Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

peonerovv · 2021-10-29 12:00:24

Hi.

I installed arch on my Thinkpad X200, which has an Intel Core 2 Duo. I used it for a bit and there were no problems. I then decided to fix the screen tearing issue by adding

Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf file. After that I began noticing a problem where the laptop would reboot itself after some time. The problem persisted even after I deleted the file, since I thought that giving drivers for intel graphics, to a computer with cpu before core series wouldn't work. (but to be fair, adding this file fixed the tearing problem). How do I fix this and how do I look into log files, to try to find the root of the issue.

Thanks.

Edit:
I fixed the crashing error by removing the "xf86-video-intel" driver. I suspect it wasn't completely compatible with my GPU (Intel Mobile 4 Series). The screen tearing problem still persists though.

Last edited by peonerovv (2021-10-30 10:33:01)

V1del · 2021-10-29 12:07:28

It's likely there's little to no correlation between these two events. The worst this option should be able to do is crash xorg. And it will certainly not persist if you removed the file in the meantime.

Is it a sudden reboot as if the electricity was cut or a clean reboot? In any case post

sudo journalctl -b-1

after rebooting from such an event, if something was possible to be written out it will be there: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

peonerovv · 2021-10-29 13:18:21

It's rebooting as if electricity was cut, or as if I pressed on the power button for a few seconds, forcefully shutting down the machine. It then turns on by itself again, but doesn't boot, just sits on a black screen.
I have troubles understanding how am I supposed to give you the output of journalctl -b-1. Can you help me?

peonerovv · 2021-10-29 13:20:08

I also filmed myself while this was happening, and I may reinstall the system, since it has only been a few days from the original install, and test the same actions with the same programs.

V1del · 2021-10-29 13:21:52

Run

sudo journalctl -b-1 |& curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

post the resulting link

peonerovv · 2021-10-29 13:27:27

Here is the link:
http://ix.io/3DgY

Last edited by peonerovv (2021-10-29 13:27:57)

seth · 2021-10-29 14:37:57

Oct 29 15:23:13 timur systemd-logind[292]: New session 1 of user timur.
…
Oct 29 15:23:13 timur login[303]: LOGIN ON tty1 BY timur
…
Oct 29 15:24:09 timur systemd[310]: Started Sound Service.

So you just log into the console (there doesn't seem to be a GUI session) and after ~1 minute pulseaudio starts and the journal stops (and the system reboots)?

Do you do anything after logging in? Is the reboot timeout somewhat constant?
You might want to watch lm_sensors on whether the system heats up too much.

peonerovv · 2021-10-29 15:09:03

All the crashes happen while I'm using my browser. Wrote a script that displayed the output of "sensors" every second. I played music through YouTube and played web version of Tetris at the same time (since doing this had caused the crash before), while looking at the output of my script. After I started playing the fan started rotating at ~1850 rpm. Both cores never peaked more then 51°C and then all of a sudden it crashed.
Also about an hour ago it crashed while I was watching a video at 720p, and which was the only tab in the browser.
I assumed crashes were caused by the config file because yesterday, before writing the file and deleting it, i left the laptop compiling a fairly large c++ program for a few minutes. The fan was much more louder then during this test and yet, nothing happened.

seth · 2021-10-29 15:17:09

Is the journal you posted from a previous boot that had crashed (… -b -1 or … -b -2) or from a running TTY login?
Did you use xf86-video-intel before you added the tearfree option (which only applies to that driver) and can you reproduce the crash w/ xf86-video-intel?
When removing it make sure that it's not referenced in any config,

grep -ri intel /{etc,usr/share}/X11/xorg.conf*

peonerovv · 2021-10-30 10:12:41

Yes, I had the driver from the beginning (I installed it before running X for the first time). The journalctl that I showed was produced by the command

 journalctl -b-1

(no space between b and -1).
One thing I noticed is that the GPU on this machine is listed as "Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset". Could it be possible that I'm just using the wrong drivers?

peonerovv · 2021-10-30 10:30:45

Update:
I think my theory was right. I deleted the xf86-video-intel driver and ran the command from the command above. The crashes stopped completely, when I was running the same tests.
One interesting thing I noticed was that the fan was running at 2x the speed compared then when I was testing my laptop with the driver.
I would still like to get rid of screen tearing though. Any suggestions on how to?

Thanks.

seth · 2021-10-30 11:57:46

I would still like to get rid of screen tearing though. Any suggestions on how to?

https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/picom/ ?

Could it be possible that I'm just using the wrong drivers?

Not really, but the xf86-video-intel driver is phased out (or maybe not, or somehow in a limbo, nobody knows but it tends to make trouble, has been dropped entirely by different distros and the recommendation is to not use it)

One interesting thing I noticed was that the fan was running at 2x the speed compared then when I was testing my laptop with the driver.

So it was overheating

Arch Linux

#1 2021-10-29 12:00:24

Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#2 2021-10-29 12:07:28

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#3 2021-10-29 13:18:21

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#4 2021-10-29 13:20:08

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#5 2021-10-29 13:21:52

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#6 2021-10-29 13:27:27

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#7 2021-10-29 14:37:57

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#8 2021-10-29 15:09:03

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#9 2021-10-29 15:17:09

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#10 2021-10-30 10:12:41

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#11 2021-10-30 10:30:45

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

#12 2021-10-30 11:57:46

Re: Thinkpad X200 reboots by itself after adding "TearFree" to the X conf

Board footer