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.
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
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.
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.
>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.
>
>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
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.
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).
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.
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.
Update time. I still get the freezes sometimes (usually in the next hours after running certain 3D games) and am almost certain the problems are because of the fglrx driver. It’s a bad driver… but until the radeon one can run games the same way I have to bare with it.
I managed to make it stop when restoring minimized Konsole windows at least. That quit causing freezes and crashes after I went to Configure Desktop -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced and set “Keep window thumbnails” to Always and “Scale Method” to smooth. I believe this makes desktop effects no longer cause the problem themselves, so I just need to be careful with games.
Interesting thread. I’m also suffering from intermittent and apparently random freezes on opensuse 12.2 (desktop effects on and using default radeon drivers with a Radeon 6750). Come back to computer in morning/after work and find it won’t respond to mouse or keyboard, cannot SSH to it and no display on monitor. After some hours wasted thinking it was a faulty RAM problem due to memtest reporting spurious errors (see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=773569, I did not read the 12.2 release notes) I’ve come back to the conclusion that it’s a software problem causing my freezes. I’ve not seen anything in any of the /var/log/ Xorg or messages or ~/.xession-errors to give me any clues though.
As when the freeze occurs I lose the display (monitor reports nothing from DVI cable, on other hard freezes/crashes I expect the display to stay stuck) it may well be down to desktop effects. I did have crash problems when Kwin was enabled on earlier versions of opensuse, different crash results though. I was kind of expecting that desktop effects problems would have been ironed out by now.
I’ll see how I go with desktop effects turned off.
I really have the expectation that my PC will only reboot following power cuts (I don’t have a UPS), or when I want to do a hardware change or opensuse upgrade. Have had uptime of > 150 days a couple of times before, at least one of those on my current hardware (one new Intel SSD 330 excepted).
At this day there are barely any more slowdowns, crashes and freezes for me. Likely thanks to updates fixing them over time, as well as me tweaking desktop effects to reduce such issues. But I know the source of what caused 95% of the problems; The fglrx driver. I hope in 12.3 the open-source Radeon driver will be able to run games, so I can finally get rid of fglrx and all its issues.
On 2013-03-06 01:06, rjwilmsi wrote:
> Interesting thread. I’m also suffering from intermittent and apparently
> random freezes on opensuse 12.2 (desktop effects on and using default
> radeon drivers with a Radeon 6750). Come back to computer in
> morning/after work and find it won’t respond to mouse or keyboard,
> cannot SSH to it and no display on monitor.
Years ago I had random crashes or lockouts when coming back to my
computer after some time. The culprit turned out to be the screensaver.
It was set to choose one randomly each time, and some of them locked the
machine hard.
I discovered by running some of those screensavers directly from the
selection screen. Nowdays I never set a random one. I choose one that
uses little CPU (and little GPU too), or a black screen.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
On 2013-03-06 07:27, dd wrote:
>> or a black screen.
>
> to me, black screen is the only “screen saver” that make any
> sense…why, because it is the one which uses the least energy…
With that criteria, yes
I have it running for a few minutes only, then dpms mode kicks in. Some
times you can configure to require a password to get back in after
sleep, not after screensaver phase, and that’s a convenience for me. I
hate when I’m staring at the screen and saving mode kicks in suddenly
and I have to type my password.
> anyway, who has a TV with dancing blinking swirling stuff going on when
> no one is there to enjoy it??
Ah, you have not worked at an office where there is some competition to
have the cutest screensaver running
> and, the screens of last century (Cathode Ray Tubes [CRT] displays
> actually) needed a “screen saver”…whats in use today do not…
I’m not so sure of that. I have seen modern displays with burn in, at
kiosks or banks displays, where the thing is displaying the exact same
thing for days. I’m not absolutely sure of the technology they used, though.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
I am experiencing the same.
I have recently installed OpenSuse 12.3, KDE 4.10 on both my desktop and laptop. The two architectures are quite different:
Desktop, 64 bit, home built system, geforce 610 card
Laptop 32 bit, HP G61, HP integrated video card
Since my first installation of OpenSuse 12.3 on the desktop I started experiencing random system freezes: image frozen, no response from either mouse or keyboard, no possibility to switch to console mode, the desktop can not be reached via ssh from the lan.
These freezes happen every few days and typically while logged in and browsing the internet, but not necessarily.
My first instinct was to blame the hardware so:
I replaced the PSU
I replaced the geforce card
I was almost in the process of replacing the motherboard when suddenly…
It happened on my laptop too! And I just had upgraded OpenSuse from 11.4 to 12.3!
So it has to be a software problem.
Like many other users, trawling thorough logs (messages and Xorg.0.log) did not help.
I guess it will work eventually when disabling desktop effects.
A bit disappointed that KDE team seems to be chasing the latest glitzy things while forgetting about stability.
Similar bad experience with Nepomuk and Akonadi with a previous upgrade (12.1), and which finally and thankfully seem more stable now.
Updated by zypper dup after changing the repos from 11.4 to 12.3 following the instruction somewhere on this forum.
In a nutshell, the system is fine and usable, much more stable on laptop than on desktop.
I like the latest KDE but feel there is still some instability in OpenGL
I only had one freeze on laptop and about 10 in few weeks on the desktop.
The freezes are unrecoverable (power off/on only remedy) as described in this thread.
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.
