[SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

TheJaava · 2021-08-04 07:34:19

So I have an arch install on a HP ProBook. everything looks good.

I want a graphical user interface because of course I do. I've been trying to set it up in time for classes this fall so I have my system mostly set up so I can focus on work and study.

But I'm at a loss. I have installed sway from pacman, failed to install sway-git and wlroots-git, installed river-git, installed dwl, installed weston, and as of 1 hour ago installed kde plasma.
I like dwm so I was looking for a wayland window manager with tiling features so i decided to give sway a shot because i had read that it is well supported. Sway does not work. It always freezes
before I can get anything done. I posted about this here. Still 0 progress on that front. Then I decided I want to try kde plasma. I've had plasma before
(on the machine I'm posting from I had previously had kubuntu installed and i liked the environment). i thought i installed xorg correctly but running plasma with x from ly freezes on splash screen.
I cannot access any tty. Running plasma with wayland gives me something different every time. Sometimes it loads up, but eventually freezes. One time it worked for a while allowing me to go through and change
some settings and then it froze. I was doing the same thing. Sometimes it loads up but only gives me a black screen with a cursor that I can move around. I can even ctrl+alt+t and type reboot and the computer restarts.
I can't see any of this on my display. And most of the time it freezes even with the black screen. Whenever it freezes I cannot get into tty. What do I do?

journal -b -1 > pastebin
lspci > pastebin
uname -a > pastebin
sudo dmesg > pastebin

I like tiling window managers because of the customization possible and the really cool workspace features.

But I would love to have a kde plasma (especially wayland) de configured to my liking on this arch system on my main laptop. I just can't fix this freezing.

EDIT: been away working on school. but now that things are slowed down again I'm back at it again.
I can definitely say the freezing has been resolved.

This was the fix:

Alad wrote:

I had a laptop that behaved like that, the only solution was to disable hardware acceleration entirely. For example you can try
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "NoAccel" "true"
EndSection
or instead of NoAccel,
Option "DRI" "False"
in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-noaccel.conf.

and thanks to seth for pointing out that on this machine I need to use the setting for the modesetting driver.

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-30 04:33:57)

V1del · 2021-08-04 07:49:32

Is that the journal output from after rebooting after a freeze? There's too little context, make sure you run the journal command as root/with sudo.

If this is indeed the entire output it reads like your disk doesn't accept writes any more which would be a problem.

TheJaava · 2021-08-04 08:00:06

V1del wrote:

Is that the journal output from after rebooting after a freeze? There's too little context, make sure you run the journal command as root/with sudo.
If this is indeed the entire output it reads like your disk doesn't accept writes any more which would be a problem.

OK. I restarted. Using ly I logged into Plasma (Wayland). Immediately after loading in I'm hit by the black screen with a mouse centered. (the mouse has an orange tint which I know is from the night time settings i changed when it worked for 5 minutes earlier
-- thought that was interesting). I could not access tty as usual. I had to turn it off with the powerbutton and restart. I loaded into the shell:

journal -b -1 | ixio

--> new journal. Running with sudo gives me
"no results to fetch" (with no newline after...). And my disk definitely allows me to write to it. I have been programming, using git, and installing software all day without a working window manager or desktop environment.

seth · 2021-08-04 11:20:25

Any kind of hard-reboot will prevent the journal from being sync'd to disk.
Can you https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq) ?

CarbonChauvinist · 2021-08-04 11:37:07

Try without Ly. For instance with Plasma use the default SDDM and see if that gives different behavior. I've seen issues with Ly before and want to make sure that's not the constant that's biting you here.

Trilby · 2021-08-04 12:51:41

TheJaava wrote:

I like dwm so I was looking for a wayland window manager with tiling features so i decided to give sway ...

Off topic: once you solve the underlying issue, you may be interested in dwl which is to dwm as sway is to i3.

TheJaava · 2021-08-04 20:17:53

seth wrote:

Any kind of hard-reboot will prevent the journal from being sync'd to disk.
Can you https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq) ?

Thanks. I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't have sysrq set up on the laptop but i did add it sysrq_always_enabled=1 to my grub config and did grub-mkconfig again.
I tested it from within ly and after plasma wayland opened with a black screen. it worked. but 5 minutes ago it opened plasma with wayland and let me open the system settings then froze.
I cannot sysrq when it does that. So are you saying that I can't get the correct journal i need if I use the power button to reboot (which is the only thing I can do when the system freezes)? is there anything I can do to get
the logs after the crash?

TheJaava · 2021-08-04 20:20:23

CarbonChauvinist wrote:

Try without Ly. For instance with Plasma use the default SDDM and see if that gives different behavior. I've seen issues with Ly before and want to make sure that's not the constant that's biting you here.

I haven't tried sddm on this machine but I tried starting sway without any display manager and got the same issues as with ly when I installed it later. I have also started plasma from the shell with the same issue. I think the issue is probably independent of plasma, ly, sway, and more likely an issue with wayland and/or xorg (because neither works properly for long).

TheJaava · 2021-08-04 20:23:37

Trilby wrote:

TheJaava wrote:
I like dwm so I was looking for a wayland window manager with tiling features so i decided to give sway ...
Off topic: once you solve the underlying issue, you may be interested in dwl which is to dwm as sway is to i3.

I saw that. I originally picked sway over a more dwm like compositor because I had read that sway was more supported. dwl is definitely a smaller project and I don't trust myself to trouble shoot many issues as they come up without a lot of help.
When sway didn't work, I did look at dwl, but I can't remember if I ever actually installed it or if I just looked at the github for a while and decided not to. If I had gotten it to work though, I probably would have just left all this behind me at this point, though, lol.

seth · 2021-08-04 20:46:13

is there anything I can do to get the logs after the crash?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kdump

Since kernel debugging sucks big time:
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microcode
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_ … ete_freeze
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Stress … ing_memory

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 08:37:15

seth wrote:

is there anything I can do to get the logs after the crash?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kdump
Since kernel debugging sucks big time:
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microcode
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_ … ete_freeze
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Stress … ing_memory

Hey thanks for the response again. I took a look at those links so now I have some questions:

the kdump page seems to imply I need to build my own kernel. I don't know if that is too hard, but i've never done it and i don't know if i want to. is that necessary?
i already update intel microcode before starting the kernel.
My chip is a Xeon E3 7th gen which I looked it up and it uses Skylake microarchitecture. Still I applied the fix for freezing on Baytrail architecture. I added the kernel parameter

intel_idle.max_cstate=1

.
The system still freezes immediately with a black screen and cursor.
I tried another fix for Broadwell chips just to check because they described the issue as "A few seconds after X/Wayland loads the machine will freeze and journalctl will log a kernel crash referencing the Intel graphics as below: "
which sounded similar to my issue. That kernel parameter didn't work either.
I installed memtest86-efi and added it to the grub menu using /etc/grub.d/40 custom. When I try to run it from grub, it gives me an error /efi/EFI/memtest86/memtestx64.efi does not exist. but it does. so i can't get the results from memtest
until i get it working first.

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 08:53:08

update: i created /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf as described here. Note I do have xf86-video-intel installed.
i logged out and logged back in using ly to Plasma (X11). It gave me a black screen with a mouse that disappeared after a second and then I just had a black screen. But unlike when I run wayland and it freezes I could open tty.
So I opened tty to run

journalctl -b|ixio

--> ixio (ps you can see everything I just described in the journal so that does take a lot of lines......)

I think it's interesting that I seem to have the same symptom of whatever issue i'm having with x and wayland, but with wayland I can't do anything but hard reboot. So the underlying cause for each protocol freezing might be different.

I got weston to work for a little while. I opened weston terminal, checked for firefox (i had tried to install it before in sway, but it froze while it was being installed), it wasn't installed so I installed it. it completed. i tried to run it.

Error: no DISPLAY environment variable specified

. i didn't know if that was a firefox specific thing, so I went to install the spotify aur package and wayland froze after i typed

git clo

. just like with Plasma (Wayland) and sway, I can't open tty.
I can only hard shut down. I'm convinced this is a wayland issue or a hardware issue affecting wayland differently than x.

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-05 09:13:33)

seth · 2021-08-05 09:16:26

I don't think it's the same situation and the journal also doesn't even show an attempt to start plasma => https://bbs.archlinux.org/profile.php?id=61077

When I try to run it from grub, it gives me an error /efi/EFI/memtest86/memtestx64.efi does not exist. but it does

Forgot to mount the ESP/boot partition?
Sanity check:

uname -a
pacman -Qs linux

The system still freezes immediately with a black screen and cursor.

For clarification: a mouse cursor or the console underline cursor? (Does it blink?)

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 09:32:47

sorry, i'm confused by the link to the profile. did they have a similar issue? and did you mean that my log does not show starting plasma? because i think it is done by ly so it is probably one of the ly pam_* audits. there were a lot of those in the journal

my ESP is /efi and it's mounted. I confirmed with lsblk

I posted uname -a in my original post but here is

pacman -Qs linux |ixio

--> ix.io.

And yea I should have been more specific. I get a mouse cursor. The screen is black with no plasma desktop or task bar. On wayland, where I have messed with the settings
(including turning on night mode with warm colors) the mouse cursor is black with an orange tinted white outside as it should look. But I get no other graphics.

With plasma and x, i suspect these settings are independent because i get the ordinary white cursor (with normal blue light)

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-05 09:37:36)

seth · 2021-08-05 09:47:24

Ah, fuck. Clicked the wrong link.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1986287 (don't use ly)

I get a mouse cursor

Display server starts but session doesn't.
Don't use ly…

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 10:06:19

seth wrote:

Ah, fuck. Clicked the wrong link.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1986287 (don't use ly)

Ohh ok. Yea. I ran sway, plasma with wayland, and weston from tty and i get the same issues.
The plasma command I used was

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland

. I could try to run from sddm, but I like ly better so far, and I still don't see how that might solve the issue when running from console doesn't even work.

Display server starts but session doesn't.
Don't use ly…

Does ly not start sessions and if not do other display managers? ly is the only display manager I've ever used....

EDIT: as root i ran:

systemctl disable ly.service

systemctl enable sddm.service

rebooted. logged into Plasma (Wayland) session using sddm. black screen with mouse cursor.

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-05 10:16:39)

V1del · 2021-08-05 10:14:39

Ly is notoriously buggy with their systemd session integration, most others aren't.

What if you run that startplasma without the explicit dbus-run-session ? After a console login you normally have a valid session that you "jump out of" with an explicit dbus-run-session invocation.

In case none of these helps I'd try the LTS kernel or so, but it's still quite strange that there's no sign of any kernel level issue in these logs I don't think I've ever seen a kernel die this hard. Something else to try would be a UEFI update, maybe you got a weird early firmware.

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 10:23:06

V1del wrote:

Ly is notoriously buggy with their systemd session integration, most others aren't.

Ok, I just edited my previous comment. I have tried it with sddm. This gives me the same result as ly unfortunately.

What if you run that startplasma without the explicit dbus-run-session ? After a console login you normally have a valid session that you "jump out of" with an explicit dbus-run-session invocation.

I just tried this. black screen with mouse cursor no tty access sysrq doesn't work. hard rebooting...

In case none of these helps I'd try the LTS kernel or so, but it's still quite strange that there's no sign of any kernel level issue in these logs I don't think I've ever seen a kernel die this hard. Something else to try would be a UEFI update, maybe you got a weird early firmware.

I was looking at the uefi update and I have absolutely no idea how to do it and i'm a little scared to try to be honest.

i'm going to try the lts kernel.

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-05 10:25:14)

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 10:42:15

running plasma with wayland through sddm after booting into the lts kernel gives black screen with mouse cursor. I assume I will have this issue with sway and weston as well without testing.

really interesting development, i think:
using lts kernel I ran plasma with x11 and it started for the first time. none of the settings i had set in the wayland sessions before lasted and screen is at full brightness but seems very dim to me.
and when it did freeze in system settings it does not let me access sysrq or tty like wayland was before

EDIT: ....switching back to latest kernel and running X11 now works the same as the lts kernel. before it only gave a black screen now it consistently opens the complete plasma desktop.
I am checking that the kernel I think is running actually is with uname -a every time. It still freezes within 5 minutes. Usually within 1. I'm so dizzy dealing with this....

brightness is now no longer an issue. coincidentally (probably not lol) the sun is now up where i live which is what the settings for night mode depends on lmao. i'm going to try to go to sleep

Last edited by TheJaava (2021-08-05 11:27:56)

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 13:03:35

Found some error logs that weren't there before so here they are

cat ~/.local/share/sddm/xorg-session.log |ixio

--> ix.io

cat ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log |ixio

--> ix.io
and this -- whatever this is

cat ~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/errors.log |ixio

--> ix.io

seth · 2021-08-05 14:21:43

The Xorg log shows a server that ran fine for ~33 minutes.
The mere fact that you can start SDDM suggests that it's not the display server (can you btw. move the mouse cursor?)

=> Let's do some basics

stat $HOME

Install xorg-xinit and xorg-xterm - can you then

startx

In one of the xterms (move the mouse over it to give it the input focus), check

loginctl session-status

What happens if you run "startplasma-x11" from the xterm?

CarbonChauvinist · 2021-08-05 15:09:13

When it freezes does your caps lock key indicator flash?

You're in good hands with Seth, V1del, et al. so what they say supersedes anything below, but I'll just throw a few more suggestions in the ring:

1. Most suggestions are to NOT install xf86-video-intel and fall back to modesetting driver (this means remove xf86-video-intel AND the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf file you created)

2. Perhaps try disabling pstate (i.e. pass `intel_pstate=disable` in the kernel parameters)

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 23:45:41

I was going to try the things you two suggested but now i'm getting a new issue and at this point i'm pretty hopeless. so i installed memtest and added a menu option in grub. I tried to run it. it gave me an error. so i decided to come back to that later. hours later I had the computer sitting there for a minute and I didn't do anything to it. i was reading something on this laptop trying to troubleshoot. next time i looked at my faulty arch machine it was running memtest. Well I figured let me let it run since i didn't know how to get it to work. so i let it run. it took forever and i had to go to work so I let it continue running and plugged it in. I went to work for 4 hours and when i came back it was done. my memory passed all the tests. no errors of any kind. cool. then i tried to exit memtest and it froze. i had to hard reboot. i started the machine and it just instantly loads memtest. it does not countdown for grub like usual. i have to exit out of memtest then grub comes up. but then the computer freezes: in the terminal. yes now my system is freezing in tty. i can use sddm but the touchpad no longer works in sddm or in plasma x. i can use the keyboard still. i can open konsole and i managed to run

sudo journalctl -b -1 | ixio

--> ix.io
I also uninstalled memtest86-efi using

sudo pacman -R memtest86-efi

But when i tried to reboot it froze after exiting plasma. I just saw the "sda2: ..." screen and it took me a minute to realize it was frozen. When i started the computer again it still loaded into memtest86. i'm sorry guys but I'm so confused at this point, i'm already somewhat new to arch and this computer has me losing sleep. i don't even know where to start

TheJaava · 2021-08-05 23:54:27

TheJaava wrote:

i don't even know where to start

I'm thinking that I should update the uefi and then reinstall linux. My partitions are already set how I want them and I would just need to pacstrap all the software and recreate my user stuff. my code is backed up on github. all the other software I can install as I need it.
then if i do it this route, I can control the environment better, because right now i'm overwhelmed. but it will be at least a couple days of work and what if i do the same thing(s) wrong this time as last time? is the risk worth it to you guys that are more experienced. do you think you can figure out what's going on with my system? i was pretty happy with my arch install until i realized that graphics doesn't work at all ////

seth · 2021-08-06 07:19:01

The last journal shows a mostly error-free boot that lastes for ~2minutes

Aug 05 19:29:09 ProBook kwalletd5[419]: QStandardPaths: wrong permissions on runtime directory /tmp/xdg-runtime-1000, 0755 instead of 0700

Something™ sets a weird $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and the target has bad permissions. I guess that's a ly-fuckup.

hours later I had the computer sitting there for a minute and I didn't do anything to it. i was reading something on this laptop trying to troubleshoot. next time i looked at my faulty arch machine it was running memtest.

Do you have any means to control the boot? grub or efibootmgr?
The described incident though indicates a reboot and if that didn't happen by intervention, schedule or cat-incident, it's likely a power/cpu/memory-hardware problem. memtest86 freezing supports that explanation
=> How old is the device? Try booting a live system like grml, knoppix or the ubuntu live-installer from usb and see whether a completely different SW stack runs into the same issues…

Arch Linux

#1 2021-08-04 07:34:19

[SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#2 2021-08-04 07:49:32

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#3 2021-08-04 08:00:06

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#4 2021-08-04 11:20:25

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#5 2021-08-04 11:37:07

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#6 2021-08-04 12:51:41

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#7 2021-08-04 20:17:53

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#8 2021-08-04 20:20:23

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#9 2021-08-04 20:23:37

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#10 2021-08-04 20:46:13

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#11 2021-08-05 08:37:15

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#12 2021-08-05 08:53:08

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#13 2021-08-05 09:16:26

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#14 2021-08-05 09:32:47

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#15 2021-08-05 09:47:24

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#16 2021-08-05 10:06:19

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#17 2021-08-05 10:14:39

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#18 2021-08-05 10:23:06

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#19 2021-08-05 10:42:15

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#20 2021-08-05 13:03:35

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#21 2021-08-05 14:21:43

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#22 2021-08-05 15:09:13

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#23 2021-08-05 23:45:41

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#24 2021-08-05 23:54:27

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

#25 2021-08-06 07:19:01

Re: [SOLVED] every window manager I have tried freezes

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