System randomly freezes or crashes to the login screen, glitches until rebooted

[Fraser_Bell]

And here is another suggestion, last post in this thread:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthre...-to-be-movable

I have no more such problems, since I changed Compositor Module from OpenGl 2.0 to XRender.

[MirceaKitsune]

And here is another suggestion, last post in this thread:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthre...-to-be-movable

Some effects don't work with XRender though... such as blur, without which my themes look pretty bad. Also the freeze happens with desktop effects disabled too, although it's a bit more rare then (every 1-2 days instead of 4-8 hours).

For now I'm waiting to see what effects today's updates had. There were hundreds of new packages, including new versions of x11 and an ATI driver package. Too early to conclude anything, but I'll post an update as there's news.

[Fraser_Bell]

Some effects don't work with XRender though... such as blur, without which my themes look pretty bad. Also the freeze happens with desktop effects disabled too, although it's a bit more rare then (every 1-2 days instead of 4-8 hours).

For now I'm waiting to see what effects today's updates had. There were hundreds of new packages, including new versions of x11 and an ATI driver package. Too early to conclude anything, but I'll post an update as there's news.

... some also seemed to get satisfaction by switching from one OpenGL version to another one, though I do not know.

[MirceaKitsune]

... some also seemed to get satisfaction by switching from one OpenGL version to another one, though I do not know.

I can actually confirm that in the past, OpenGL 2.0 did not cause GPU crashes which OpenGL 3.1 did. Having the option to switch between the two is definitely useful.

[MirceaKitsune]

I'm happy to announce that since xorg-x11-server 1.19.3 and / or xf86-video-ati 7.9.0 the issue appears to have been remedied. I now have over 5 days of uptime, with not a single GPU freeze caused by the desktop. If by chance the problem returns, I'll definitely post an update and let everyone know. It would be very appreciated if in the future, the openSUSE team and driver developers could please consider more in-depth testing for GPU lockups, to prevent this sort of thing from repeating.

[Fraser_Bell]

I'm happy to announce that since xorg-x11-server 1.19.3 and / or xf86-video-ati 7.9.0 the issue appears to have been remedied. I now have over 5 days of uptime, with not a single GPU freeze caused by the desktop. If by chance the problem returns, I'll definitely post an update and let everyone know. It would be very appreciated if in the future, the openSUSE team and driver developers could please consider more in-depth testing for GPU lockups, to prevent this sort of thing from repeating.

Thanks for the update. I am following this with interest, as I do need to know the status when I install for someone else.

For myself, well, I can deal with problems as they crop up.

[MirceaKitsune]

To my stupefaction, the exact same issue has been re-introduced and is happening again. After another openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshot and several package updates, I believe approximately 2 days ago, the freeze occurs once more. I can however confirm that for approximately 8 days before that, the problem went away as I had one week of uninterrupted uptime. Can someone please analyze what changes fit this time pattern?

[MirceaKitsune]

Very important note: While investigating a completely unrelated bug, I remembered that KWin was configured to use egl over glx on my machine. I believe glx is the old render architecture, whereas egl is the new renderer which uses OpenGL and is visibly a lot faster.

Considering that desktop activity was always the cause of the freezes in some form, I have a strong suspicion that this might have something to do with the GPU freezes as well! It's a very likely candidate because egl involves experimental OpenGL rendering, and since it's not enabled by default that would also explain why few other people are able to reproduce the GPU lockups. I have just now switched back to glx and therefore haven't had the time to confirm this, but I'm willing to bet it just might make the problem go away... I will immediately post an update if and when I'm proven wrong obviously.

If anyone else wants to test this theory and help in reproducing the system freeze, consider switching to egl rendering. Obviously this means your machine might start freezing as well, so only do this if there's no risk of data loss or major annoyance. The switch is done by opening ~/.config/kwinrc in a text editor and changing:

GLPlatformInterface=egl

to

GLPlatformInterface=glx

Note that if you're using an Aurorae theme, you might experience the bug I mentioned above, which involves KWin no longer rendering window decorations. Here are the reports for that in case anyone is curious:

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1033598
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378663

[MirceaKitsune]

Nope, still happens in glx as well. Switching away from egl rendering does not make the freezes go away.

[MirceaKitsune]

llvm 4.0.0 is now in openSUSE Tumbleweed: I have preformed a 'zypper dup', installed it, and restarted. Now it's time to see if this really makes the freeze go away.

Please allow me to keep this issue open for another month to make sure it's truly gone: If through some stretch of imagination I see the problem again, I'll immediately post a reply here and let everyone know! I need to take at least several days to have no doubt it has been solved, due to how far its probability seems to have ranged. Thank you.