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#1 2020-08-25 19:57:43

MH2012
Member
Registered: 2020-08-25
Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

Abstract

Computer ignores user input when entering i3 on kernel versions newer than 5.5.7. On kernel version 5.5.7, computer freezes occasionally each of durations spanning from 1-3 seconds.

My computer and software
  • Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4. generation

  • Window manager: i3

Hardware specs:

  • Processor: IntelCore i5-6200U @ 2.30 GHz (actually I get ambigious readings as lspci reports Intel Xeon E3)

  • Ram: 8 GB

  • Graphicscard: Intel HD 520

Problems outlined in short
  • Kernel  version 5.5.7 installed: System freezes occasionally in periods ranging from 1-3 seconds. UPDATE; It seems to occur when the system needs to do some background tasks. Ex.: It's impossible to do work in TexStudio because TexStudio does background tasks whenever I write some new content.

  • Kernel version  > 5.5.7 installed: System is not responding to any user input when entering i3 (this seems to apply to anything GUI based, so maybe a xorg issue?) and furthermore, the i3 taskbar in the bottom shows no battery found.

Introduction with regard to my skills and usage of Arch

First of all, I'm a not so experienced user of Arch Linux and I really enjoy using it, as my learning experience with linux tends to grow by each day using it. But my knowledge with regard to the more technical stuff is still somewhat limited and therefore, I ask for your help to assist me with commands that may be helpful to provide you with the necessary information to help me locate the real problem.
I have tried to lookup the issue on google and I don't feel that my issue has been matched by any other issues that relates to freezing. However, I tried to install the intel-microcode package and configured it to load early, all in accordance with the Microcode Arch Wiki page. That didn't resolve the issue and now I ask the archlinux comminity for help as I want to avoid a complete reinstall.

The problem

The problems can be divided into two sections, each related (my suspecion) to either the old kernel 5.5.7 or any newer kernel. I will as thoroughly as possible describe each of the problems in the following two sub sections.

The problem when kernel 5.5.7 is installed
This is where I encounter periodically freezes each of an average duration of 1-2 seconds. This is very annoying and is often occuring when working in QtCreator. First i suspected I lacked some SATA drivers as it all seems to happen when the disk tries to perform multiple operations, and while this may be a part of the problem I still think the main cause of troubles is related to the kernel or some other missing package. As of what I can read on the Arch Wiki, the sata drivers is not to be replaced by some third party drivers, so maybe some other packages I miss. 

The problem when a newer version of kernel 5.5.7 is installed
My window manager of choice is i3 and as of recently, for a reason unknown, my pacman mirrorlist reported no updates to the system for a long period of time. I wondered if this could be true and I just generated a new mirror list and uncommented some danish servers (my country of origin) and my system finally updated all packages and the kernel too. The latter seems to be causing me troubles now, as with newer kernels than 5.5.7, my window manager i3 starts up with the clock in the corner running as usual, but it seems to be the only thing working as the statusbar reports "no battery" and the system not responding to any keypress or mouse movement. In short, the system, when loading into i3, doesn't respond to any input and nothing else than the clock seems to be running. My solution is downgrading the kernel to 5.5.7 and it works again, with some periodically freezes spanning from a few milliseconds to a few seconds.
I have tried to lookup the issue on google and while there is many that seems to have issues close to mine, I still don't think there solutions might work in my situation. I have installed intel-microcode according to the arch wiki.

The goal

Of course, it's no secret that I want a solution as fast as possible, and with minimal effort. But this community is free and filled with skilled people helping a lot of other peoples in situations similar to mine, and of course they -probably- also have a job. So this is less about what I want and more about of what I wish for, and what I wish for is guidance to locate the real problem so I can solve this issue and get on with what I really want, to do: to do my assignments on this awesome distribution.

Please, let me know if you want any information or needs some clarification if you think some details has been left out.

UPDATE:

System log with new kernel and after the freeze occured

System log

UPDATE II:

I have installed a fresh installition of Arch a few days ago, but the same problem appears with a small change. Still small bursts of freeze occurs frequently, and updating the kernel still results in a freeze; which is to say that the system is not responding to any user input but this time there was a difference. Now the battery in the i3 statusbar was detected, unlike before. I really don't know the cause of this strange problem.

Best regards
Martin Hansen

Last edited by MH2012 (2021-04-20 21:18:48)

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#2 2020-09-03 21:57:53

fistrosan
Member
Registered: 2020-04-01
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

I am a bit confused by your system log. According to it the last time your logged into i3 was early July so i do not see how your system freezing is somehow connected to i3. I do see a lot of core dumps initiated by libc as a consequence of something going wrong with qt5.

A long-shot question: are you running arch inside a WM ?

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#3 2020-09-04 05:45:55

MH2012
Member
Registered: 2020-08-25
Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

fistrosan wrote:

I am a bit confused by your system log. According to it the last time your logged into i3 was early July so i do not see how your system freezing is somehow connected to i3. I do see a lot of core dumps initiated by libc as a consequence of something going wrong with qt5.

A long-shot question: are you running arch inside a WM ?

Ok that's strange. I have logged into i3 multiple times since early july. Maybe the log is based on the current kernel in use? Because when I ran journalctl, it was with a newer kernel (as stated in the post of course).  I just ran journalctl but maybe I missed some paramer to narrow the timespan a bit.

As of matter of fact, I have actually made a fresh install of Arch since my post, including wiping the drive. Now I'm on the latest kernel but the occasionally freeze of periods averaging of a few seconds persists, to my big annoyance.

And no, I'm not running Arch from VM.

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#4 2020-09-05 22:03:07

fistrosan
Member
Registered: 2020-04-01
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

I just realized you have a Lenovo X1. I would suggest to make sure you have all possible BIOS updates via fwupdmgr and see if the problem persists.

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#5 2020-09-07 20:17:47

MH2012
Member
Registered: 2020-08-25
Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

After I saw your reply I tried use fwudpmgr to update all possible firmwares but fwudpmgr never seemed to actually update the firmwares. I suddenly found myself in an update loop where I rebooted and afterwards it simply prompted me to install the same firmwares it just tried to install. No errors was reportet. But I will try another way to update my BIOS and see if that resolves the problem.

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#6 2020-10-27 13:03:48

MH2012
Member
Registered: 2020-08-25
Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

I tried today upgrading to the newest kernel. Now I wasn't even able to enter the i3 interface, but it did provide me with some new details. I may suspect the issue is related to xorg. It complaints about i915 module is not found in some directory. It looks pretty similar to the same issue described in this thread:

xorg: Failed to load module "i915" / no screens found

I did a quick look at the Xorg log, and found, that it couldn't find no screens. I tried to follow the instruction given in the link above, but I have no config files related to my display in /usr/share/X11/Xorg.config.d/ to remove. Only the ones that are related to my keyboard and trackpad.

I will provide the log later when I have upgraded.

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#7 2021-04-17 12:29:56

MH2012
Member
Registered: 2020-08-25
Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo X1 Carbon (gen 4) freezes periodically

After a long time, and by experiencing similar issues with my desktop, I finally located the issue to be related to my bootloader. It turns out, that Pacman, when updating kernel, fails to mount the boot partition and install the kernel files in the /boot directory, instead of my /efi directory, where my boot partition should be mounted. So all I had to do, was to arch-chroot from the arch live usb into my system and copy the necessary files from the /boot menu to my boot partition. And now I have succesfully upgraded my kernel  from 5.8.5 -> 5.11.14  without any input issues.

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