openSUSE randomly freezes and becomes unusable after prolonged uptime

[MirceaKitsune]

Ever since I moved to openSUSE (approximately 2 months ago) I experience a major issue I have little information about. After some uptime (typically 1-3 days) there comes a moment when the desktop suddenly freezes and the machine stops responding. There's no specific action triggering it nor anything special happening before or after... everything just freezes in place at a random moment. Neither the keyboard or mouse do anything, and I need to reset the machine from its computer case. The busy led on the case does not stay lit, unlike similar freezes I experienced in Windows years ago.

I notice this on my main desktop since it's the machine I use daily. A few days ago I also installed openSUSE on my laptop, and the exact same issue happened there. This should confirm it's not a hardware problem, and likely a bug with an important component of openSUSE. I do however have the same software installed on both machines, although nothing out of the ordinary is left running in the background.

I have no idea what the cause might be currently. The only thing I suspect is the ATI driver, since from my experience in Windows this was the cause for many occasional crashes. My desktop PC has an ATI Radeon HD card while the laptop has a Mobility Radeon, so both are using the same proprietary ATI driver from the Geeko repository. It could be anything else though.

Anyone else experiencing this and knows what the cause might be? I'd be happy to debug it if anyone can suggest how, but keep in mind I'm still somewhat new to Linux and don't wish to go into deep and advanced things if possible (like hacking dangerous settings or booting into consoles with special parameters and the like). There are some logs I'm usually suggested to paste in such moments but I forgot which, so let me know. OpenSuse 12.2 64bit, KDE 4.8.5.

[grglsn]

On 11/24/2012 12:06 AM, MirceaKitsune wrote:
>
> Ever since I moved to openSUSE (approximately 2 months ago) I experience
> a major issue I have little information about. After some uptime
> (typically 1-3 days) there comes a moment when the desktop suddenly
> freezes and the machine stops responding. There's no specific action
> triggering it nor anything special happening before or after...
> everything just freezes in place at a random moment. Neither the
> keyboard or mouse do anything, and I need to reset the machine from its
> computer case. The busy led on the case does not stay lit, unlike
> similar freezes I experienced in Windows years ago.
>
> I notice this on my main desktop since it's the machine I use daily. A
> few days ago I also installed openSUSE on my laptop, and the exact same
> issue happened there. This should confirm it's not a hardware problem,
> and likely a bug with an important component of openSUSE. I do however
> have the same software installed on both machines, although nothing out
> of the ordinary is left running in the background.
>
> I have no idea what the cause might be currently. The only thing I
> suspect is the ATI driver, since from my experience in Windows this was
> the cause for many occasional crashes. My desktop PC has an ATI Radeon
> HD card while the laptop has a Mobility Radeon, so both are using the
> same proprietary ATI driver from the 'Geeko repository'
> (http://geeko.ioda.net/mirror/amd-fglrx/openSUSE_12.2/). It could be
> anything else though.
>
> Anyone else experiencing this and knows what the cause might be? I'd be
> happy to debug it if anyone can suggest how, but keep in mind I'm still
> somewhat new to Linux and don't wish to go into deep and advanced things
> if possible (like hacking dangerous settings or booting into consoles
> with special parameters and the like). There are some logs I'm usually
> suggested to paste in such moments but I forgot which, so let me know.
> OpenSuse 12.2 64bit, KDE 4.8.5.
>
>
When I first switched to openSUSE a little over a year ago, I had that
same problem pretty regularly. I researched and researched, and it came
down to 2 things. First, it was my graphics driver (which was nvidia on
that pc). Once I switched to the proprietary nvidia driver, the
frequency of the freeze-ups went down considerably.

The 2nd thing I found out was that even with the proprietary driver,
having desktop effects switched on seemed to be the culprit. I don't
know how I figured that out - I think that I just had a hunch based on
some tips I received in the openSUSE mailing list. So I switched off
desktop effects, and I have never had a freeze up since, except when I
accidentally switched desktop effects back on.

The problem is that the desktop effects are nice and kind of fun to play
with. But I decided if I was going to enjoy openSUSE, I was going to
have to live without the desktop effects. Once I overcame my grief of
not being able to play around with desktop effects, I have been very
happy with my system.

--
G.O.
Box #1: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | 16GB
Box #2: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.1 | AMD Athlon X3 | 64 | 4GB
Laptop: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | Core i7-2620M | 64 | 8GB
learning openSUSE and loving it

[MirceaKitsune]

I understand. It was pretty obvious the video driver was the most likely issue, but I didn't consider desktop effects were part of the chain. In my case I really don't wanna go without them, so if nothing can be done apart from disabling desktop compositing I'll have to live with those freezes. It's obviously a bug that needs to be reported and fixed in that case (likely with kwin) but the problem is how to debug it in detail.

So far I have 1 day of uptime and no freeze... maybe it will happen again tomorrow I remember that a few weeks ago, I achieved nearly a week of uptime, and I had the ATI driver and desktop effects on as usual. But I have enabled some new effects since then. Perhaps there are specific effects that cause this only... anyone know about that? Either way, any way to help dig further into this issue? The fact that it does happen so rarely leads me to think it's an exceptional memory read issue of sorts.

[MirceaKitsune]

Sorry for the double post, editing time expired. I'm looking at the settings under the Advanced tab of the Desktop Effects menu in KDE. I'm seeing various things there that MIGHT be related to the issue (if we are sure the freezes are desktop effects and nothing else). If anyone can, please check them out.

One I thought of is "Keep window thumbnails", but I don't really know what it does. If it removes thumbnails from the memory cache for minimized windows however, I imagine that might cause compositing to not find them in rare circumstances which can lead to a segmentation fault. Anyone know what this setting does precisely and if there's a change it could be part of the problem?

Next, there's one to "Use OpenGL 2 Shaders". This is very general, but has anyone tried without it and can confirm the crashes disappear? For me compositing works the same way with this turned on or off.

The last and most important setting there is Scale Method. For me it's set to Accurate, but if I hover the mouse over that it says that Accurate might cause segmentation faults and have issues with some drivers. So this is the first thing I'm going to change, and set it to Smooth to see if the problem still takes place. If after this it never happens again, it was likely that... but once again it's very hard to know.

[josephkk]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:14:07 GMT, grglsn
<grglsn@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>On 11/24/2012 12:06 AM, MirceaKitsune wrote:
>>
>> Ever since I moved to openSUSE (approximately 2 months ago) I experience
>> a major issue I have little information about. After some uptime
>> (typically 1-3 days) there comes a moment when the desktop suddenly
>> freezes and the machine stops responding. There's no specific action
>> triggering it nor anything special happening before or after...
>> everything just freezes in place at a random moment. Neither the
>> keyboard or mouse do anything, and I need to reset the machine from its
>> computer case. The busy led on the case does not stay lit, unlike
>> similar freezes I experienced in Windows years ago.
>>
>> I notice this on my main desktop since it's the machine I use daily. A
>> few days ago I also installed openSUSE on my laptop, and the exact same
>> issue happened there. This should confirm it's not a hardware problem,
>> and likely a bug with an important component of openSUSE. I do however
>> have the same software installed on both machines, although nothing out
>> of the ordinary is left running in the background.
>>
>> I have no idea what the cause might be currently. The only thing I
>> suspect is the ATI driver, since from my experience in Windows this was
>> the cause for many occasional crashes. My desktop PC has an ATI Radeon
>> HD card while the laptop has a Mobility Radeon, so both are using the
>> same proprietary ATI driver from the 'Geeko repository'
>> (http://geeko.ioda.net/mirror/amd-fglrx/openSUSE_12.2/). It could be
>> anything else though.
>>
>> Anyone else experiencing this and knows what the cause might be? I'd be
>> happy to debug it if anyone can suggest how, but keep in mind I'm still
>> somewhat new to Linux and don't wish to go into deep and advanced things
>> if possible (like hacking dangerous settings or booting into consoles
>> with special parameters and the like). There are some logs I'm usually
>> suggested to paste in such moments but I forgot which, so let me know.
>> OpenSuse 12.2 64bit, KDE 4.8.5.
>>
>>
>When I first switched to openSUSE a little over a year ago, I had that
>same problem pretty regularly. I researched and researched, and it came
>down to 2 things. First, it was my graphics driver (which was nvidia on
>that pc). Once I switched to the proprietary nvidia driver, the
>frequency of the freeze-ups went down considerably.
>
>The 2nd thing I found out was that even with the proprietary driver,
>having desktop effects switched on seemed to be the culprit. I don't
>know how I figured that out - I think that I just had a hunch based on
>some tips I received in the openSUSE mailing list. So I switched off
>desktop effects, and I have never had a freeze up since, except when I
>accidentally switched desktop effects back on.
>
>The problem is that the desktop effects are nice and kind of fun to play
>with. But I decided if I was going to enjoy openSUSE, I was going to
>have to live without the desktop effects. Once I overcame my grief of
>not being able to play around with desktop effects, I have been very
>happy with my system.

Wow. Now i know i have been around a long time. I despised desktop
effects when they came out, they interfered with getting things done. (Not
to mention were a major cause of crashes.) They have been forbidden on my
boxes for many years.

?-)

[josephkk]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 15:56:02 GMT, MirceaKitsune
<MirceaKitsune@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
>I understand. It was pretty obvious the video driver was the most likely
>issue, but I didn't consider desktop effects were part of the chain. In
>my case I really don't wanna go without them, so if nothing can be done
>apart from disabling desktop compositing I'll have to live with those
>freezes. It's obviously a bug that needs to be reported and fixed in
>that case (likely with kwin) but the problem is how to debug it in
>detail.
>
>So far I have 1 day of uptime and no freeze... maybe it will happen
>again tomorrow I remember that a few weeks ago, I achieved nearly a
>week of uptime, and I had the ATI driver and desktop effects on as
>usual. But I have enabled some new effects since then. Perhaps there are
>specific effects that cause this only... anyone know about that? Either
>way, any way to help dig further into this issue? The fact that it does
>happen so rarely leads me to think it's an exceptional memory read issue
>of sorts.


ONE DAY of uptime?? I could never be satisfied with that. This box:

CODE
-------------------------------
josephkk@Godel:~> uptime
00:54am up 44 days 11:02, 12 users, load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.05
-------------------------------

When things are really good i top 100 days.

?-)

[MirceaKitsune]

I actually achieved more than 3 days of uptime, until today due to a power failure. Uptime because it didn't restart... KDE occasionally has a special crash which logs me out and takes me to the login screen. I'm not sure if this is related to the same issue as the freezes though... I'm also pretty sure one of those logout crashes took place while desktop effects were off. Either way, setting "Scaling method" to Smooth instead of Accurate for Desktop Effects seems to keep the permanent freezes from happening at least... will take a lot more days to properly debug and be sure. I'm also suspecting that running certain 3D games causes this to happen after several hours, also completely unsure here. If anyone else has ideas, do tell me please.

[MirceaKitsune]

Today I got nearly 5 days of uptime, but manually restarted for other reasons. During this time there have been no more freezes... apparently since I set the "Scaling Method" of desktop effects to Smooth instead of Accurate (disabling lanczos filter) as advised by the pop-up there. I'm not sure just yet, but it seems the freezes might have been solved, as I haven't had any in two weeks.

However, I do occasionally get the session crashing. After suddenly being taken to a full-screen console for a couple of seconds, I'm logged out and brought to the login screen as if I restarted. I'm not certain, but this appears to happen when I switch to bash consoles or keep any running in the background (Konsole). When none are running this doesn't appear to take place... so I wonder if it's a separate bug with Konsole in case it really is the cause (or at least the most common one).

[nightwishfan]

After the session crash, look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old or .xsession-errors (which is inside your home folder). I have not had session crashes with many months of uptime, so its probably gpu related.

[MirceaKitsune]

I got the crash again (once again after switching to an instance of Konsole). Nothing special to catch my attention in .xsession-errors, but there is an interesting output in Xorg.0.log.old: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=HSJzg9FH See at the end. If anyone can tell where that's coming from and how to fix it please let me know.