Linux Froze In The Middle of A Part???

Greetings,

I was running the last of six parts and the CNC machine stopped in mid-cut. Spindle dead and not axis motion.

The display screen was dead also. The AXIS image was there; but, the mouse and keyboard were not responsive.

Able to power down the machine and computer and do a restart.

Was able to finish my last part.

Curious to learn what happened. Software, Hardware, ???

I am sure there is an error file. Would someone enlighten me as to what it is named and where it is located?

Oh yes, LinuxCNC 2.5.4. The machine has been making parts for three years now with no issues.

Cheers,

Dave

It does rather sound like bad hardware to me
How old is the motherboard?

Greetings,

The machine is a Smithy in which the computer, Breakout Board, and lots of other electrical stuff is contained on one large metal cabinet.

A major project to conduct the above suggestions.

Again, I ask. Where within Linux is the Error Log file?

Cheers,

Dave

Usually /var/log

The kernel log is kern.log (older copies are archived in /var/log)

A crash caused by a hardware fault may not be logged however

Greetings,

Update on LinuxCNC crash.

I started up the machine again with no issues. I then ran several parts in 4-axis mode and all went well.

When I finished, I started the application that shows disk utilities. Clicking on the SMART drive icon, it showed my drive had several "bad sectors". Perhaps this is where the initial problem occurred.

In the beginning, I purchased an exact copy of the hard drive in my machine and used Linux to clone it. At that time no bad sectors were indicated.

Perhaps this information will be of use to others.

With kind regards,

David

Greetings,

My best efforts have gone unrewarded.

I swapped out hard drives and memory sticks. Things were running fine for about three days and the problem is back. The machine stops and the computer freezes at no particular point in the program.

The computer reboots okay and shows no errors during the POST.

I do have a spare motherboard. However, I need guidance with setting the BIOS values to make LinuxCNC work properly, or; maybe I do not. I just do not know.

The motherboard is a JetWay 7F2WE1G5D-OC-LF.

The only difference from the one in the machine is this board has a faster CPU (1.5)

The machine itself is a SMITHY CNC1240 with Gecko G201 drives.

I eagerly await my instructions.

Cheers,

David

Greetings Andy,

Yes, the hard drive was a clone from two years ago.

Do you think it is possible a corrupt file can freeze the machine? The computer console, mouse, keyboard, are totally unresponsive. Only turning off the Power and rebooting brings it back to life.

The motherboard is inside the electrical cabinet with the power supply and breakout board.

I will need to connect a CD-ROM drive to it as it does not have USB boot capability.

To jog your memory, you supplied me with modifications to my *.ini files, so I need to preserve them.

Do I merely copy and paste my old "config" directory? Are there any PATH errors I may encounter?

With kind regards,

David