Arch Linux

WizenedEE

Member

Registered: 2012-03-14

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

When I am working in a terminal, occasionally (every 10-20 seconds) everything will freeze for about two seconds. This happens in xterm (which is what I use most often), rvxt (installed just to test this) and even in the ttys (tried in both tty1 and tty2). In all of them, it freezes when I'm typing, and two seconds later it unfreezes and all the characters I was typing appear at once (none are lost). In xterm, but not the ttys, when I run a script like this:

while true; do echo $RANDOM; sleep .25; done

it will still freeze, but maybe slightly less often. When running this script with the xterm menu open (ctrl+click), the menu freezes also.

I've tried reinstalling xterm and all its dependencies and even linux, but that hasn't helped.

This never happens while running chromium, gvim, libreoffice, or dmenu. It has been going on for several days, and I've rebooted multiple times, but I haven't seen anything like this before (I've been running arch for a year on two computers). I'm running the standard archlinux kernel on a lenovo T61 thinkpad laptop with its normal keyboard.

In case it's helpful, here's my pacman log for about when I think the issue started appearing:

[2012-08-18 15:04] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2012-08-18 15:04] synchronizing package lists
[2012-08-18 15:04] starting full system upgrade
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded automake (1.12.2-1 -> 1.12.3-1)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded gdb (7.4.1-1 -> 7.5-1)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded man-pages (3.41-1 -> 3.42-1)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded rsync (3.0.9-3 -> 3.0.9-4)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded subversion (1.7.5-3 -> 1.7.6-1)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded sudo (1.8.5.p2-1 -> 1.8.5.p3-1)
[2012-08-18 15:05] upgraded wine (1.5.10-1 -> 1.5.11-1)
[2012-08-19 12:16] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2012-08-19 12:16] synchronizing package lists
[2012-08-19 12:16] starting full system upgrade
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded poppler (0.20.2-1 -> 0.20.3-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded cups-filters (1.0.20-1 -> 1.0.20-2)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-en-US (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-common (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-calc (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-impress (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-math (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded libreoffice-writer (3.5.5-1 -> 3.5.6-1)
[2012-08-19 12:20] >>> texlive: updating the filename database...
[2012-08-19 12:20] mktexlsr: Updating /etc/texmf/ls-R... 
[2012-08-19 12:20] mktexlsr: Updating /usr/share/texmf/ls-R... 
[2012-08-19 12:20] mktexlsr: Updating /usr/share/texmf-dist/ls-R... 
[2012-08-19 12:20] mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R... 
[2012-08-19 12:20] mktexlsr: Done.
[2012-08-19 12:20] recreating all formats... done.
[2012-08-19 12:20]  (logs are under /var/lib/texmf/web2c/<engine>/<formatname>.log)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded texlive-bin (2012.0-3 -> 2012.0-4)
[2012-08-19 12:20] upgraded xf86-video-intel (2.20.3-1 -> 2.20.4-1)
[2012-08-19 21:54] Running 'pacman -S psmisc'

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank you!

Last edited by WizenedEE (2012-08-25 06:35:42)

johnislarry

Member

From: Seattle, WA, USA

Registered: 2010-08-18

Posts: 19

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

Is there any error output in /var/log/error.log?

WizenedEE

Member

Registered: 2012-03-14

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

Is there any error output in /var/log/error.log?

No, there are no errors concerning this in any of the log files or dmesg.

I am, however, getting something like this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=145564

johnislarry

Member

From: Seattle, WA, USA

Registered: 2010-08-18

Posts: 19

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

I am, however, getting something like this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=145564

Can you maybe elaborate on that a little bit?  Are you getting the same error message about your wired interface?  Are you having wired connectivity problems on top of your freezing terminal?

Maybe you can try and see if disabling any network daemons or services fixes your freezing problems, then go from there.

WizenedEE

Member

Registered: 2012-03-14

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

Maybe you can try and see if disabling any network daemons or services fixes your freezing problems, then go from there.

aha! As soon as I do

# rmmod e1000e

It stops freezing until the next reboot (even if I load the module again). So it looks like this problem is solved, in the sense that it's actually a different problem.

Thank you for your help.

johnislarry

Member

From: Seattle, WA, USA

Registered: 2010-08-18

Posts: 19

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Terminals Freeze

No problem, glad you got it figured out!