Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

TheTechromancer · 2016-01-27 04:41:50

Hello! I'm a long-time Windows user who just switched to linux, and am mostly loving it so far! I'm new to Arch and Linux in general, but I decided to post in this section since this is not really "newbie" territory. I'm probably in over my head here.

I have a Macbook Pro 2015, and am running the latest stable 4.4 kernel, which I compiled by following the "Kernels/Arch Build System" instructions on the wiki. (The 4.3 kernel doesn't recognize my NVMe SSD) My /home is mounted on a USB 3.0 drive, but my /boot and swap partitions reside on the SSD. rEFInd is my current boot manager. I have a pretty lightweight installation, with virtually only the base packages, VirtualBox, XFCE, Firefox, and broadcom-wl-dkms from the AUR installed.

My system has been freezing whenever it undergoes (relatively) heavy use. After the freeze, I cannot switch TTYs, and the system does not reboot automatically. Whatever image was last displayed stays on the screen until I perform a hard shutdown. Typical scenarios in which this happen are when I am running a VM in VirtualBox (guest OS doesn't make a difference), or when I have many tabs open in FireFox (loading videos seems to make it worse). I have 8GB of RAM and 12GB of active swap, and resources can be anywhere from 10-50% when the freeze takes place.

At first, I thought it might be a problem with the VirtualBox driver. However, even when none of the VirtualBox modules are loaded and the program is not started, a freeze can still occur. Throughout the headache-inducing troubleshooting process, I've tried booting with the following kernel parameters, neither of which have managed to cure the problem: nosmap, libata.force=noncq.

Here is some information which may be relevent to my situation. Feel free to scold me if I'm missing anything obvious

Last 20 lines of "dmesg -w > dmesg.txt &":

[    2.919840]  sda: sda1
[    2.921408] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    3.426334] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:03.0: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[    3.426337] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20151010 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[    3.426340] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 170x48
[    3.460166] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[    3.482185] input: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/sound/card0/input12
[    3.483448] input: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/sound/card0/input13
[    3.484831] input: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/sound/card0/input14
[    4.084882] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: data=ordered
[    4.497687] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp0s20u1u2: link is not ready
[    4.619639] vboxdrv: Found 4 processor cores
[    4.641575] vboxdrv: TSC mode is Invariant, tentative frequency 1599999423 Hz
[    4.642819] vboxdrv: Successfully loaded version 5.0.14_OSE (interface 0x00240000)
[    4.644372] VBoxNetAdp: Successfully started.
[    4.646841] VBoxNetFlt: Successfully started.
[    4.649273] VBoxPciLinuxInit
[    4.651643] vboxpci: IOMMU not found (not registered)
[    7.101994] ax88179_178a 1-1.2:1.0 enp0s20u1u2: ax88179 - Link status is: 1
[    7.108439] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): enp0s20u1u2: link becomes ready
[   16.958942] fuse init (API version 7.23)

Output of journalctl -xeb <last_boot> (after freeze and reset):

-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit UNIT has finished starting up.
-- 
-- The start-up result is done.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Successfully made thread 1121 of process 1121 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' high priority
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 1 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - dbus-daemon[1041]: Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1'
Jan 26 22:14:07 - dbus-daemon[1041]: Activating service name='org.a11y.Bus'
Jan 26 22:14:07 - dbus-daemon[1041]: Successfully activated service 'org.a11y.Bus'
Jan 26 22:14:07 - org.a11y.Bus[1041]: Activating service name='org.a11y.atspi.Registry'
Jan 26 22:14:07 - org.a11y.Bus[1041]: Successfully activated service 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry'
Jan 26 22:14:07 - org.a11y.atspi.Registry[1182]: SpiRegistry daemon is running with well-known name - org.a11y.atspi.Registry
Jan 26 22:14:07 - polkitd[1049]: Registered Authentication Agent for unix-session:c1 (system bus name :1.16 [/usr/lib/polkit-gnome/polk
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 1 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Successfully made thread 1192 of process 1121 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' RT at priorit
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - pkexec[1191]: pam_unix(polkit-1:session): session opened for user root by (uid=1000)
Jan 26 22:14:07 - pkexec[1191]: r00t: Executing command [USER=root] [TTY=unknown] [CWD=/] [COMMAND=/usr/bin/xfpm-power-backlight-helper
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Successfully made thread 1198 of process 1121 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' RT at priorit
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Successfully made thread 1199 of process 1121 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' RT at priorit
Jan 26 22:14:07 - rtkit-daemon[1133]: Supervising 4 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jan 26 22:14:07 - systemd[1001]: Started Sound Service.
-- Subject: Unit UNIT has finished start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit UNIT has finished starting up.
-- 
-- The start-up result is done.

Output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Host Bridge -OPI (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics (rev 09)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP USB xHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:15.0 DMA controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO DMA Controller (rev 03)
00:15.4 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO GSPI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP MEI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev e3)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev e3)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev e3)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev e3)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev e3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Thermal Management Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Multimedia controller: Broadcom Corporation 720p FaceTime HD Camera
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
04:00.0 Mass storage controller: Apple Inc. Device 2001 (rev 01)
05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
06:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
06:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
06:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
06:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156b
07:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 156a

EDIT: grammerz

Last edited by TheTechromancer (2016-01-27 04:44:03)

ewaller · 2016-01-27 04:53:12

Welcome to Arch. You are doing quite well for newcomer; including a custom kernel

Just a shot in the dark, have you installed and configured the Intel microcode updates?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microcode

TheTechromancer · 2016-01-27 05:00:09

I seem to have completely overlooked that. It looks really promising; I'll give it a shot and report back. Thanks!

TheTechromancer · 2016-01-27 05:56:44

Thanks for the tip. I learned something new, but I'm still in the predicament.

Followed the instructions on the wiki page, and it looks like the microcode is already at the latest version. The computer's hardware is pretty recent, so I'm guessing that's why. Also, I did verify that microcode support was compiled into my running kernel.

Output of "dmesg | grep microcode" after update process:

[    0.412522] microcode: CPU0 sig=0x306d4, pf=0x40, revision=0x21
[    0.412607] microcode: CPU1 sig=0x306d4, pf=0x40, revision=0x21
[    0.412759] microcode: CPU2 sig=0x306d4, pf=0x40, revision=0x21
[    0.412844] microcode: CPU3 sig=0x306d4, pf=0x40, revision=0x21
[    0.413090] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.01 <tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk>, Peter Oruba

I'm sure it's entirely possible that installing the official 4.4 kernel package (when it comes out) will fix the issue. About how much time after a stable release does it typically take until the kernel makes it out of the testing repo?

EDIT: Etiquette

Last edited by TheTechromancer (2016-01-27 06:20:21)

ewaller · 2016-01-27 14:52:29

Generally a couple weeks. Quite a few things need to change when the kernel changes.

Scimmia · 2016-01-27 15:06:12

That is not the latest microcode for your processor. Check the instructions again.

Edit: Wait, newer microcode is still in Testing as well. That probably is the latest in Core.

Last edited by Scimmia (2016-01-27 15:07:41)

TheTechromancer · 2016-01-28 05:32:41

Well, it turns out this probably did belong in the Newbie sub afterall.

I ran some stress tests while in the command-line environment, and didn't experience any instability issues. I thought I might have narrowed it down to a video problem, so I did some Googling. It turns out that I needed to install the xf86-video-intel package. After doing this and rebooting, I haven't yet experienced another crash. If I had actually read the ArchWiki "Macbook" page, I might have avoided this altogether. But hey, live and learn!

Anyway, hopefully this will help somebody else down the line.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-01-27 04:41:50

Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#2 2016-01-27 04:53:12

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#3 2016-01-27 05:00:09

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#4 2016-01-27 05:56:44

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#5 2016-01-27 14:52:29

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#6 2016-01-27 15:06:12

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

#7 2016-01-28 05:32:41

Re: Intermittent System Freezes on Macbook

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