openSUSE 12.3 freezes when switching between virtual consoles

English Hardware
1

Hello

Sorry, I am not shure, if I posted this thread in the appropriate forum.

My problem is, that my openSUSE 12.3 freezes sometimes when I switch between virtual consoles or when I log off or shut down from KDE. The only I can do, is to power off or to reset my computer. In /var/log/messages nothing is logged.

Can anybody help me preventing openSUSE 12.3 from freezing?

My mainboard is a P4C800 Delux

pc1:/home/amadrits # uname -r
3.7.10-1.4-default

pc1:/home/amadrits # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:06.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Processor to I/O Memory Interface (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC’97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro]
01:00.1 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro] (Secondary)
02:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev 46)
02:04.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20378 (FastTrak 378/SATA 378) (rev 02)
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c940 10/100/1000Base-T [Marvell] (rev 12)
02:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
02:0b.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)

Thanks in advance

2

So the pc completely freezes when you log off? Does it do the same when you switch users? You should be more specific if you want help with this problem.

3

Yes, the PC completely freezes when I log off. It do not do this every time, but only sometimes. Yes, It do the same when I switch users. As I wrote, it do this even, when I switch between virtual consoles with Ctrl-Alt-Fn.

4

Hello

Can someone give me a hint on how it is possible to analyze this problem please?

5

Hello

I still have the problem, that openSUSE 12.3 freezes when switching between virtual consoles.

Here follows the output of dmesg:

SUSE Paste

I can configure the radeon driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf, which contains at the moment:


Section "Device"
    Identifier  "radeon"
    Driver  "radeon"
    Option    "AGPMode"               "8"   #not used when KMS is on
    Option    "AGPFastWrite"          "off" #could cause instabilities enable it at your own risk
    Option    "SWcursor"              "off" #software cursor might be necessary on some rare occasions, hence set off by default
    Option    "EnablePageFlip"        "on"  #supported on all R/RV/RS4xx and older hardware and set off by default
    Option    "AccelMethod"           "EXA" #valid options are XAA, EXA and Glamor. EXA is the default.
    Option    "RenderAccel"           "on"  #enabled by default on all radeon hardware
    Option    "ColorTiling"           "on"  #enabled by default on RV300 and later radeon cards.
    Option    "EXAVSync"              "off" #default is off, otherwise on. Only works if EXA activated
    Option    "EXAPixmaps"            "on"  #when on icreases 2D performance, but may also cause artifacts on some old cards. Only works if EXA activated
    Option    "AccelDFS"              "on"  #default is off, read the radeon manpage for more information
EndSection

Can someone give me a hint on which radeon options could impact this misbehaviour?

6

I see this thread is sort of old but the same issue has just emerged for me after a seemingly flawless update from 12.2 to 12.3.

My computer hangs when changing virtual console OR switching users to or from root, i.e. I can log in as myself and can use sudo for maintenance tasks, but if I switch user to a new session as root to do system tasks the machine sometimes hangs. Reboot and it’s back up. If I log in as root first and then lock the session and login as myself the problem is identical. It seems to happen a little more than half the time; in other words sometimes it works perfectly.

** I have made no changes to my computer and have been upgrading this box since an initial install of ver. 12.1 - This problem surfaced after upgrading from 12.2 to 12.3.

For now I can work around it by just log out and then log back in but I don’t like having only a single login to do involved tasks.

When I say “hangs” I mean immediately and forever with just a flashing screen showing my Asus vw246h monitor logo. It completely freezes and I have to shutdown with the switch. Again I have made no hardware changes and it has been working perfectly (before the upgrade) for some time now.

For now I’m living with it, but if you can point me somewhere to start I would appreciate it and if I find out anything I will come back and post it. If I knew for sure it would fix it I would buy a boxed distribution.

7

Hi jamesallenmay,

could you please give us information about your graphics-card and the driver you are using? ATI with fglrx?
I can remember having had these problems as well, but I can’t really remember the solution. Bit I think it was pretty easy. Maybe getting rid of the closed driver…

Regards
Simon

8

Hello Simon

I thought that fglrx do not work anymore with the new kernel 3.7.10 shipped with openSUSE 12.3. Or is there a trick to get fglrx working with that kernel?

9

The fglrx works just fine with 12.3.
It’s the legacy driver that doesn’t work (because of the too new X server).

But both don’t support your card anyway.

Have you tried to remove that 20-radeon.conf completely?
I have a radeon 9600 which works fine without any special options. (I used to have a 9800pro, but that broke 3 years ago, so I don’t know how it would have worked on 12.3 :wink: )
But your options are all at the default (or not applicable any more) anyway AFAICS.

Another thing you could try is to upgrade your kernel from this repo:
[noparse]http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard/[/noparse]
The old kernel should stay installed, so if you have problems with the new one you could change back by selecting the old one in the boot menu (“Advanced Options”).

10

Hello

I do not have a 20-radeon.conf. This was only an attempt.

There is the same kernel I already installed.

11

I thought you have kernel 3.7.10, as included in 12.3.

Well, you could also try to upgrade the X stack and drivers. (Index of /repositories/X11:/XOrg)

Or, maybe better, download a 13.1 Beta1 LiveCD and see if it works there (this contains a 3.11 kernel and the latest X).

12

Since I switched to Index of /repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard the system never froze, but I had to uninstall a view Yast modules.

13

But you didn’t say so. I thought you were still having that problem.

but I had to uninstall a view Yast modules.

And which ones? AFAIK none of them requires a specific kernel version.

14

I switched to Index of /repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard a hour ago and since then the system did not freeze anymore.

mdadm
libstorage4
yast2-storage
yast2-installation
autoyast2-installation
yast2-backup
yast2-add-on
yast2-update
yast2-network
yast2-bootloader
patterns-openSUSE-yast2_basis
yast2-samba-server
yast2-ldap-client
yast2-restore
yast2-tune
yast2-users
yast2-mail
yast2-sudo
yast2-inetd

It is not because of the kernel, but it is because of mkinitrd.

15

???
16 hours ago you wrote:

Sorry, I’m slightly confused now… :wink:

But well, it isn’t important anyway.

It is not because of the kernel, but it is because of mkinitrd.

I still find that strange, since those do not require a specific mkinitrd version either.
Or don’t you have any mkinitrd installed now at all?
That would explain why mdadm would have been uninstalled, which would cause libstorage4 to be removed, and so on.

Better check, because a system without mkinitrd would give you troubles, during the next kernel update at the latest.

Do you get a conflict when you try to install any of them manually again?

16

Sorry, 16 hours ago I added the source and did not see a newer kernel version in yast.

2 hours ago I clicked “switch system packages” in yast and the newer kernel has been installed, but I had to uninstall this mentioned above packages.

I have mkinitrd 2.8.0-253.1 installed.

This happens, when I try to install mdadm manually:

error: Failed dependencies:
mdadm < 3.3 conflicts with (installed) mkinitrd-2.8.0-253.1.i586

17

Regarding the original problem discussed, it looks to me like there was an issue with the drm and the switch back to framebuffer console. It may not have been radeon.ko itself, but rather in the drm helper layer’s attempt to restore the console.

I note from your previous dmesg paste that you’re (or were) using vga= boot parm. I have no idea why you (a) set such a low mode with that, but, and even more importantly, (b) why you were even using it. The point being that you shouldn’t use such, as they can be problematic with DRM/KMS*.

I suspect that changes to the drm helper, that have found their way into more recent kernels, have alleviated the problem (whether it was actually related to the forced mode set or otherwise) of properly restoring the mode on the console.

  • if you’re not aware, the vga= boot parm is only applicable to the vesafb (a genreic kernel frame buffer driver). During the boot process, vesafb is (on non uefi systems, and, if a different fb driver isn’t manually specified instead) the initial console driver bound to fbcon, but (when using a KMS pathway) it is itself replaced by the fb driver built into the DRM/KMS driver very shortly afterwards (which, in your particular case, is “radeondrmfb”, which is inherent to radeon.ko, the DRM/KMS driver). In a perfect world there shouldn’t be any problems. Unfortunately … the fbdev layer is pretty archaic and, historically, problems are/have been encountered between classic/legacy fbdev drivers and the DRM/KMS.
18

OK. YaST/zypper don’t switch packages to other repositories by default (“vendor-stickiness”), that’s why YaST doesn’t show a newer version in a different repo either.
But you could have selected the kernel-desktop package and click on the “Versions” tab in the bottom-right part of the window… :wink:

error: Failed dependencies:
mdadm < 3.3 conflicts with (installed) mkinitrd-2.8.0-253.1.i586

Right. mkinitrd from the Kernel:stable repo has this in its spec file:

Conflicts:      udev < 118
Conflicts:      mdadm < 3.3

So if you install mdadm 3.3 or higher, you should be able to re-install those other packages as well.
Unfortunately there is none in Kernel:stable, but the one from Base:System should do:
software.opensuse.org: Install package Base:System / mdadm

Or, maybe better, downgrade mkinitrd to 12.3’s version:

sudo zypper in -f mkinitrd-2.7.2