Arch Linux

L0ren2

Member

Registered: 2023-11-21

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Yet Another Arch Freeze

Hey,
I have similar issues as others, mainly, my system freezing at seemingly random points in time.
I have freezes as early as before decrypting my hard drive during boot and as late as trying to start an X server.
I'm running archlinux kernel: Linux version 6.6.1-arch1-1 (linux@archlinux) (gcc (GCC) 13.2.1 20230801, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.41.0) #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed, 08 Nov 2023 16:05:38 +0000
My hardware is a Lenovo Thinkpad W530. It has a WWAN card and 24 GB RAM, pretty much everything else is stock.
You can find the full output of

journalctl -b-1

on https://pastebin.com/TvHb0b7e.
Also, this problem started appearing only today when I tried to turn on my Thinkpad but the battery was very low and it suddenly died because of it.
As a responsible laptop owner I put the puppy on charge but ever since I experience this problem

I also tried using an ISO to boot from a USB stick and I even got freezes using that. I tried following ISO files:

archlinux-2023.09.01-x86_64.iso
archlinux-2023.11.01-x86_64.iso
nixos-minimal-23.05.2753.3fe694c4156b-x86_64-linux.iso

The files match their corresponding sha256sums.

At this point I thought about broken hardware so I ran all bios tests. They where all OK and I now do not know what to do. Thinking about the freezing ISOs, I could not even reinstall if I wanted.
After trying Tails which also froze, I did not trust my bios hardware tests, so I took out the WWAN card and all RAM sticks and installed only a single 8 GB SODIMM stick of memory.
This also resulted in a freeze. I also tried using a 4GB stick that I had lying around but no luck.
Should I just try to save as much of my data and trash my beloved Thinkpad? I still would like to know the cause of those freezes though.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by L0ren2 (2023-11-22 13:03:32)

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: [SOLVED] Yet Another Arch Freeze

Things you could try:

• Remove all power sources (including all kinds of bios batteries) and let the thing sit for a while and try again.

• Cycle through your RAM sticks to see if one or more of them are broken.

• Try a very old ISO, like an ancient LTS Ubuntu to see if that freezes too. If so, your thinkpad might have issues with recent kernels. Although, if the whole thing started after a power failure, then this isn't likely the case.

• Remove all HDDs and SSDs and boot from USB. If the Live system doesn't freeze, then it's your storage.

• Detach the internal keyboard and touchpad and try a USB keyboard.

• Try an external display. Unhook the internal display if necessary.

L0ren2

Member

Registered: 2023-11-21

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Yet Another Arch Freeze

Thank you for your reply. 
Booting from the USB using the latest arch (2023.11) ISO with only 16 GB of RAM (2x8GB) and without any hard drives, I have managed an uptime of more than 10 minutes so far which is a record. 
I will try adding hardware from now on and see where it breaks from here. 
I really hope that the hard drive is not the issue, since I only bought that less than one year ago. 
Thanks for your suggestions.

L0ren2

Member

Registered: 2023-11-21

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Yet Another Arch Freeze

Alright.
I added all hardware back in it and wouldn't you know it, it just works again.
I guess that discharging all capacitors on the motherboard really does make a difference.
Thank you again, i will mark this as solved.

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: [SOLVED] Yet Another Arch Freeze

Electron hiccup, my arch enemy! Glad you don't need to throw that beauty out!