi will be jewel there; it is versatile and affordable.
Thx to the foundation to have developed a work of art.

[MaxK1]

Good starting point is http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

Pay particular attention to power - a (phone) battery charger is NOT the same as a power supply.
Voltage at TP1/TP2? Can you ssh in from another system to look at log files?Are you overclocking at all? What H/W do you have connected?

[ptihackers]

Hi MaxK1,
Finally I solved the issue by upgrading wheezy to the latest.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Glad it works, so far so good.

[ptihackers]

After the upgrade, my PIs work for couple of hours in graphic mode, that's good then freeze; it is better then previously. I will dig in http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting as suggested to see what I can find for a remedy.

[ptihackers]

Hi MaxK1,
Answering your questions:
1) The power supply came with the RPi
2) I get about 5+ Volts at TP1/TP2
3) No overclocking
4) I did not try the ssh to check the log
Thx

[MaxK1]

Can you feel if anything is getting warm? I vaguely remember a problem like the SD card was getting
warm and losing contact on one or more pins. Will it reboot right away after it hangs? Or don't you notice it right away? Easy way to eliminate that as a possible cause is to put a fan nearby... One thing I have noticed is after swapping in my 512M board in place of a 256M is that the 512 runs MUCH hotter.
63' C vs ~48-50' C... Still below the point of "meltdown" and I haven't seen a problem yet, but if I do, heatsink is the first thing I'll try...

[ptihackers]

Hi MaxK1,
Heat and SD card seems to be fine.
Today I analyzed the log; syslog is fine too however xsession-errors has some errors, see below.
snd_pcm_writei returned -1 is repetitive and corresponds to "Write interleaved frames to a PCM"
This error occurs when I use Scratch with sound.

Code: Select all

Xsession: X session started for pi at Mon Dec 10 11:46:55 GMT 2012
Obt-Message: Xinerama extension is not present on the server
Openbox-Message: Unable to find a valid menu file "/usr/share/lxde/openbox/menu.xml"

** (midori:2189): CRITICAL **: midori_load_soup_session was not called!
Executing: /usr/lib/squeak/4.4.7-2357/squeakvm -encoding UTF-8 -vm-display-x11 -xshm -plugins /usr/lib/scratch/plugins/:/usr/lib/squeak/4.4.7-2357/ -vm-sound-alsa /usr/share/scratch/Scratch.image
snd_pcm_writei returned -1
snd_pcm_writei returned -1
start_SoundRecording: snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory
snd_pcm_writei returned -1

[MaxK1]

Sorry - I have no clue what's going on there. Maybe someone else knows and can jump in?
Unless you are eating up all your space on the SD card....