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#1 2021-05-10 13:58:37

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Laptop freezes randomly

For a few weeks (about two months) my laptop is randomly freezing, but because of current world circumstances I did not use my laptop that much and did my work related stuff on my desktop PC.

Problem description:
The freezes appear to be random to me, they happen no matter if the laptop is charging, docked, or while it is on battery. Very often the laptop is running for a whole day without a freeze, but once a freeze happened the next boot is very likely to happen again within 5 minutes after booting (and then again, and again, and again). I have the FEELING that a freeze is more likely to appear while the laptop is charging or while it is idling/not doing anything "heavy" (and with heavy I mean watching a video or compiling something, so nothing really heavy), but a freeze also happened while the laptop was rendering something small (with 100% cpu usage and fan at max speed). That sounds like it might be related to power management.
Thanks to the top bar of Gnome and a few extensions that I have I can always see the time of the freeze, a graph with the cpu usage in the last 5 minutes and the temperatures. I never saw anything interesting in those, or an obvious similarity between all those freezes.

When i searched for the problem online I found a few people who described a similar issue and who even have the same laptop model as me (Dell Latitude 7390, i5):
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/6397
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=264843
But the Arch Forum thread for example mentions freezes that only while it is on battery, a difference to my issue. But at least it seems like I am not alone. Those links suggest that it might be related to the Kernel? But I am not sure either.

My silly attempts to fix the issue:
I already tried a few different things, like disabling c-states (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_ … ete_freeze), fiddling around with pstate/cpu governors/scaling, a few different kernels (with Arch I only tried 5.12 and 5.12 Zen, on Fedora I tried mainline and 5.9), the integrated self-check from my laptop (no errors found), checking the bios fw of the laptop (was already on the latest firmware, last version from the dell support page is from the end of April 2021), fiddling around with a few power management options, checking journalctl (nothing interesting) and dmesg, which does have a few interesting error messages. The only thing that I could still try out is installing Windows on the laptop, just to see if the problem exists even on Windows 10 (and therefore being a big indication of a hardware issue). But bc that requires me to wipe my disk and me not having anything for making a full backup of the disk I did not do this so far.

dmesg errors:

[    0.607390] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\_PR.PR00._CPC], AE_NOT_FOUND (20210105/psargs-330)
[...]
[    0.609765] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_PR.PR01._CPC due to previous error (AE_NOT_FOUND) (20210105/psparse-529)

This error seems to be common with 5.12 according to different threads that I found and nothing that I need to worry about too much.

[ 5340.252825] audit: type=1110 audit(1620652328.940:429): pid=81942 uid=1000 auid=1000 ses=2 msg='op=PAM:setcred grantors=pam_faillock,pam_permit,pam_env,pam_faillock acct="root" exe="/usr/bin/sudo" hostname=? addr=? terminal=/dev/pts/1 res=success'
[ 5340.254990] audit: type=1105 audit(1620652328.942:430): pid=81942 uid=1000 auid=1000 ses=2 msg='op=PAM:session_open grantors=pam_limits,pam_unix,pam_permit acct="root" exe="/usr/bin/sudo" hostname=? addr=? terminal=/dev/pts/1 res=success'
[ 5342.514152] i2c /dev entries driver
[ 5343.923832] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5344.947853] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5345.971858] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5346.995871] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5348.019887] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5349.044915] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5350.067935] i2c_designware i2c_designware.0: controller timed out
[ 5353.011963] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5354.035932] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5355.060003] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5356.084006] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5357.108009] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5358.132016] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5359.155994] i2c_designware i2c_designware.2: controller timed out
[ 5366.773156] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5367.796139] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5368.820152] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5369.844167] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5370.868200] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5371.892159] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5372.916213] i2c_designware i2c_designware.3: controller timed out
[ 5381.308857] audit: type=1334 audit(1620652369.995:431): prog-id=106 op=UNLOAD
[ 5381.308864] audit: type=1334 audit(1620652369.995:432): prog-id=105 op=UNLOAD

With this I currently don't know what it could mean or if it is related. All the stuff on my laptop seems to work fine, as far as I can tell (USB ports, touchpad, keyboard backlight, etc,). I also read through the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management page, just because I can not get rid of the feeling that this problem is either related to a change in the kernel or in the power management/cpu scaling, but with none of the stuff I got the feeling that it might fix my issue. I also read the arch wiki page about CPU frequency scaling, but I could not see anything of interest either.
Something that might be interesting though:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_ … Management

lspci -vv | grep 'ASPM.*abled;'

This returns nothing, neither an enabled or disabled.

If a full dmesg is needed, please tell me. But I don't think that I missed anything of interest.

System:

OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
Host: Latitude 7390 
Kernel: 5.12.2-zen1-1-zen 
CPU: Intel i5-8250U (8) @ 3.400GHz (Kaby Lake microarchitecture)
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620 
Memory: 5718MiB / 15860MiB 
Boot-Loader: Systemd-boot
DE: Gnome (Wayland)

Full lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: skl_uncore
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 (rev 07)
	DeviceName:  Onboard IGD
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 08)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: proc_thermal
	Kernel modules: processor_thermal_device
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
	Kernel modules: xhci_pci
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: intel_pch_thermal
	Kernel modules: intel_pch_thermal
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #2 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.3 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #3 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: mei_me
	Kernel modules: mei_me
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev f1)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point LPC Controller/eSPI Controller (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
	Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
	Kernel modules: i2c_i801
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (4) I219-LM (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: e1000e
	Kernel modules: e1000e
01:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS525A PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 081b
	Kernel driver in use: rtsx_pci
	Kernel modules: rtsx_pci
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 0050
	Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
	Kernel modules: iwlwifi

A little bit of history:
The problem originally appeared with Fedora 33 about 8 weeks ago. At first I just tried an upgrade to Fedora 34. Problem still existed. Then I did a fresh installation of Fedora 34, just to be sure that everything is clean/fresh/as it is expected to be. Problem still existed. I then tried out the linux-mainline-kernel and 5.9, but that did not solve my problem either. Now I switched to Arch (something I wanted to do anyway for a long time), but I wouldn't write this thread if the issue was solved by now.

Last edited by marissachan9 (2021-05-10 14:19:42)

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#2 2021-05-11 15:43:59

LucasBiazi
Member
Registered: 2020-11-11
Posts: 111

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Good morning.

1) What is the output of systemctl --failed?
2) Are you using Xorg or Wayland? If X, please post the log.
3) Have you tried the lts kernel?

Since you have already tried other distributions, it is possible that you may have a hardware problem. How old is your machine? Have you tried to let a professional take a look at it? I had a similar problem not long ago, however my crashes were completely random, not in every 5 minutes. The solution was to change my mother-board for a brand-new. For what is worth, try W10 and see if the issues still remains (I would recommend Windows because I heard it has a better hardware support when compared to Linux).

Hope it helps.


Always backup important files when editing it.

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#3 2021-05-12 11:22:01

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

1. The output is:

➜  ~ systemctl --failed
  UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
0 loaded units listed.
➜  ~ sudo !!
➜  ~ sudo systemctl --failed
  UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
0 loaded units listed.
➜  ~ 

2. As I already mentioned in my original post I am using Wayland (with Gnome).

3. I did use 5.10 with Fedora, but not with Arch Linux. But considering that a similar issue even existed with 5.4 and 5.10 (both LTS on QubesOS) I did not try out any of them on Arch so far. I guess I could look into 5.8 for example (a Kernel that originally came with Fedora 33, which worked)

I did not let an expert look into it so far. But considering that other people have a similar issue which started at the same time I do not expect this to be a hardware issue. Installing Windows 10 is an option, but right now I am not able to make a full bitwise backup of the disk.

Just to clarify:
"I had a similar problem not long ago, however my crashes were completely random, not in every 5 minutes."
My crashes are random, I might have misphrased something, English is not my first language. The crashes I have appear to be fully random. I can use my laptop for maybe 10 hours without a problem, maybe I can use it for 2 or 3 hours without a problem. I can not identify anything that the crashes have in common.
BUT when the laptop froze once the laptop is very likely to freeze again WITHIN a few minutes of after booting/being on the desktop. I often have to reboot 4-5 times and hope that this time the laptop does not freeze within the first 5 minutes or so, because then I have the feeling that the laptop usually survives an hour or even more without freezing. That is the only pattern that I am able to see.

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#4 2021-05-12 12:34:21

nek0panchi
Member
Registered: 2020-08-07
Posts: 2

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I have the same problem on my laptop, it seems to freeze randomly but only when doing cpu intensive stuff, I have freezes on both vanilla and zen kernel, I switched to lts and so far no freezes with 22h uptime.

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#5 2021-05-12 20:04:10

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Just to be sure I tried out linux-lts, adjusted the entry in /boot/loader/entries and verified with

➜  ~ uname -a
Linux <machinename> 5.10.36-1-lts #1 SMP Tue, 11 May 2021 15:06:48 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
➜  ~ 

that I am actually using the lts-Kernel, and it sadly still freezes.

(But the ACPI erros that I mentioned in my first post and which according to other posts started to appear with 5.12 disappeared in dmesg.)

Last edited by marissachan9 (2021-05-12 20:04:39)

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#6 2021-05-15 10:48:42

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I installed FreeBSD and it ran without a single freeze (but didnt support most of the hardware and features like closing the lid for hibernation. Still very interesting experience). After that I installed Windows 10 three days ago and so far I did not have a single freeze. I guess this indicates that this is not a hardware issue (but this is obviously not a 100% proof).

Any ideas what else I could try out with Arch? Or any idea how I could even debug the freezes and look into what causes them? Btw something that I forgot to mention, Sysrq doesnt work either.

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#7 2021-05-15 11:09:19

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I might've missed it from your post, but do you have the intel-ucode package installed and have you loaded it in your bootloader before the initramfs?

In systemd-boot it'd look something like this for your conf:

linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /intel-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img

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#8 2021-05-15 11:29:12

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I did have the intel-ucode loaded according to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/microcode#systemd-boot
When I tried to verify that they are loaded properly https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/microc … ed_on_boot I noticed no difference. I assumed that this is normal though, bc the BIOS is on the latest firmware. The date was "recentish" too, but because I wiped the Arch installation for now to test FreeBSD and Windows 10 I can not mention which version/date it was exactly.

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#9 2021-05-15 11:45:14

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Yeah I figured, I think most people do have it enabled but I've heard of similar issues when the microcode wasn't loaded so I figured it was worth a shot. Very frustrating.

Given that the issues seem to have appeared recently, have you checked the thermals? That might perhaps explain the recurrent freeze in short time after the first freeze, if the laptop hasn't cooled down properly yet. It's weird that the other systems work fine though, but maybe BSD doesn't support whatever piece of hardware doesn't play well with the temperature, and maybe windows manages it differently? That would also be related to your feeling about it being related to the power management stuff, I figure.

Have you tried cleaning the laptop with some compressed air?

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#10 2021-05-15 12:30:17

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I dont think that the thermals are the issue either. I have a Gnome Extension which shows me the temperature and fan speeds. And very often when the laptop froze the temperatures were around 40-50°C and was just idling. Often when I came back from doing something I discovered that my laptop froze, usually directly AFTER I left. And when I did something processor intensive I always had the feeling that the laptop was less likely (though not impossible) to freeze.

I also already suspected that the CPU slowing down or that maybe the nvme disk going to sleep is the culprit. But forcing the cpu gov to performance or power saver didnt help either. I also played around with smartmontools to check for smart errors. I also tried out a few things from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_state_drive but nothing was helpful either.

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#11 2021-05-15 12:41:39

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Yeah, it was a long shot. I was just thinking since kernel 5.9 introduced some changes regarding both power and thermal management. I suppose you could give the aur package linux-lts54 a try, or you could give a quick install of manjaro a try since they still provide the 5.4 kernel as a recommended LTS, to see if it's a problem with the kernel itself or some other piece of software.

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#12 2021-05-26 18:12:12

marissachan9
Member
Registered: 2021-05-10
Posts: 8

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

I didnt reply so far because I had no time to reinstall Arch. But with Windows 10 I just got a BSOD, saying "FAULTY HARDWARE CORRUPTED PAGE". I guess this means that this is indeed a hardware issue.

It is weird that neither memtest nor the Dell selftest found that problem.

Thanks everybody who tried to help. I guess this thread can be closed.

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#13 2021-05-26 18:23:39

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Strange though that it took so long to show up in windows. Still, hopefully the new laptop works better!

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#14 2021-05-28 10:47:49

nek0panchi
Member
Registered: 2020-08-07
Posts: 2

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

marissachan9 wrote:

I didnt reply so far because I had no time to reinstall Arch. But with Windows 10 I just got a BSOD, saying "FAULTY HARDWARE CORRUPTED PAGE". I guess this means that this is indeed a hardware issue.

It is weird that neither memtest nor the Dell selftest found that problem.

Thanks everybody who tried to help. I guess this thread can be closed.

guess we didn't have the same issue, my freezing problem got fix yesterday with kernel 5.12.7.

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#15 2021-06-01 10:06:47

strange_charm
Member
Registered: 2021-05-31
Posts: 3

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Same exact issue as OP describes. What I tried: Adding kernal options (intel_pstate=disable, intel_idle.max_cstate=0 or 1). Updating the microcode and BIOS (in case you need to do this, Hirens Boot CD works great). Lack of RAM is not an issue for myself. I cleaned the fans and heat sink with compressed air just in case. I also updated the kernal from 5.11.x to 5.12.8 and it was good for about 2 days but then it froze again.

Hardware specs:

OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
Host: XPS L521X A18 
Kernel: 5.12.8-arch1-1 
Shell: bash 5.1.8
WM: i3 
CPU: Intel i5-3210M (4) @ 3.100GHz 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M 
GPU: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller 
Memory: 2928MiB / 15888MiB 

Last edited by strange_charm (2021-06-01 13:08:53)

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#16 2021-06-01 10:30:10

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

5.12 brought some changes to ACPI-stuff IIRC. OP was already using the 5.12 kernel though.

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#17 2021-06-01 12:57:54

strange_charm
Member
Registered: 2021-05-31
Posts: 3

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

It froze again for me. I made an edit to my previous post.

@Zom I think your insight is getting us closer to the solution. The freezing is more likely after it happens once. Although my CPU temperatures are normal and my rig is clean.

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#18 2021-06-01 13:52:30

Zom
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 430

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Op said everything worked fine until they upgraded from the 5.8 kernel, you could try the same suggestion I made to them with trying the 5.4 LTS kernel. However, Op also said that the issue that was described also occurred on the 5.4 kernel on qubes OS, although I don't know if the Op encountered this by themselves. It's something to try, I suppose.

I don't have any particular insight in the issue, I actually really hate these kinds of problems that only occur "sometimes" without any obvious logic behind them, since they're very hard to troubleshoot accurately. It could work for a week or a month, you'd think it's gone and then it hits you again from nowhere.

My spontaneous thought is that it might be troublesome hardware, either through a BIOS or ACPI bug or a linux bug that triggers some rare state in the hardware where it keeps failing for a while. This could also explain the crash in windows for the Op, in case the hardware wasn't actually detected as defective. Basically linux might put the hardware in a state where it shouldn't be, and it keeps misbehaving for a while. I'm very much not a programmer though, so my knowledge here is very limited.

I know dell offers ubuntu as a preloaded choice for some of their computers, and the latest version of ubuntu ships with kernel 5.11 I think. You could have a look at that and see if the problem occurs again. If it doesn't, then there might be something that ubuntu does with the kernel (or some other piece of software) that fixes the problem, and if it does occur again then you could contact dell support maybe and see if they have any suggestions?

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#19 2021-06-11 12:00:44

strange_charm
Member
Registered: 2021-05-31
Posts: 3

Re: Laptop freezes randomly

Update:

I've been able to narrow down the issue, as I noticed that the freezing definitely occurred after having had the laptop in hibernation. In addition, if it did freeze, I was left only with the option of pressing the power button, however, this apparently didn't correctly shut down the system (acpi settings don't reset perhaps). If I start a session either after hibernation or after it froze, it would eventually freeze again, becoming more frequent the more it freezes.

If I poweroff at the end of every session, I don't get freezing ever. I made the changes in my Kernal mode setting but haven't tested if this solely fixes the issue. For now, I don't mind simply ending my sessions with poweroff.

Two links regarding the "hibernation/freezing" issue which apparently solved it for me: GuC / HuC firmware loading , Early KMS start

Note: Before, I tried reverting to linux-lts 5.10.42-1 but it didn't solve the issue. As mentioned in previous comments by others, since 5.4 there have been acpi setting changes, perhaps an earlier linux-lts would work.

Last edited by strange_charm (2021-06-15 12:48:31)

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