Arch Linux

porridgewithraisins

Member

Registered: 2023-09-30

Posts: 40

Issue with random crashes, potentially linked to graphics

I have a 12 year old Dell Optiplex 9020 AIO, equipped with an Intel i7-4770s and HD Graphics 4600 (Haswell), enough ram (12G) and an SSD. It has always run arch linux without any hardware issues. Everything always worked perfectly.

Of late (2-3 months), there is an issue where it crashes and throws the screen into weirdness, and the only way to fix it is to restart (going to a text mode tty doesn't work, etc,). Sometimes, it auto reboots, other times, I have to force power off and turn it on again. Here is a video of the crash. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12dXr0k … drive_link

I have noticed it happening in the following situations:

- Sometimes, when I am watching videos full screen in my browser (Brave), with hw accln on.

- Almost all the time, when I open PNG images in mpv.

- Just once, when I did systemctl reboot, it went into this mode and then rebooted again.

- Just once, when I was restoring a timeshift backup.

On reboot, I don't see any diagnostic information in the boot process, only the filesystem fixing itself from its journal.

- I have libva-intel-driver for VA-API.

- I have tried both xf86-video-intel and modesetting as the Xorg driver.

- I have tried with vulkan installed && enabled in about:flags, as well as with vulkan uninstalled.

- I reverted to linux-lts as there was no issue before the last 2-3 months.

Nothing worked. It still happens.

I have looked at both `journalctl` and Xorg logs - none of them seem to have anything related to the crash, but maybe I haven't found it.

It happens when I watch videos for "long enough", so my programmer mind thinks that some kind of _SIZE or _LIMIT was changed in the last 2-3 months, and that caused a regression on my GPU.

Notably, it doesn't happen when I am doing video "work", e.g when I am using the GPU to record screen, or do ffmpeg/obs work.

When playing audio, no issues. I play music virtually all the time without issues.

Haven't noticed it happening in VLC. But also, I haven't played long videos in VLC.

The GPU is being used for sure by my browser, mpv and vlc. I checked their respective logs as well as intel_gpu_top.

Here is my pacman -Q
https://pastebin.com/H8u8NeJ0

Here is my journalctl for a whole boot. At the end of this boot is where the crash occured (no shutdown logs as it was a force power off). Might it have something to do with the MTTR errors? Because I know that one MTTR is reserved for DRM for the GPU.
https://pastebin.com/Xjp2LXQa

P.S. In this video, it is silent, but sometimes, I get a "GRRR" sound accompanying the screen weirdness during a crash.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

Re: Issue with random crashes, potentially linked to graphics

You could download an older live-usb for something like Ubuntu.  Something that has a kernel you suspect was good.  Boot the usb stick, start the desktop and use that for as long as you can.  Run all the programs it has.  You're trying to make the crash happen in that independent environment.  If the crash does happen there, on a whole other software base, then it becomes more likely that you have a hardware problem.  Especially considering the age of the CPU and system.