[SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

emak · 2016-09-11 20:06:26

Hi

I am not sure which forum is the right one, as the error is hard to track down. Since approx. 5 weeks I get periodically a freeeze on two fully independent systems. Both are up to date and have some similarities but also differences in the setup.

Error description

system suddenly freezes and reacts to no keypresses, only a hard reset (power off) works
if music was playing during the freeze, you get to listen to approx. the latest 2s in a indefinitely repeated loop
the display is not updating anymore
there is no helpful entry in journalctl or another log from the freeze or short before moment
a monitoring tool shows no outage of RAM or CPU bottlenecks

Possible causes
It can happen after 10 min of working or after two or more days of uptime. It is most often caused when you "really" want to work (e.g. opening Mail, Browser, different tool, editor, bash and a music player). I tried to downgrade the kernel from 4.7.2.1 to 4.7.1.1 but it didn't help. As mentioned: the error happens on two different systems (Lenovo Thinkpad X250 and Dell Latitude E7450). I then tried to avoid using programs like evolution, sky in order to narrow it down, but was not successful by now.

What can that be? A research on the forum and the web doesn't show any other possible causes apart from Kernel 4.7. being maybe a source of the problem? I will now proceed to downgroad one system to 4.6.4.1. Else, how can I help to track it down? There's nothing more frustrating, than not knowing when the next freeze will happen and with it the loosing of all unsaved work...

Last edited by emak (2016-09-21 15:26:16)

jasonwryan · 2016-09-11 20:38:15

Other people have reported similar issues. Paste the relevant part of the journal from a freeze. Also, try -lts kernel and see if you can reproduce with that.

berbae · 2016-09-11 20:45:02

When such a thing happened to me, it was a hardware failure; but you say that the freezes occur on two different machines, so...
Presently with latest kernel and latest intel video driver, I don't see such freezes on my recent desktop computer (it is an assembled machine with chosen components).

Maybe you have a ventilation problem in a dusty environment.

Last edited by berbae (2016-09-12 09:05:20)

emak · 2016-09-11 21:08:40

Here is the relevant part of one freeze - the last logged actions before a freeze are not always the same:

Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: FS-Cache: Loaded
Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: Key type dns_resolver registered
Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: FS-Cache: Netfs 'cifs' registered for caching
Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: Key type cifs.spnego registered
Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: Key type cifs.idmap registered
Sep 11 20:17:39 PC-DE-E74-LI systemd[1]: Mounted /mnt/srv-file-private.
Sep 11 20:27:21 PC-DE-E74-LI wpa_supplicant[756]: wlp2s0: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 9c:c7:a6:f2:f7:88 [GTK=CCMP]
Sep 11 20:30:39 PC-DE-E74-LI systemd[1]: Starting Cleanup of Temporary Directories...
Sep 11 20:30:39 PC-DE-E74-LI systemd[1]: Started Cleanup of Temporary Directories.
-- Reboot --
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI systemd-journald[322]: Runtime journal (/run/log/journal/) is 8.0M, max 797.0M, 789.0M free.
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: Linux version 4.7.2-1-ARCH (builduser@tobias) (gcc version 6.1.1 20160802 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Aug 20 23:02:56 CEST 2016
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=1a736fb2-8345-4dfd-825c-adac39d26571 rw rootflags=subvol=_current/ROOT cryptdevice=UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:EncStor-rootv quiet
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: xstate_offset[2]:  576, xstate_sizes[2]:  256
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x001: 'x87 floating point registers'
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x002: 'SSE registers'
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x004: 'AVX registers'
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: Enabled xstate features 0x7, context size is 832 bytes, using 'standard' format.
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: x86/fpu: Using 'eager' FPU context switches.
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: e820: BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000057fff] usable
Sep 11 20:39:22 PC-DE-E74-LI kernel: BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000058000-0x0000000000058fff] reserved

I will try a lts kernel on one machine and the downgraded to 4.6.4.1 on the other one.

Jup, a hardware failure is something I was thinking about, but not starting from the same time on two different machines, used in different environments (and definitely not dusted ones!). I have uninstalled xf86-video-intel the 25.08.16 on both machines and I have in mind that the problems were already existing (at least I uninstalled it for a different reason). I can't nevertheless be 100% sure, because when the problems arise it always seems like an enormeous amount of time, but you are not sure about when it started for the first time. But what I know for sure is that the machines were absolutely stable before!

glenb77 · 2016-09-13 00:37:25

i have had same issue in the past and has resurfaced in kernel 4.7.3. i use the linux-ck. i am pretty sure it is intel i915. i used to get it every month or so (using laptop daily), now i get it 2-3 times a day. i have changed xorg driver to modesetting but it still occurs. i was planning to just wait it out until 4.8 kernel where i had read intel has made changes to the module. i have tried the suggestions in the wiki and elsewhere without noticeable difference. if anyone comes up with any workarounds please advise. thanks.

emak · 2016-09-13 08:51:13

Today I had the freeze on the machine running kernel 4.6.4.1 so I downgraded this also to 4.4.20-1-lts and keep looking with that now.

agm28011997 · 2016-09-13 10:02:48

glen for me it isn't related to the driver because with the same drivers and mesa git version the older kernel of ck and oficial arch don't cause me anye freeze

emak · 2016-09-16 11:44:32

So after 3 days uptime the systems seems to be running stable again with the 4.4.20-1-lts kernel. I will continue trying next week on my work laptop, the home system just works fine so far.

emak · 2016-09-21 15:25:50

Well, it looks like the systems are running stable now. I don't know what's wrong with the newest kernel but both my systems are running stable on the lts-kernel (no freeze since) and I can live with that. Mark this as solved

glenb77 · 2016-09-22 18:27:42

if you are having this issue with a baytrail cpu, the script attached in this kernel bug on the freezes and hangs, has helped my system a lot. i can use current kernel and avoid the freezes. script is at post 434. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051#c434

just add simple service to run script at boot.

d.hensen · 2016-11-19 12:22:40

I'm also experiencing exactly this issue. I'm currently on 4.7.6-1-ARCH, I have even more severe problems with newer kernels.

I'm running BSPWM and occasionally GNOME. When using gnome, my screen turns on automatically after X minutes and GDM locks the session. When this happens there is a high probability that when I resume working, my screen does not refresh anymore, so it looks like a freeze. The screen updates only when moving the mouse and the only remedy is rebooting. With BSPWM I dont have an locking timer installed, so the screen just blanks and GDM does NOT lock. So when running BSPWM I can get some work done, with Gnome I know its gonna fail very soon. I can't figure it all out anymore because the logs all look super OKAY, I'm getting tired of it...

I have tried lts kernel, which seemed to run good until it got updated this month. I hope it all will improve by the hard work of the kernel devs!

Arch Linux

#1 2016-09-11 20:06:26

[SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#2 2016-09-11 20:38:15

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#3 2016-09-11 20:45:02

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#4 2016-09-11 21:08:40

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#5 2016-09-13 00:37:25

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#6 2016-09-13 08:51:13

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#7 2016-09-13 10:02:48

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#8 2016-09-16 11:44:32

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#9 2016-09-21 15:25:50

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#10 2016-09-22 18:27:42

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

#11 2016-11-19 12:22:40

Re: [SOLVED] System freeze periodically - hard reset needed

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