Has anybody else noticed this . . .?
Sometime in the past couple of weeks I have done an update that has resulted in the occasional sporadic screen freeze / lag.
I’m running openSUSE 12.3 x86_64 with KDE 4.11.2
I first noticed the problem when scrolling through web pages and noticed that scrolling would occasionally stick momentarily.
I just assumed that it was a browser / firefox problem but over the next few days I noticed that mouse movements would exhibit the same behaviour - as does dragging around windows such as dolphin. The windows do not move smoothly but with very jerky movements.
The behaviour disappears as quickly as it appeared.
Looking in system monitor there isn’t any particular strain on cpu or anything else noticeable that might be causing it.
I don’t think there have been any kernel or xorg updates in the past couple of weeks.
Video is Intel GM45 Express
Not entirely sure where to look to troubleshoot this.
I don’t have this problem here (also running openSUSE 12.3 x86_64 with KDE 4.11.2).
Did it start with upgrading KDE to 4.11 maybe? Or did that work fine?
Maybe have a look in “Configure Desktop”->“Desktop Effects”->“Advanced”. “Qt graphics system” should be set to “Raster” and “Composite type” to “OpenGL” (try the different versions, I have no idea which one would be best for your intel chip).
Thanks for this I usually run with desktop effects disabled but interestingly, I enabled effects earlier today and the problem hasn’t manifested since then. I’ve now disabled desktop effects again. In advanced Composite was set to OpenGL and QT to Native. I’ve now changed QT to Raster so I’ll play around for a while and see if it makes a difference.
that didn’t take long . . .
problem appeared pretty quickly again after disabling desktop effects - even after changing from native to raster.
I’ve been running KDE 4.11 for some time without problem but I see that most kde libs were updated on my system around sept 29 to 4.11.2-5, 6 or 7 so I guess that could be around the time that I first started to notice the issue.
And why don’t you want to leave the desktop effects enabled? Apparently you don’t have this problem then, do you?
Those graphics system and composite type settings only apply when desktop effects are on.
You can switch off effects you do not want one by one on the “All Effects” tab.
Quite interested when I read this post. Yes, I have noticed this, exactly as described when browsing web-sites. I’ve not seen it when moving windows around, nor have I seen it with the mouse. Like yourself I put this down to a Firefox issue; however, not having seen any of the other effects I had been trying to establish if it was particular web-sites causing the problem.
I was going to try combinations of compositing type as suggested by “wolfi323” (interesting that he is not seeing this), but that was before I read your follow-up posts.
It certainly is random, usually a few times during a days use of the computer. My own guess would be I started seeing this approximately two-three weeks ago, which is broadly in line with your own estimate.
Just for comparison, a brief summary of my set-up:
Desktop effects: enabled, (selectively, I’ve disabled quite a few).
Animation speed: normal.
Compositing: raster openGL 3.1
Desktop theme: oxygen
Cursor theme: oxygen white
Video hardware is Nvidia 8600GTS using the proprietary driver (319.32)
Running xrestop might help identify which application(s) are showing increased resource usage when the issue occurs. For example, pxm_mem may grow constantly over time which might indicate a particular app has a memory leak, etc.
Hi,
Intel GM45, so is that the Thinkpad SL510? Still multi-booting mine with 12.3 Tumbleweed/KDE 11.2, 12.2/KDE standard, and Win 7, with none of your symptoms or any other graphics related issues.
Are you running on the original HDD supplied by lenovo?
Your screen freezes/lags remind me of the first symptoms experienced here when my HDD began to fail with intermittent errors. It carried on intermittently for several months, thanks to ext4’s resilience, before a fatal error crippled file system’s journal and that partition. Some time later a second partition failed and I replaced the disk. With hindsight, I should have changed it sooner, but then I wouldn’t have experienced the challenge of repairing Win 7 to support replacement with a modern advanced function disk (the spinning variety).
I suggest you run “smartctl” on the disk to examine usage and error stats. You should also run through a full memory test to eliminate it as a possible cause.
Just personal preference. No technical reason.
Perhaps it is time I got used to having effects enabled, and indeed playing around today it does seem quite nice.
Yes, spot on.
Still multi-booting mine with 12.3 Tumbleweed/KDE 11.2, 12.2/KDE standard, and Win 7, with none of your symptoms or any other graphics related issues.
Are you running on the original HDD supplied by lenovo?
Yes, still running original HD.
I did think that may be the cause but I couldn’t reproduce any symptoms in Win7 (still multiboot - booted in for first time in about six months today)
Because KDE was updated about the time I started to see the symptoms I wanted to have a play with that.
I switched from 4.11 to the 4.10 but the problem was still present (and perhaps worse)
switched back to 4.11 and now the problem has disappeared on me (and indeed 4.11 seems a little snappier).
I’ll need to play around for a few days to check I guess, but it may have just been an update gone wrong that caused the trouble.
I’ll keep you posted if it returns and also follow the other suggestions if I see it again.
Yes, your original WD2500BEVT is fine according to that smartctl report, whereas my Fujitsu 320GB had many errors for “Current_Pending_Sector” and “Offline_Uncorrectable”, earlier this year when it failed. A like-for-like replacement wasn’t possible apart from rpm, and Fujitsu [luckily] had sold HDD business to Toshiba in 2009. So I replaced it with a WD5000LPVX Blue, and very pleased with it so far.
At least you eliminated some serious hardware, but it’s back to wearing the “thinking cap” unfortunately. :\
actually, I recall seeing similar behaviour after first updating to 12.3 - but it got better with subsequent updates.
I always assumed it was kernel related, but as I mentioned previously, there haven’t been any recent kernel updates (other than kernel-firmware).
Just checked my HD at 28 C., but it’s only been on for a short while with ambient of 18 C. Around 1200 hours ago at Power_On_Hours = 194, it was 47 C. So as you say yours is perhaps a little bit higher at 53 C.
been running kernel 3.11.5 from the stable repo coming up a couple of days now.
Seems to have fixed my problem as I haven’t seen any of the symptoms since the upgrade.
As a bonus from the kernel upgrade I have also doubled file transfer speeds from my NAS over wifi and got my mute button back that stopped working with the 3.7 kernel in openSUSE 12.3.
Same here on 12.3 with or without Tumbleweed, the mute button doesn’t work on 3.7 and later kernels but works on 12.2 standard. On Tumbleweed now with
kernel-desktop-3.11.5-32.1.ga012288.x86_64 running and it still doesn’t work :(. Also on startup, more often than not, the sound icon (KDE standard or TW) shows sound is muted. Easy enough to clear but annoying. Does that happen on yours?
Everything worked great for me in 12.1. A few things stopped working in 12.2 and then in 12.3 wireless slowed a little.
After installing the 3.11 kernel everything is back to working great as it did in 12.1. All my function buttons work as should (brightness etc).
I’ve never seen the muted sound on boot that you have.
There is some difference between sl510s though. My wife has the Japanese version which is quite a bit different to mine (different cpu (she has celeron I have i5 dual) different wireless, different hard disc).
edit: while my mute button works - the mute button light doesn’t work.
oh, hang about . . . . I have seen that.
I remember scratching my head over it because when it occurred wasn’t related to any kind of upgrade / update.
Then I remembered that I had set mute when I booted into win7 and forgot to un-mute before leaving that session.
I guess win7 is setting mute in bios settings or something.
Booted back into win7, un-muted there and all was back to normal.
