[(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

Guff · 2012-01-14 17:13:45

Alright, well I've had this laptop for a few weeks now, and it's been pretty good. But I've noticed somewhat random freezes when in Gnome 3 (as I explain below, I've been unable to reproduce this on demand, so I do not know if it would happen were I to use something else or not use X), in which the system is totally unresponsive (pointer doesn't move, unable to switch to a virtual console, no sign of I/O) and has to be turned off manually. The laptop has an AMD E-450 APU, with Radeon HD 6320M graphics built in.
Magic sysrq stuff sort of works. The last time it happened, I was able to reboot using sysrq, however, I was not able to restore the framebuffer console and thus was unable to get any data from it. And I do know that Alt + printScreen + v works when the system is not in a crashy state.

The problem has occurred since I got it, and I've kept the system fairly up to date, so the issue has occurred with every kernel version that's been available from three weeks or so ago to now. The problem occurs when using the stock kernel as well as the K8-optimized linux-ck kernel.

I have read every single log in /var/log, and I have not noticed any messages that seem like they could be associated with the problem. A couple do pop out at me, however:

Jan 14 10:25:13 localhost logger: ACPI group/action undefined: thermal_zone / LNXTHERM:00

This has often shown up around the time of the freezes, but also shows up a lot when the system is operating normally. I've got sensord running, however, and the CPU is almost always in the range of 60-70°C, which as far as I can tell is safely below the critical threshold.

[   292.154] (II) RADEON(0): radeon_dri2_schedule_flip:670 fevent[0x17eb6d0]
[   292.175] (II) RADEON(0): radeon_dri2_flip_event_handler:1067 fevent[0x17eb6d0] width 1366 pitch 5632 (/4 1408)

Xorg.log gets spammed with this quite a bit, with it showing up anywhere from two or three times a second to once every 30 seconds. Twice so far, I've noticed (after examining Xorg.log.old) post-freeze that only part of the message was written to the log (e.g. just the timestamp, and a handful of characters from the start of the message, or just the first message of the pair).

Jan 14 10:49:17 localhost kernel: [    6.170288] [Firmware Bug]: Invalid critical threshold (0)

This gets written on every boot up.

I've been unable to find anyone experiencing a similar issue. I am also unable to intentionally reproduce the problem. I've used stress-testing tools to hammer the CPU with at least 3-4 threads, as well as hammer the memory and I/O, but running it for around an hour has not worked.
Also, it seems to be much more likely to freeze after having just rebooted from a freeze. This suggests to me that it is a thermal issue, but nothing I've seen corroborates that.

I've really got no idea how to troubleshoot this, so any help at all would be appreciated. And if you need any additional information, just ask. Thanks in advance.

In case it helps:
rc.conf
lsmod output
lspci output

Last edited by Guff (2012-07-17 16:36:01)

dimath · 2012-01-18 18:32:47

I think I have the same issue with different laptop (ACER Aspire 5670). Random freezes in Gnome 3. I think I don't experience this with other shells that don't use desktop effects.
I am actually able to switch console by Alt+Ctrl+F1, but all I can get from logs is these lines, repeated infinite number of times:
[ 22575.068] (II) RADEON(0): radeon_dri2_schedule_flip:670 fevent[0x97c02e0]
[ 22575.085] (II) RADEON(0): radeon_dri2_flip_event_handler:1067 fevent[0x97c02e0] width 1280 pitch 5120 (/4 1280)
...

I'm using ATI graphic card with r300 driver. CPU temperature is ~60C (i.e. just usual temperature), but I don't have a sensor on the ATI chipset.

PS: Can be related: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650857

Last edited by dimath (2012-01-18 18:44:02)

Guff · 2012-01-24 21:04:35

@dimath: thanks for the link. There was a link there to another bug report, which mentioned some kernel parameters to try out. Didn't help.

Since I was having issues with getting my wireless to work properly (which I ultimately was not able to do, so just got a tiny USB dongle for the time being), I did a lot of mucking around in the system. Mucking around with many things that I did not understand. So, I figured well maybe I did something stupid that somehow brought this curse down upon me, so last week I did a total reinstall.
It didn't work.

I've tried KDE, and the problem persists, so it's not gnome-specific for me. I'm trying the catalyst driver now, but of course it's fairly unusable with gnome3 at the moment, so I'm only testing it in KDE. It seems like it might be okay, because I've been doing my best to try and trigger a crash/freeze.
Then again, it took a long while for the issue to pop up once I started using KDE. I still haven't quite worked out how to trigger the damn thing.
It often shows up when building some larger packages, installing packages, and when launching Firefox (I often have an ungodly amount of tabs open, so it is fairly resource-intensive). As mentioned, however, it's not at all consistent.

dimath, have you tried another DE yet? And if the problem persisted, have you tried catalyst? Obviously, I don't expect you to use it with gnome given that it's buggy as hell, but I'd be interested to see if it helps for you at all.

dimath · 2012-01-25 09:59:18

I don't think I have the problem with DE without effects, I've tried several, have freezes only with compiz enabled or in gnome3. I can't really use catalyst afaik, cause ati x1400 is too old and is not supported by catalyst.

Take a look at this thread, I think it is the same issue:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=129481

Guff · 2012-01-29 21:32:39

Well, I'm fairly sure it's not the GPU now. I was eventually able to reproduce the problem while using the catalyst driver. So I'm assuming it's an issue with the CPU somehow. Maybe.

I'm thinking the issue you're experiencing might be unrelated. For one thing, I've never been able to switch to a virtual console once it occurs. I hope you figure something out that works for you, though.

bwood · 2012-02-01 04:28:23

I've been having a similar problem with my desktop...kernel panics whenever the CPU usage is high and sustained for a minute or two. I have a fresh install of Arch, after having previously used Fedora 16 and Debian 6 on the same box. Both Fedora and Debian were generally stable, no kernel panics there regardless of CPU usage. On Arch, I can consistently trigger a crash by spinning up a few infinite loops in separate processes (just incrementing a counter...no memory leaks or anything). CPU is a Phenom II X6 1100T, GPU is a GTS 450. System runs off a 64GB SSD, with /home and swap partitions on a mechanical hard drive.

I've tried both the NVIDIA proprietary and Nouveau drivers, still crashes with either of those. I have 16GB of physical RAM plus 16GB of swap, but I haven't yet run a memtest. Gnome 3 doesn't appear to be at fault, because I can still trigger the crashes from a prompt with gdm not running (interestingly, the screen flashes/flickers while doing heavy CPU stuff at a regular prompt). Pretty sure it's not a heat issue, as the CPU never goes above 48C at full load.

I got some strange behaviour when doing the load tests on an Arch Live CD (i.e., segmentation fault kills the sixth infinite loop if I spin it up), but no outright crashes. I'm going to test more with Live CDs from other distros and see if it's software-independent.

If all else fails, I'll try to re-seat the CPU in its socket, but besides that I'm at a loss.

dimath · 2012-02-01 07:29:51

bwood wrote:

I've been having a similar problem with my desktop...kernel panics whenever the CPU usage is high and sustained for a minute or two. ...

This does not seem to me as the same issue.

bwood · 2012-02-01 12:12:56

dimath wrote:

bwood wrote:
I've been having a similar problem with my desktop...kernel panics whenever the CPU usage is high and sustained for a minute or two. ...
This does not seem to me as the same issue.

Maybe it's not, I just thought I'd share.

Guff · 2012-02-06 20:41:46

Well, I did eventually figure it out. Sorta.

On every boot, I would get an error in kernel.log:

SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xb80430 already in use

Blacklisting sp5100_tco seems to have fixed the issue. I think. I also disabled the thermal module, given that I already have two temperature readings. It also seemed to be messing with the fan control, but I can't say I fully understand much of this. So I'm not 100% sure which of the two changes fixed it, but I'd put money on the sp5100 thing.

timt · 2012-06-16 10:02:40

Thanks @Guff, I've been struggling with this problem on my HP Pavilion dm1-4020sa for months, but your suggestion has finally fixed it.

I first tried just blacklisting the sp5100_tco driver, but that did not solve the problem. It was only when I also disabled the thermal module that the problem finally went away. So disabling the thermal module is definitely required. Whether or not it is also necessary to blacklist the sp5100_tco driver, I'm not sure.

For anyone else with this problem, for info, I'm using grub, and the simplest way I found to disable the thermal module was to edit /etc/default/grub.
This had a line something like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

To disable the thermal module, I changed this to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash thermal.off=1"

Having edited this file, you then need to run

update-grub

to activate the change.

Wilco · 2012-07-16 20:02:01

Thanks a lot @guff and @timt! This finally fixed my freezes on a Pavilion DM1-4000sd (also updated the bios btw).

Guff · 2012-07-17 16:21:51

As it turns out, the original issue seems to be gone. However, I've had another issue pop up annoyingly often: the keyboard and touchpad suddenly stop working and the laptop has to be suspended and resumed to get them working again. Have either of you guys experienced this?

I found a few other reports of this issue and so I sent my laptop into HP for repair (covered under warranty). They replaced the fan, keyboard, and "top assembly" (not really sure what that is), but the issue remains. It's not an X11 issue, as it can also happen when X isn't running.
I'm really, really uncertain if it's a hardware or software issue. It seems to be temperature-related to some extent, but it's very inconsistent and unpredictable. I was able to reproduce it under Windows 7 once, but that was in a hot car and was within a few minutes of experiencing it under Arch. I've tried a few more times to reproduce it on Windows without success.
It's an extremely frustrating issue and makes it very hard to do much gaming.

If anyone has any idea what the cause of this could be, or any ideas whatsoever on how to further diagnose the issue, I would greatly appreciate it.

Last edited by Guff (2012-07-17 16:35:43)

Wilco · 2012-07-20 14:57:33

@Guff: lots of information about your problem here. But unfortunately no solution:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-L … -p/1679299

timt · 2012-10-25 22:46:51

I've not had the keyboard or touchpad problems.

However, having upgraded to (ubuntu) kernel 3.2.0-31 onwards, I experienced intermittent problems with failing to boot from grub. I have now removed the blacklisting of the sp5100_tco driver, and re-enabled the thermal module. I am no longer getting the CPU lock-up problems with the newer kernels, and having reinstated these things, I am no longer getting the boot problems either.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-14 17:13:45

[(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#2 2012-01-18 18:32:47

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#3 2012-01-24 21:04:35

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#4 2012-01-25 09:59:18

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#5 2012-01-29 21:32:39

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#6 2012-02-01 04:28:23

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#7 2012-02-01 07:29:51

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#8 2012-02-01 12:12:56

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#9 2012-02-06 20:41:46

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#10 2012-06-16 10:02:40

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#11 2012-07-16 20:02:01

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#12 2012-07-17 16:21:51

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#13 2012-07-20 14:57:33

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

#14 2012-10-25 22:46:51

Re: [(partially?) SOLVED] HP dm1z (4000 model) freezes under heavy load

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