[Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

miboco · 2025-07-31 09:38:16

Hi,
got a "new" notebook - Lenovo T14 Gen 2 Intel - and ran into a weird problem with XFCE4 I can´t find in the forums: When I display content of a remote server the content of the window freezes at some point, no matter if the notebook is connected to the docking station or sitting on my lap running on battery, with both wifi or ethernet connections. Affected applications:
caja / thunar with afp, sftp and smb connections
Remmina with vnc and rdp
Terminator / xterm with ssh and sftp
VMWare Workstation managing remote hosts
The problem doesn´t seam to be related to some kind of timeout. You can open a ssh session with terminator create a second tab make a second ssh connection to the same server and the content of the first session is frozen while the second session is happily working while on other days it is running several minutes before one of them gives up.
Another example:
I was setting up a new Windows 2025 server at a client location within VMWare Workstation. I was able to watch the status bar of a 3 hour copy task even when my local screen saver kicked in the content wasn´t affected. After finishing that I started to add new users and while adding the second user the content died while jumping with the tab key from the user field to the first password field!
The connection itself is still working for instance when you are remotely logged in to a machine, the content freezes and you then make a double click on a file on the desktop the file is open when you reconnect to this machine. As I said - pretty weird.
I´ve seen a lot posts related to nvidia drivers with a lot of ways of fixes but none seems to be related to my problems.

Any help is welcome, best regards,

Mike

Last edited by miboco (2025-08-06 07:07:42)

seth · 2025-07-31 15:44:11

Affected applications:
caja / thunar with afp, sftp and smb connections
Terminator / xterm with ssh and sftp

Just to be clear: you've an ssh connection running in xterm and at some point that freezes?
If you then kill the ssh client, does the terminal continue to properly work (ie. eg you can run "top" in it now)?
I that case you're looking at a network issue, maybe w/ the remote system, maybe w/ the connection.

miboco · 2025-08-01 07:33:30

No let´s say I have two or three ssh connections to the same server, no matter if with xterm or terminator. At some point the content of one of the windows will freeze, you can´t do anything beside closing the window while the other two connections are still running. Network was also my first intention so I got my old Arch Linux notebook running on a Macbook Pro for quite some years and the behavior doesn´t occur once during a normal working day while using the Lenovo the next day it was only 20 minutes before it came back. I also think that it is related to the nvidia driver because when the content frozes in a thunar window in list view you are still able to open files with a double click but cannot expand folders with the triangle. Also when you are moving the window it leaves fragments all the way which also hints to redraw problems.

seth · 2025-08-01 07:50:17

At some point the content of one of the windows will freeze, you can´t do anything beside closing the window while the other two connections are still running.

What exactly happens when you kill the ssh instance running in that terminal (but leave the terminal alone and the implication is that you ran ssh out of an interactive shell and not "xterm -e ssh foo" or so.

when you are moving the window it leaves fragments all the way which also hints to redraw problems

Also try to disable the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xfwm#Composite_manager

miboco · 2025-08-01 09:51:05

seth wrote:

What exactly happens when you kill the ssh instance running in that terminal (but leave the terminal alone and the implication is that you ran ssh out of an interactive shell and not "xterm -e ssh foo" or so.

Nothing, content of the window stays unchanged, all you can do is closing the window.

Also try to disable the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xfwm#Composite_manager

This might be the right clue! Changed the setting, opened a ssh connection in terminator and after around half an hour the "Connection timed out" message appeared and I was still able to work in the window. While occupied with other things I will report back on monday when I have some workload to do if the problem is fixed.

Best regards,

Mike

seth · 2025-08-01 12:49:36

This might be the right clue!

This makes more sense - except that the "network" part is probably completely random - the window will either no longer cause damage events or the compositor somehow loses track of it.
But that should™ not at all relate to whatever causes the updates inside the window.

miboco · 2025-08-06 07:04:31

So finally fixed the problem: for some reason I´ve managed not only to install wpa_supplicant AND iwd but also to activate them which not only gives problems with wifi but also with the ethernet connections. Disabled both of them and let NetworkManager handle iwd. Bad me not to uninstall unused software packages...
So thanks for all the provided help.

Best regards,

Mike

Arch Linux

#1 2025-07-31 09:38:16

[Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#2 2025-07-31 15:44:11

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#3 2025-08-01 07:33:30

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#4 2025-08-01 07:50:17

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#5 2025-08-01 09:51:05

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#6 2025-08-01 12:49:36

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

#7 2025-08-06 07:04:31

Re: [Solved] NVidia problem: Window content freezes with remote content

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