Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

fini_fly · 2010-04-13 16:32:02

I'm not sure when this started to happen, but my screen will freeze (not refresh) randomly for short periods of time (about 5 seconds). The mouse cursor still active and anything I click on will eventually catch up once the screen refreshes.

I'm assuming this is an Xorg issue, or perhaps and Nvidia issue, but here are some details:

KDE 4.4
Kernel 2.6.32-ARCH 64
Nvidia 195.36.15

And here is my Xorg.conf:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder58)  Tue Oct 20 21:25:04 PDT 2009


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "SynapticsTouchpad" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "synaptics"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "SynapticsTouchpad"
    Driver         "synaptics"
    Option         "AlwaysCore" "true"
    Option         "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "VerticalEdgeScroll" "True"
    Option         "HorizontalEdgeScroll" "True"
    Option         "CornerCoasting" "true"
    Option         "TapButton1" "1"
    Option         "TapButton2" "2"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
    Option         "RenderAccel" "True"
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "True"
    Option         "BackingStore" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Needless to say this is very annoying/embarrassing when I try and show people stuff, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Last edited by fini_fly (2010-05-21 13:47:20)

ziopera · 2010-04-14 12:07:17

I have the very same behaviour. I'm using KDE 4.4.2, but with an ATI card, and the problem has started after the last upgrade. With that upgrade, comed
- xorg-server 1.7.6 -3
- xf86-video-ati-6.12.192-1
- ati-dri-7.7.1
- kernel26-2.6.33.2-1

I've kept open a xterm with top running on it and I can see that, when the screen freezes and after restart, X jumps to 99% of CPU usage. I cannot say if this is the cause of the freezing, or a symptom.

The behaviour is the same with or without xorg.conf file.

I think it's an X issue, having me and the other guy different video cards (NVIDIA versus ATI).

Last edited by ziopera (2010-04-14 12:08:57)

ziopera · 2010-04-15 07:50:22

I've solved the problem DISABLING KMS. I've added nomodeset to the kernel parameter and now the system is working flawlessly as before.
I don't know if the same fixing exists with the NVIDIA driver (I've got an ATI).

Milena · 2010-04-15 21:06:31

I don't know about ATI users but regarding Nvidia...
The occasional 3-5 second freezes are a known bug in Xorg 1.7.x with Nvidia 190/195 Drivers, distribution wide. There are plenty of posts at Nvidia forums. It hit me once I got the last xorg-server update one or two weeks ago before that everything was fine. I had the same problem on Fedora 12 before with 1.7.6 and now on Arch ><

fini_fly · 2010-04-15 21:10:16

Milena wrote:

I don't know about ATI users but regarding Nvidia...
The occasional 3-5 second freezes are a known bug in Xorg 1.7.x with Nvidia 190/195 Drivers, distribution wide. There are plenty of posts at Nvidia forums. It hit me once I got the last xorg-server update one or two weeks ago before that everything was fine. I had the same problem on Fedora 12 before with 1.7.6 and now on Arch ><

So basically we'll just have to wait.

Vinschni · 2010-04-22 19:39:00

I have the the same problem. I upgraded to xorg-server 1.8.0-2, and the problem still appears, so it seems to be related to nvidia driver.

Vinschni

Milena · 2010-04-22 20:51:43

What you can try is to add:

option "UseEvents" "false"

(also try "true" and see if it works for you)

to your xorg.conf under the device section. Play with both false and true settings, UseEvents is somewhat related to the short freezes and the nvidia guys mentioned they disabled this feature a few driver releases ago (as far as i know from researching their forums). Otherwise we probably have to wait for a new driver series.

Another tweak would be to check if you use MSI for your nvidia card:

cat /proc/interrupts:

 22:          0          4       1106     297835   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ohci_hcd:usb3
 23:          1         17       3275     890447   IO-APIC-fasteoi   hda_intel
 27:          2         13       1035     342106   PCI-MSI-edge      ahci
 28:          5        337      26356    7568321   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0
 29:          6         92      10219    1998835   PCI-MSI-edge      nvidia
NMI:          0          0          0          0   Non-maskable interrupts

add this to /etc/modprobe.d/options.conf: (does not work with all nvidia cards but i can confirm it works with the 200 series)

options nvidia NVreg_EnableMSI=1

While using MSI slightly improves performance some people reported it also shortens the occasional freezes.

As said in the post above this is only for nvidia and it may or may not help for some gpu's.

Best regards

Vinschni · 2010-04-23 16:08:53

Thank you Milena,
i played with options and added sucessfully <options nvidia NVreg_EnableMSI=1> (i use a GTX295). Unfortunately the freezes still appear sometimes. It seems we have to wait until new driver releases. I hope it will come soon

Greetings,

Vinschni

fini_fly · 2010-05-13 18:34:40

I've just noticed that any plasma-related action will cause the screen to unfreeze. So for the time being, I've been hitting one of my volume buttons and the screen unfreezes.

Vinschni · 2010-05-18 16:10:20

I was able to determine the problem of my random freezes.
I changed one by one all softwarecomponents inculding nvidia driver, but the problem still appeared. Finally i changed my GTK-theme. Until today i used qDark. CHANGING THE GTK THEME SOLVED THE PROBLEM FOR ME.

Its absolutely awesome. Usually i got 2-5 10s freezes per hour. Now everything works fluently (nvidia 195.36.24).

So i recommend you checking/changing your GTK-theme(and/or engine), it could be the thing, which causes the freezes.

Greetings,

Vinschni

Last edited by Vinschni (2010-05-18 16:10:50)

fini_fly · 2010-05-21 13:47:02

So... I recently ran into a problem where the ownership of ~/.ICEauthority changed and prevented me from logging in to KDE. So I ended up doing

sudo chown daniel:users ~/.ICEauthority

Long story short, it took me a while to get to that point, but leading up to it, I did the following:

move ~/.kde4 ~/.kde4backup

...and...

pacman -Rd kdebase-workspace kdebase-plasma
pacman -Syuw
pacman -S kdebase-workspace kdebase-plasma

I'm not sure which did the trick, but I am not longer experiencing the freezes. Maybe some type of config error within ~/.kde4? I'm marking this as solved for the time being.

Profjim · 2010-05-22 02:25:37

I'm getting random screen freezes, I'm pretty sure it's because I'm using SSD instead of a hard drive. After a bunch of data caches up, the whole system freezes while it gets flushed to the drives. The disk light flashes when this is happening. I'd like to get the writes evened out more, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-13 16:32:02

Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#2 2010-04-14 12:07:17

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#3 2010-04-15 07:50:22

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#4 2010-04-15 21:06:31

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#5 2010-04-15 21:10:16

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#6 2010-04-22 19:39:00

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#7 2010-04-22 20:51:43

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#8 2010-04-23 16:08:53

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#9 2010-05-13 18:34:40

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#10 2010-05-18 16:10:20

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#11 2010-05-21 13:47:02

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

#12 2010-05-22 02:25:37

Re: Screen freezes randomly for short periods of time [Solved]

Board footer