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corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

[SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Recently, my Xorg has been freezing a lot, randomly.

The screen will stay on, but everything (sound, mouse/keyboard interaction, video) will stop and the system will be frozen.

- Most of the time, VLC is open - 80%
- Media will usually be playing (audio or video)  - 90%

I am using XFCE and have the latest packages for everything I use. Also, I am using kernel 2.6.36.

How can I troubleshoot this?

Last edited by corruptz0r (2010-12-07 05:42:20)

fsckd

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-06-15

Posts: 4,173

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

start with /var/log/Xorg.*.log*

Last edited by fsckd (2010-11-23 20:49:20)

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corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

start with /var/log/Xorg.*.log*

I've done this, and it seems normal (both Xorg.0.log and Xorg.0.log.old)

Here is the log:  http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=XARqZ8Ea

Lothium

Member

Registered: 2009-10-10

Posts: 192

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Same here... Most of the time it happens, when I switch between desktops. I use kde with compiz and I have an ATI X700 mobility with the oss driver.

corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Unfortunately, I am still heavily having this problem.  My laptop has been crashing 2-3 times a day

What else can I do?  Anyone?

Edit: the screen just froze again, at 1:22pm.  I opened up /var/log and checked every log file for any events on or around that time... Nothing.

Last edited by corruptz0r (2010-12-03 21:31:21)

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

I would hazard a guess that you have a hardware fault, rather than an Xorg fault. If that laptop has an optical drive, boot from any Live Linux CD and stress out the machine getting the CPU warm and see if you get the freezing. If yes, then you have a hardware fault and I would then do things like memtest, hard drive tests, CPU  tests, etc. using perhaps the Ultimate Boot CD.

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DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Parted Magic comes with a few such utilities. And it can run from a USB stick (used Unebootin for that). But yeah, just about any LiveCD Linux distro comes with memtest86+, I think even the Arch iso does... And you can also run those from a USB stick too (again, Unebootin).

PS: Preferably a more recent LiveCD variant. I still have an old Ubuntu 6.04 LTS disc lying around but I probably wouldn't use it with my shiny 2 GB RAM module. Back then I think 1 GB modules were the 4 GB modules of today (rare and expensive).

Last edited by DSpider (2010-12-03 23:15:19)

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corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Thanks for the assistance.  I will report back if it finds anything

corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

There are NO hardware problems.

Another thing to note on the crash:  basically, if I'm typing while it crashes, it'll first do this:

(say I type a 'b'), it'll scroll: bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb and on the last 'b' it'll freeze.  Does this help at all?

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,543

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Can you do a sysrq r-s-e-i-u-b when it freezes?  If you can then the logs will be sync'd to disk before rebooting which may assist tracking down the cause

corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

Can you do a sysrq r-s-e-i-u-b when it freezes?  If you can then the logs will be sync'd to disk before rebooting which may assist tracking down the cause

Thank you for this tip! I didn't know about sysrq until now.

Searching the logs after doing that, I found events at the time of the crash that stand out:

Nov 28 01:50:27 localhost logger: ACPI group/action undefined: video / GFX0
Nov 28 01:50:38 localhost kernel: [ 8597.744919] xfce4-session[4340]: segfault at 0 ip 0000000000413193 sp 00007fff362d8660 error 4 in xfce4-session[400000+20000]

This is an Nvidia Optimus laptop with 2 GPUs.  I use acpi_call to disable the Nvidia 310m card (on startup), and use the onboard Intel one for everything.

Hmm... Now to troubleshoot further.

corruptz0r

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 63

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg keeps freezing randomly - How can I investigate?

So it turns out the cause for all of this was the module "usb-autosuspend" in the laptop-mode package; after I disabled this, the crashes went away.