Random software and system crashes (AMD driver help)

English Hardware
1

I thought this was covered in a different thread, but was suggested I start a new one, so here goes. Having no luck finding a resolution (if in fact there even is one) searching, so maybe someone here can help.

Since installing LEAP (actually the only distro I’ve run on this box) been having random crashes, “mostly” while running any web browser, that is, browser just exits. Also system freezes up, sometimes with eg SMPlayer, but it’s frozen with seemingly random software too, to the extent that key combos are useless, and the only way out of them is to cut power and re-boot the system. The only browser I’ve been able to run with any degree of reliability is Links, since there’s basically no multimedia or java-script happening it’s all kinds of stable.

I built this box not too long ago, ran into a few issues which I got sorted, but this one’s kicking my butt, don’t mind a re-install, but done several with no luck, don’t want to downgrade or change distros (honestly don’t even know if that will solve anything anyway) I’ll try to provide adequate info, and anyone who wants to help me troubleshoot it can ask for whatever else is needed…

System info is as follows:

MB: MSI 990FXA Gaming
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB DDR3 @ 2400MHz (actually I think it’s closer to 2133)

Video card: MSI Computer Corp. Video Graphics Card R9 270 GAMING 2G

(is this just completely incompatible? Pretty sure I can still send it back, that is, I’m reasonably sure it’s a graphics card issue, but the last box I built was 16 years ago, so I’m a little out of my depth hardware-wise)

Chipset: AMD Radeon R9 270
Video Memory: 2GB GDDR5
Memory Clock: 5600 MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Max. Resolution: 2560 x 1600

using this driver: radeon-crimson-15.30.1025

KDE Plasma Version: 5.5.5
QT Version: 5.5.1
Kernel: 4.1.27-27-default
OS: 64 bit

BTW, Plasma crashes completely when I ask KInfoCenter for OpenGL information, or the info center simply exits. Started from a terminal it gives this:

KCrash: Application ‘kinfocenter’ crashing…
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/run/user/1000/kdeinit5__0

[1]+ Stopped kinfocenter

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (external gfx0 port B) (rev 02)
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD990 I/O Memory Management Unit (IOMMU)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port B)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port D)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 40)
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40)
00:14.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:15.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:15.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3)
00:16.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:16.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 5
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Curacao PRO [Radeon R7 370 / R9 270/370 OEM]
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7700/7800 Series]
02:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1343
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E220x Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
05:00.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL805 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 01)

…hopefully this is enough info for someone with maybe a better understanding than my own to at least help me get started sorting this out, it really is driving me bonkers, so any help at all would be greatly appreciated! In the interest of brevity I haven’t added my Xorg.conf or the latest Xorg logs, but can if need be…

Thanks in advance

2

Have you tried changing the rendering backend (eg to XRender) to see if that makes a difference?

System Settings > Hardware > Display and Monitor > Compositor

FWIW, here’s another user’s assessment of this hardware

https://kparal.wordpress.com/category/hardware/

3

Even tried disabling compositing completely (in K) and still the problems, I’m baffled, because there’s also not a lot in the way of error reporting in any logs I can find, and more than a little bummed, since other than the crashes, after moving from Tumbleweed/KDE4 (on a different machine) I’ve kinda been loving LEAP+Plasma5.

Since it’s also happening in gnome, Xfce and Lxde, I loaded WindowMaker to see how a plain old window manager w/o the eye candy would do, and bang… problem solved, no crashes in a few days, so it seems somehow compositing is the issue, just don’t know how (I’m assuming OpenBox, Fvwm, fluxbox etc would be the same story, but I really like the eye candy of especialy KDE). Would have thought disabling it in KDE would fix things, but apparently not. I recall there was a “wrapper” setting for NVIDIA cards, you can set in Xorg.conf, any idea if there is a similar setting for AMD/ATI?

I may take it to the KDE forum as well, and see if I can get some insight there, since WM works without a hitch so far, it’s probably a better bet. Still a bunch of stuff to try, but was just kind of hoping it might be one of those easy fix things… meh, no such luck I guess, but if anyone else has any suggestions, I’ll keep an eye on this thread…

…and thanks deano_ferrari I do appreciate the reply.

For future reference, are there any fully open source graphics cards, that also perform reasonably well, my searches haven’t turned up a lot, which I find kind of surprising, possibly I’m just looking in the wrong places?

Not exactly new to linux, but it has been a while since I built a new rig/dealt with hardware issues, and I’ve had exactly zero issues with Opensuse at all in several years, it’s always been solid as a rock, so I maybe allowed myself to get a bit spoiled (and rusty on troubleshooting evidently) haha.

4

For future reference, are there any fully open source graphics cards, that also perform reasonably well, my searches haven’t turned up a lot, which I find kind of surprising, possibly I’m just looking in the wrong places?

It is really a question of which hardware is best supported by open source drivers, and that depends on support from the vendors, otherwise a lot of reverse engineering can be required as part of the driver development.

Intel are particularly proactive with producing and assisting the community with open source drivers, so generally the best bet for those not needing high-end performance.

5

I wonder why the user in the link I posted has had such a different experience to the one you describe here. I guess the versions of Fedora (20/21) he was using (and its older graphics stack) may have been in his favour. You probably should submit a bug report - that might help attract the attention of those who can help further.

6

BTW, in your opening post you mentioned that you were using the proprietary AMD Radeon Crimson driver (radeon-crimson-15.30.1025). Did you also try using the open source radeon driver?

FWIW, this blog describes a user going through steps to successfully install the AMD Crimson driver in a Fedra 23 environment. Perhaps you need to remove and reinstall the driver?

7

For what it’s worth, the issue is fixed, it turned out to be bad RAM, I really don’t know why I didn’t check it sooner, since I had Memtest in my downloads folder for the six weeks or so since building this machine, I just never burned the ISO to disk and ran the test :shame: my bad, within 5 minutes, big nasty red error screen. Managed to find a sympathetic sales person at Fry’s, who let me go a bit past their 30 day returns policy (if you don’t buy a warranty, which generally I don’t, because *generally *you never need them) turns out *this *time, I was mistaken. Didn’t even bother checking individual sticks, I just traded in the entire 32GiB set, for a new one, and voila, problem solved, not one crash since. Faith in LEAP restored!

I’m adding this reply one, so people won’t waste their time on a solved issue, and two, in case anyone’s got a similar issue, check the memory *first, *it was kind of a rookie mistake, I should have known better, and I ended up buying a second video card I didn’t *really *need (although, I’m honestly a lot happier with the Radeon than the NVIDIA, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing) but I could’ve saved myself about a month’s worth of beating my head against the wall, by simply running the Memtest program right after I downloaded it, rather than *ass -u -me -ing *it was the video card! Oh well, you live, you learn, thanks for the replies, it *is *appreciated. :slight_smile:

8

Thank you for reporting back. It is always usefull for others, that come to a thread later, to read what the root cause was and how it is cured.

And congratulations on solving this without financial drawbacks :).

9

Well done. Glad you manage to find the problem and get it resolved.

10

This thread got my attention b/c I was having random crashes after a period of relatively good behavior in an AMD-based PC. But I’d not just built the machine, the RAM had proven itself with 13.2 before migrating to Leap 42.2
My system’s instability seems to have been related to the introduction of an SSD. I have a mix of SSD and spinners (swap areas are on the spinners…)

… Anyway, the fix was to change the BIOS setting from “IDE” to “AHCI”.

I’d tried switching it before and found the system wouldn’t boot; but likely didn’t have the SSD in SATA0 at that time… ? The system was pretty good for a while (no crashes).