Temporary Freeze on Startup

Just as I thought I was making some headway...

After changing out the motherboard, I finally got my computer to boot up with the 5i25 card installed. So I went to the Pncconf wizard and took a try at creating a configuration for my CNC. When I launched LinuxCNC with that configuration, the computer mostly froze up (mouse pointer still moves, but nothing else works). After about 30 seconds or so, the LInuxCNC window closed and a new window came up with error messages. After puzzling over this, eventually it occurred to me that I should have the 7i76 card connected up. So I did that, but nothing has changed except that the period of time the computer spends being frozen has gotten longer. Now it takes over 2 minutes before the error window comes up. I tried deleting the configuration files and creating new ones, but that made no difference. So I removed the 5i25 card and launched LinuxCNC using one of the demo configurations but computer still froze at first. Once the operating screen came up, everything seemed to be normal.

For what it's worth, I am using LinuxCNC Version 2.7.0

So what's the next step? Do I just wipe my hard drive and and install everything from scratch?

Thats very odd, what LinuxCNC distribution (Linux OS version) are you using?

Looks like it is "Debian GNU/Linux 7.9 (wheezy)".

OK probably next step is to run linuxcnc from a terminal and see if you can see where its hanging or look at the kernel log:

sudo dmesg -C (to clear the log)
(start LinuxCNC)
once LinuxCNC is running, run:
dmesg > log.txt

PCW wrote,

OK probably next step is to run linuxcnc from a terminal and see if you can see where its hanging or look at the kernel log:

When I run from the terminal, I see two or three messages that say
"task: main loop took n seconds"
where n is always more than 0.010)

Then there is nothing until the LinuxCNC operating screen comes up.

After I exit, I get a message that says
"m latency excursions"
where m is always 3 or more (depending on what I did in the operating window).

From this, it is clear that the "main loop" is intended to execute in less than 1 mS and my setup is giving more than 10 times that.

I ran the latency test again (somewhat longer this time) and got the following numbers:
..................................Max Interval..........Max Jitter
.....Servo Thread:..........1099756................4929
.....Base Thread:...............74099..............49207

If I understand correctly, the base thread max jitter here is quite bad.

I went into the BIOS and turned off everything I could and I got the following latency numbers:
..................................Max Interval..........Max Jitter
.....Servo Thread:............999756................4076
.....Base Thread:...............51408..............26516

Despite the improvements in the numbers, there is no change in the way LinuxCNC behaves.

By the way, I am using an nVidia G-Force video card. From what I can tell reading various forum posts, this may be a problem. I'll see if I can find a different video card to try.

Please note, log file is attached.

Also the kernel log may provide more information about what's causing the hang:

sudo dmesg -C (to clear the log)
(start LinuxCNC)
once LinuxCNC is running, run:
dmesg > log.txt

PCW:
Thanks for the response.

Perhaps you didn't notice that I attached the kernel log to my earlier message above. I'll attach it again below. (Sorry, I have not figured out how to embed it into the message on this forum.)