I’ve had a couple system lockups in the past week (or so). I believe the first was after the really big update. I wish I could be more specific. What I want to know is if others have experienced a similar problem. That way we know if it’s a problem with the ditro.
The first time, interactivity deteriorated in steps. I lost control of the window, but the mouse still moved. After attempting a “Ctrl+Meta+Esc” the entire GUI was locked. I was able to ssh from another machine to the extent that I got a prompt, but upon submitting the password nothing returned.
Today I stepped away to get a cup of coffee and returned to a locked up GUI. No mouse nor keyboard. I first attempted an ssh with a bogus password to see if the auth daemon was functioning. It did return me to a login prompt, so the kernel was most likely functioning. When I get it a valid password it never returned a CLI.
The system locked up again. This time I could not ssh, but I could still ping it. ssh just hung. This could be a problem with my hardware. After the crash it required 3 reboots to get past the BIOS configuration. There was a time when I would immediately say the OS couldn’t cause that. But these days I’m not so sure.
It seems that trying ctrl+meta+esc' on a hung window causes a complete lockup. I still had some interaction such as alt+tab` and mouse movement, but once I tried to kill a hung Emacs window, it locked up hard. I was hoping the new kernel would fix this, but that isn’t working either.
While working in a CLI only run level, I realized there was still a problem. I tried running the recovery boot option a few times, but it kept hanging on ‘journald.service’. It could neither fully start it nor sigkill it. I finally decided to try
sudo zypper install --force systemd.
So far, so good. But I cannot swear it was the latter step that killed the gremlins. (Nor am I certain all the gremlins are dead. ) The recovery mode boot session I used to run the zypper command was much cleaner than the previous ones.
Prior to the above steps I had done
zypper install --force kernel-default
then
`sudo dracut --force’
To fix a broken update to kernel 7.1.8-1.0.8.sr20260802-default. The failed update may have been caused by the already existing problem.
Another step I had prepared but have not yet been compelled to take is to do a reinstall using the latest slowroll ISO on a USB stick.
This appeared on my second monitor while in runlevel 3 when the system locked up.
I was getting that from all three kernels. The current 7.1.8; the previous 7.1.7; and the longterm 6.18.43.
I can’t say exactly what fixed it. However it appears to be fixed. I was starting to think I needed a new CPU , but it turned out to be software. Or pure FM.
If it doesn’t lockup by the end of the day I will flag this as resolved. The fix is somewhere in the steps above. Assuming it’s fixed.
