Arch Linux

sleet

Member

Registered: 2021-06-11

Posts: 11

Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

In the past few months, I have installed Arch Linux on several different
machines. All of these installations present some kind of "system freeze"
if I start doing CPU intensive tasks (e.g. opening a website with
javascript, opening a big pdf file for reading).

At first, I thought these were isolated cases, specific to the machine
hardware. I thought the thermal paste should be reapplied. But as it kept
freezing and as the new installations were all suffering from the same issue,
I gave up on that idea, or I'd run out of thermal paste for no reason.

I have tried underclocking every single machine as best as I could to see
if it would help, but that made no difference.

In total, I have installed Arch on four different machines. Curiously
enough, they are all stronger than my Thinkpad X200 (dual core with 2GB
of RAM), and I have probably only seen it freeze once. These machines
freeze every day.

I am at a loss here. Nothing responds to my commands when it freezes.
Ctrl+Alt+F1..6 doesn't work
Alt+SysReq combinations do not work
Ssh does not work

My installations are extremely minimal: DWM, firefox, cups, zathura,
sshd, Thunderbird... They usually freeze with Firefox or Thunderbird,
but one notebook freezes during pacman updates or installations.

These computers are for the company, not for me. In fact, while writing this
someone just called me saying that her computer froze. Amazing.

Besides those four computers, I also have two notebooks and a gaming pc.
I have already seen my gaming pc freeze during GPU intensive or CPU
intensive workloads, but that was also happening while using windows.

My gaming notebook has never frozen. My Thinkpad has probably only
frozen a couple of times or so. Since my installation is much more
minimal than the company's computers, I believe that is why I don't
get so many freezes.

I have stress tested the cpu with the 'stress' package, but nothing
really happens.

I suspect this might be a kernel issue, but I am not sure how to
gather information during the freeze.

I wish there was a kernel option: "I really don't care if everything
becomes slow af, just please don't freeze my system", but maybe that's
asking too much? lol

There is also a possibility that DWM might be the problem. That is
unlikely though, seeing as the Ctrl+Alt+F keys were not working.

Last edited by sleet (2021-06-11 16:50:57)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,796

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

When they freeze:

Are the keyboard LEDs flashing?  This would be indicative of a kernel panic.
Do they ever unfreeze?
Can you change to a different console use Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or F3 through F6)?
Can you "ping" the machines over the network?
Can you log into them using ssh? (Assuming sshd is enabled)
Anything interesting in the journal prior to the freeze?

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Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
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How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

sleet

Member

Registered: 2021-06-11

Posts: 11

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

Are the keyboard LEDs flashing?  This would be indicative of a kernel panic.
Do they ever unfreeze?
Can you change to a different console use Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or F3 through F6)?
Can you "ping" the machines over the network?
Can you log into them using ssh? (Assuming sshd is enabled)
Anything interesting in the journal prior to the freeze?

I don't want to sound rude, but I have already addressed a few of those questions:

I am at a loss here. Nothing responds to my commands when it freezes.
Ctrl+Alt+F1..6 doesn't work
Alt+SysReq combinations do not work
Ssh does not work

Regarding the keyboard LEDs, I did not notice any flashing, but will pay more attention next time.
As for the journal log, I'll wait for another crash so that I can post it here, although I did not
find anything particularly interesting

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 676

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

What CPUs do you have in these machines? Do you have microcode for CPU installed everywhere? What GPUs and drivers have these systems? Do you use X server or Wayland? Anything other then DWM (I don't use DWM, so I don't know if it can run on Wayland)? Do you have BIOS or UEFI on these systems?

I use nvidia GPU and when I had installed xf86-video-nouveau I occasionally experienced freezes/crashes, but when I uninstalled this package and use KMS nouveau driver from kernel, they were gone.
I didn't use nvidia binary blobs, but I have read that people also have sometimes problems with them, also with Intel and AMD (GPUs and CPUs).

Maybe journal log would shed some light on it, if it is CPU, GPU or other.
By the way: did you checked RAM by memtest?

Last edited by xerxes_ (2021-06-11 18:01:54)

sleet

Member

Registered: 2021-06-11

Posts: 11

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

What CPUs do you have in this machines?

All of them are Intel Dual-Core CPUs (Celeron, Pentium...)

Do you have microcode for CPU installed everywhere?

I do not recall installing the microcode on the machines.
I am going to test that out and report back when I'm finished.

What GPUs and drivers have these systems?

We don't use GPUs.

Do you use X server or Wayland? Anything other then DWM?

X server only. DWM only.

By the way: did you checked RAM by memtest?

I do not believe the RAM modules are the issue, they are working correctly

Lone_Wolf

Forum Moderator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,922

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

What GPUs and drivers have these systems?

We don't use GPUs.

So all those systems use intel integrated graphics  ?
Are they using xf86-video-intel or modesetting driver ?

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,292

Re: Complete system freeze, especially on older machines

Alt+SysReq combinations do not work

Did you enable them?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq)

* To hammer away at the IGP vector, can you trigger this when booting the multi-user.target "nomodeset"?
* Next to the IGP question, please post /proc/cpuinfo - celeron/pentium are generic brands that intel has used for ages for different models and that are essentially meaningless reg. the actual architecture
* Since you can probably trigger this at will, you could monitor "dmesg -w" in a terminal while it happens.

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