How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

songgao · 2011-04-12 12:54:45

Hi,

I am using gnome-shell from testing repo on a laptop computer. The system(I do not know which part) has frozen several times in a same way. The whole display just suddenly stops reacting while I am scrolling down the web page in Chrome, opening a wine program, or something else. I have not figured out any pattern of its occurrence, so it's not repeatable for now. It seems that it's related to some modules or libraries used by Google Chrome browser or Wine because it mostly happens when I am interacting with Chrome browser.

It seems that only the display is frozen. I could not enter the tty with Ctrl + Alt + <F1...F8>, but I could move the cursor with my TrackPoint mouse. The NumLk/CapsLk LED also reacts normally. Even the network is working - when turning off and on the hardware switch of wireless, WiFi LED shows like the system is trying to reconnect the WiFi automatically.

If there's anything related Chrome, I guess one of the possible reasons is that when installing google-chrome-dev from AUR, I replaced libpci with libpciaccess in the depends array so that it won't cause a file exists conflict when installing.
Another possible reason is xinput, which I use for TrackPoint scrolling.

Now I am very curious in finding out what exactly it is that keeps freezing the display, but I'm not sure where to start. Could anyone give me some suggestions?

THANKS

fema · 2011-04-12 15:30:10

I also had those random freezes. I run Chromium a lot, so I don't know whether it's the reason or not, but unlike you, I use the stable version without modifying anything.
On a side note, I tried Fedora 15 pre-release with Gnome 3 and I got the same kind of freeze right after rebooting after the first update. (No Chromium at all.)

songgao · 2011-04-15 04:34:22

It seems that a recent full system upgrade fixes the problem. I have not been frozen for almost two days.

demian · 2011-04-15 07:43:39

I'd start my DE from the terminal and when it freezes use alt+sysrq to regain control and see what happened. alt+sysrq+r,e,i should bring you back to the terminal.

songgao · 2011-04-15 09:37:45

demian wrote:

I'd start my DE from the terminal and when it freezes use alt+sysrq to regain control and see what happened. alt+sysrq+r,e,i should bring you back to the terminal.

thanks, but my SysRq and PrtSc are on same button, and when I press Fn + Alt + [PrtSc, SysRq], the system just recognizes as Alt + PrtSc. This is weird....

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-12 12:54:45

How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

#2 2011-04-12 15:30:10

Re: How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

#3 2011-04-15 04:34:22

Re: How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

#4 2011-04-15 07:43:39

Re: How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

#5 2011-04-15 09:37:45

Re: How should I find out the stuff that keeps freezing the display?

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