Cinnamon Freezing Metabug

[mtwebster]

In an effort to solve issues many users are having, I'm creating this issue to try to keep everything together and easy to manage, and will be closing other reports. Please read through this entirely before actually doing anything.

Please keep this civil and to the point. I'm not interested in commentary, complaints, threats, FUD or anything else unhelpful. I will remove or edit such posts.

If you wish to paste logs - anything more than a line or two, please use a pastebin service. This stuff is much easier to read there, and keeps this issue from becoming enormous.

General

If you are affected by freezes in Cinnamon, I ask that you report the following:

1. What are you doing when it manifests? (nothing, playing on Steam, alt-tabbing, expo, random, etc...
2. How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...
3. Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit
4. Your gpu type

Testing

Install the following packages - note, these are only if you're running stable cinnamon from the repos (2.4.8) - nightlies already include the fix I'm testing here. As data is collected, I may publish updated packages containing more fixes. Install all level 1, 2, and 3 updates before doing this.

32-bit:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon_2.4.8_i386.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-dbg_2.4.8_i386.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-common_2.4.8_all.deb

64 bit:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon_2.4.8_amd64.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-dbg_2.4.8_amd64.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-common_2.4.8_all.deb

Do not install these using the graphical installer. Instead, download all three packages to a folder, go to that folder in a terminal, and run:

sudo dpkg -i *cinnamon*.deb

Try to reproduce the problem in the default environment. This is to attempt to have everyone test under the same controlled conditions. I'm not condemning 3rd party applets, desklets and extensions, I'm merely trying to get to the core problems. If it turns out there are issues with 3rd party applets, we'll work with those developers if possible, and within Cinnamon, to mitigate them. For now, I'm looking for consistent data.

A fairly simple way to create a temporary test environment is to do the following:

open a terminal:

dconf dump /org/cinnamon/ > mysettings
dconf reset -f /org/cinnamon/

I recommend logging out and back in at this point, before continuing - depending on your system, it may freeze for a moment, or even require a reboot. Make sure you have nothing unsaved before doing this. This is nothing to be alarmed about.

Now, attempt to reproduce the issue.

Once you're done, to restore all your settings:

dconf load /org/cinnamon/ < mysettings

Again, you should log out and back in (Cinnamon may freeze at this point, just as mentioned above, as you're sending a fairly enormous jolt of changes to it at once - again, this is nothing to be concerned with)

Attempt to reproduce once more.

If there is a change in behavior (something in your settings apparently is the cause), I'd ask that you share your 'mysettings' file - please use a pastebin/dpaste service to do so, and share the link.

One last bit of data I'd like, if you've installed those test packages, is one line from your ~/.xsession-errors file:

St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes SUPPORTED

or:

St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes NOT supported

If you wish to revert back to stable packages afterward, you should be able to simply update through the Update Manager.

If you have any questions or issues don't hesitate to voice them, or I can be contacted on Spotchat irc in #linuxmint-dev channel (I'm always there, though not always available - just be patient)

Thank you in advance for all your patience, understanding, and effort.

[plaa]

I've been facing the problem for some time now (Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, Linux Mint 17.1 64-bit, Intel graphics controller driver=i915). I recently upgraded to 2.4.8 from the repos, and had the freeze occur today, so I still have the issue. I'm now installing your packages and will report if I get the freeze again.

Freezing has occurred totally randomly while at work (typically when docked to an external monitor - I don't recall having freezes undocked). The frequency varies a lot. Originally I typically had 1-2 freezes per day, then it when up to a dozen or more per day for a couple of weeks, and for the past week or so it's been very rare - no idea why. I can fix a freeze either by switching to another terminal / desktop and back, or by undocking my laptop (which changes the resolution as well).

Since I don't know how to reproduce the problem, I'll report back if I have a freeze with the new packages. If you don't hear anything from me, you can assume the new packages have fixed (or at least alleviated) the problem. (I use the laptop for my work, so I'm not comfortable switching to default settings - sorry.)

Thanks for trying to resolve this issue!

[plaa]

I'm unable to install the packages on Mint 17.1. cinnamon depends on libcjs0e (>= 2.5.0), however the latest version in the repos is 2.4.2. Any suggestions?
dpkg output: http://pastebin.com/RwjurGGA

[mtwebster]

Ack - I goofed. I've updated the packages at the links above - re-download and try again.

Sorry!

[plaa]

Thanks, I've now updated the packages and will shout if I still have freezes.

[matthijsmelissen]

What are you doing when it manifests? (nothing, playing on Steam, alt-tabbing, expo, random, etc...

Alt-tab. It does not occur on every alt-tab though.

How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...

killall -HUP cinnamon from tty resolves it, simply going to tty and back does not.

Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3317U CPU @ 1.70GHz on 64-bit linux

Your gpu type

Not sure where to find this, is this the right information?

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 10fd

The issue seems to occur mainly (or only?) when I'm running Skype, so that might be related?

This is before installing the packages above. I now installed the packages, and will report back if the issue reoccurs.

If you wish to revert back to stable packages afterward, you should be able to simply update through the Update Manager.

What do you mean exactly by that? Does it mean I should off updating through the Update Manager for now as it would overwrite the installation of the installed packages?

[mtwebster]

GPU info is fine - as far as updates, the update manager will see these manually installed packages as of a lesser version than what it offers, so if you blindly update, it will replace these packages. If you find this patch works for you, you can add 'cinnamon' to ignored updates temporarily (right-click on the cinnamon entry, click ignore). When you want to upgrade it eventually (like if we release a new official version), you can then edit your ignored packages list and remove cinnamon.

[mikkovedru]

Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon 64-bit. Version 2.4.8. Kernel: 3.13.0-35-generic. Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz x 4. RAM: 7.8GB. Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 (Driver: Nvidia 340.29).

It seems that it can happen anytime. CPU/GPU working/idle. Playing a game, watching a movie, doing nothing. Freezes anywhere from 2 times a day to 1 time a week.

The new information, that will surely help you, is that it freezes only on my second monitor!

I have two monitors. Main = main, secondary for task-manager, temperature monitor, playing movies, copy/extract dialogs, some programs. So only action on the second monitor freezes - never on the main monitor. All the background programs are still working fine: for example I can still pause the video (audio) playing on the second monitor - by using both a keyboard and a mouse. I can see the mouse cursor, but not anything besides that. The funny thing is that cursor works 100% as normal, it even changes according to what action I attempt on the invisible windows on the background.

So everything seems to work on the background, except for the video output on the second monitor (except the mouse cursor).

I fix the problem by going to the "Display" settings, disabling the second monitor and then enabling it again. Not a big deal, except that all the windows go and stay on the first monitor, and I have to reorganize them again. Another funny thing is that the second monitor starts working even if I go to settings, disable the second monitor, but then say that I am not satisfied and want everything to be returned back.

[nkoropoff]

If I tell update manager to ignore the cinnamon package, it still tries to force the install of the official version along with any other package available to update like apt, compiz, or wpa.

[leigh123linux]

@mtwebster
Just added a few thousand Guinea pig's (all F20 - F23 users).

http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/cinnamon.git/commit/?id=54083015a4d6491237a00620a508d7af1a5eb381

[mtwebster]

@nkoropoff Ah you probably should have brought your system up-to-date prior to installing (lvl 1, 2, 3) - you can update, let it do its thing, then just re-install those packages.

[peterhorsley]

// UPDATE: After replacing my power supply, the PC no longer freezes, so it looks like in my case it was a faulty power supply, sorry.

In the past few weeks, my Mint 17 box has been freezing (screen, keyboard, mouse) with only option to hold power button to reset. To rule out HDD first, I took an image and restored it on a new disk (SSD). Now I can reproduce the feeze every boot - it happens right when the login screen is about to appear - i.e. when the video mode is changed. Sometimes I will see the UI with the login box (but everything is frozen), sometimes I'll just see blank screen with an unmovable mouse cursor. Previously, it would freeze on the login screen, or any amount of time thereafter, but now I can't even log in. I have also switched graphics cards to no effect.

What are you doing when it manifests? - Waiting for login screen to appear.
How do you resolve it? - Hold power button.
Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit - AMD CPU 64bit
Your gpu type - Gigabyte (AMD) cards, tried two.

Any suggestion as to what logs I can attach (e.g. via recovery shell) to help? my /var/log/Xorg.0.log is 0 bytes.

[nkoropoff]

I have been running the above 64-bit test packages for a week now and have not been able to experience a single freeze so far. The first day was running a default cinnamon environment and then my customized one. Will continue testing but so far it has been very stable for me.

[plaa]

I've also been running the 64-bit packages for a week now (customized environment) and haven't experienced any freezes.

[ghost]

I have not any freeze now(while running), but i have some freeze when i try to restart cinnamon. Apparently the cause is the gnome background manager, in this case. If i put a let on the variables not fix the freeze. So, this would not be related with this bugs, but as is a type of freezed, in charge here, to not create chaos.

Cjs-Message: JS LOG: About to start Cinnamon
St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes SUPPORTED
Window manager warning: Trying to remove non-existent custom keybinding "magnifier-zoom-in".
Window manager warning: Trying to remove non-existent custom keybinding "magnifier-zoom-out".
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Cinnamon started at Mon May 04 2015 18:21:27 GMT-0500 (CDT)
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: network applet: Cannot find connection for active (or connection cannot be read)
(3 lines of this)
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: GSettings key not found. schema: org.cinnamon, key: window-list-applet-alert

Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 38]: assignment to undeclared variable somethingChanged
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 40]: assignment to undeclared variable key
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 41]: assignment to undeclared variable value
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 42]: assignment to undeclared variable newValue
(5 lines of this)
Window manager warning: Trying to remove non-existent custom keybinding "magnifier-zoom-in".
Window manager warning: Trying to remove non-existent custom keybinding "magnifier-zoom-out".

Edit: After some minutes (1-3) cinnamon appeared how is nothing occurs, and it never freeze if i not restart cinnamon. Also this not occurs all times and aparently is relate with the size of the .xsession-errors file.

[dalcde]

On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 05:10:05AM -0700, Lester Carballo Pérez wrote:

Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 38]: assignment to undeclared variable somethingChanged
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 40]: assignment to undeclared variable key
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 41]: assignment to undeclared variable value
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/backgroundManager.js 42]: assignment to undeclared variable newValue

This is fixed in Cinnamon git

[ghost]

@dalcde the let of the variables, is not the cause of the freeze, i also fixed this to test what happens. Is also fixed the froze on restart? I think is the gnome background manager, because when cinnamon froze this error appears, otherwise not. So, this is why i think is the gnome background manager the cause of this. I see all that you made, especially in center the panel (right panel behavior). Thanks.

[dalcde]

@dalcde the let of the variables, is not the cause of the freeze, i also fixed this to test what happens. Is also fixed the froze on restart? I think is gnome background manager, because when cinnamon froze this error appears, otherwise not. So, this is why i think is gnome background manager the cause of this. I see all that you made, especially in center the panel (right panel behavior). Thanks.

Correlation does not imply causation. In this case, I heavily doubt it
is related to the background manager (also, why are you calling it
gnome background manager?).

The errors are due to broken code in backgroundManager.js, which is
called whenever a gsettings changed:: signal is emitted and the
background manager reacts. I suspect it is the changed:: signal that
causes the freeze (or whatever caused the changed:: signal to be fired)

[ghost]

org.gnome.desktop.background is not who emit the signal? I'm not sure what caused the frozen, as i say: i THINK is... In all case will be a place to see.

[dalcde]

There is no gnome background manager afaik. It's just a gsettings schema. Gsettings is known to randomly fire changed:: signals when nothing has changed during startup etc. can you try to log what specific keys are being changed? Gsetting passes the key to the function as an argument, and you should be able to global.log that.

[ghost]

Ok, thanks for the explanation... I will reported the key when i found it more that 3 times, could be different keys, so i will wait to get more than 3 time the same. Thanks.

[ghost]

ok, i can not way for 3 times after see all this, there are a lot of keys:
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: picture-opacity
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: secondary-color
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: show-desktop-icons
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: primary-color
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: color-shading-type
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: picture-options
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: picture-uri
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Error on Cinnamon restart on key: draw-background

[ghost]

I think that the org.gnome.desktop.background is connected to the signal faster, where the stage is not ready and this is the cause, of the freeze https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/blob/d9e95ec37570b870dd22fa46e2e6629ee045e22a/js/ui/main.js#L294

Signals need to be connected to the last as possible.

[dalcde]

try deleting that line entirely and see if Cinnamon still freezes.

[akaIDIOT]

@cmcx @acidicX Had the exact same behaviour here, micro freezes every few seconds on an i7-6600 (Intel HD 520). Downgrading to kernel 4.4 (4.4.0-93 at the time of writing) fixed the issue. I've seen the bug on 4.8, 4.10 and 4.11 kernels, iirc also on older 4.4 kernels.

• Intel Core i7-6600 (with Intel HD 520)
• Linuxmint 18.2
• Cinnamon 3.4.6+sonya (amd64)
• linux 4.4.0-93-generic (the one that does not exhibit the bug)
• libegl1-mesa 17.0.7-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
• libegl1-mesa-drivers 12.0.6-0ubuntu0.16.04.1

[acidicX]

@akaIDIOT I'm currently running 4.12.8-2-ARCH on Arch Linux and the stuttering has stopped while on AC power. Still happens sometimes when on battery though.

[akaIDIOT]

@acidicX neat, got a 4.12.10 kernel from the mainline ppa, which does indeed also 'fix' the bug, haven't seen glitches yet. Alas, ndiswrapper doesn't play ball for that version, but that's a local issue now. Thanks for the headsup!

[iplayfast]

I replaced my hp bluetooth keyboard with a plugged in usb one. Problems have largely stopped, but still happen on occasion. Very seldom now though.

…

On 2017-08-30 06:49 AM, Carsten wrote: @akaIDIOT <https://github.com/akaidiot> I'm currently running |4.12.8-2-ARCH| on Arch Linux and the stuttering has stopped while on AC power. Still happens sometimes when on battery though. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4072 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAt2ymTEMsUu9cVadHG0dWec5gccMKhsks5sdT49gaJpZM4EGLOs>.

[jonorthwash]

The glitches disappeared for me about a year ago, but I still get "slow downs" after running cinnamon for a while. That is, once cinnamon has been running for about a week or so, all interface interaction gets somewhat unresponsive. It seems to get worse the longer I let it go, with delays between clicking on things and them responding getting longer the more time cinnamon has been running. cinnamon --replace is all that's needed to get it back to a normal state. When in the "bogged down" state, cinnamon does not seem to be using additional CPU cycles, and the behaviour seems to be the same regardless of RAM usage.

I wonder if this issue is related to the freezing / glitches, or if I should file it as a separate issue.

[Bobavince]

Hi !

Arch with Cinnamon, freezing problem too.
Freezing time : 1 second to 30 seconds.
No SDD, just hard drive.
Nvidia card.

It seems to be related to Network manager for me (as for example, when my Wifi shutdown for one reason or another, the screen and not the mouse, freeze during seconds) but I did not found any solution (more than a year now)

[geektortoise]

Debian 9 64 bits with Cinnamon,
Freezing time : Unlimited. I have never be able to get the control back.
Max time waiting : 15 minutes
Graphic card : NVIDIA Corporation GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M]
Frequency : Every day ...
How to reproduce : Not each time but enough frequent to crash every day :
Skip from one fullscreen application to another.
Often : Gedit, firefox, Thunderbird.

[Bobavince]

It's seems that the update of Network-Manager (recently) fixed the problem for me. At least, it's far more uncommon.

[dstromberg]

1. What are you doing when it manifests? (nothing, playing on Steam, alt-tabbing, expo, random, etc...
   It happens sometimes in:

• mplayer
• youtube (chromium)
• nonvideo web browsing (again chromium)
• a gobject introspection (Python GTK+) application I wrote (http://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/hcm/)
• the workspace switcher
• mrxvt (a terminal emulator)
• gvncviewer (a VNC client, not in fullscreen mode)

In fact, I'm not sure there's anything I do on this machine that doesn't temporarily freeze sometimes. I pretty much never use alt-tab, but I do have a hot corner for "show all workspaces" which I use often. I also have 25 workspaces most of the time.

2. How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...
   If I wait around 1 to 30 seconds, it unfreezes. As described by others, the mouse pointer moves during these freezes, but other things on the display do not change. In fact, it froze three times as I was writing this. It's pretty frequent - maybe 10 or 20 times in an evening of heavy use.

3. Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit
   From /proc/cpuinfo: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4000M CPU @ 2.40GHz
   64 bit

4. Your gpu type
   From lspvi -v: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)

I had the problem with Mint 18.2 a little, so I reinstalled with Mint 18.3. It was good for a while, but then it got more frequent than it was on 18.2. My Cinnamon version is 3.6.6. I reboot infrequently, and log out infrequently.

I have a couple of other machines with Linux Mint on them. One is still 18.2, the other is 18.3. Neither of these 2 show the problem.

I tried turning off all desktop effects, but it does not appear to have lead to a resolution.

I did not try to install the deb's in the issue description, because I'm on a much later version of Mint and Cinnamon.

Thanks!

[ghost]

What are you doing when it manifests?

Restarting network manager because, for some reason, and even though wifi shows as up, I can't connect. (DNS problem?) Result: 5-10 second freeze, then Cinnamon crash.

How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...
Cinnamon managed to restart itself.

Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit

Intel i7-8550U, 64-bit Mint.

Your gpu type

Intel Kabylake GT1.5

Cinnamon 3.6.7.

[real-or-random]

See linuxmint/cinnamon-spices-extensions#163 .

[dstromberg]

I've seen this on a laptop with Intel graphics - I don't think it's Nvidia only.
alt-f2 r helps me.

[rbaeta]

Similar problem here...

What are you doing when it manifests?

Freezes some random time after I undock from station, when doing tasks that imply opening new dialogs, like Open file/save dialog. My main screen is laptop, second screen is monitor. Both screens freeze, only mouse moves. Can switch to tty and back.

How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...

I switch to tty and run $ top to see if there is any process with 100% cpu load or so, but nothing suspicious. Sometimes, I return to graphic session and it unfreezes in 10 minutes or so, other times it doesn't. So, the final judgement is reboot. Nothing suspicious in dmesg or syslog.

Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i5-3230M @ 2.60GHz 4-core
Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64 GNU/Linux
Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit
Cinnamon version: 2.2.16

Your gpu type

Graphics Card: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics controller

Thank you for any help.

=======
UPDATE

happened again, extracted some logs:

dmesg.log.txt

[luisvmf]

Random freezes, only mouse pointer can move.

What are you doing when it manifests?
Random freezes, but normally when an remote directory is mounted with sshfs.
How do you resolve it?
Alt+SysRq+reisub.
Here is the information from System Reports after one crash
https://pastebin.com/PKcySr6h
Here is the output from inxi -Fx
https://pastebin.com/j6875iLJ

It happened again, this time there was no sshfs folder mounted, it happened when i was clicking on terminal opened tab. Here is the log from System Reports, it appears to be the same error!

https://pastebin.com/dDY0P5WM

[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
Core was generated by `cinnamon --replace'.
Program terminated with signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0  js::GCMethods<JSObject*>::needsPostBarrier (v=0x7fd32d8b7d00) at /usr/include/mozjs-38/js/RootingAPI.h:663
663	/usr/include/mozjs-38/js/RootingAPI.h: No such file or directory.
[Current thread is 1 (Thread 0x7fd376b90ac0 (LWP 2694))]

[Fabian42]

I hope I'm in the right place here, even though I'm using Debian and not Linux Mint. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=cinnamon-desktop-environment;dist=unstable only lists two bugs for Cinnamon, that can't be right.

**Cinnamon freezes whenever I use Alt+Tab ("cycle through open windows") while a new window opens. Apparently it can't deal properly with adding new items to the list while it's open.

Debian: 9.11
Cinnamon: 3.2.7
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ
GPU: System settings show "Intel Corporation Device 591b", Minecraft shows "Mesa DRI Intel Kabylake GT2"

St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes SUPPORTED

What resolves it: Usually I reboot, but sudo service lightdm restart also works (but I can't see much differences to a reboot, except that it's faster and sometimes a few things are a bit weird afterwards). I do not know how to restart cinnamon except for the key combination (which doesn't work if Cinnamon is frozen).

This also happens with default settings. This does NOT happen in my Debian VM! It uses Debian 9.9 (but I'm pretty sure I also had this issue when I had Debian 9.9 as my main system) and its graphics card shows in the system settings as "VMware SVGA II Adapter (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])". Everything else should be identical.

[JesseWeinstein]

I have observed this intermittently.

What are you doing when it manifests?
Running Zoom (the video chat software)
How do you resolve it?
Restarting cinnamon from another tty seems to work, but leaves things in a vulnerable state that seems to later require a full restart to fix.
Your cpu type

uname -a                                                            ~
Linux ultralap 4.17.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.17.8-1~bpo9+1 (2018-07-23) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Your gpu type

sudo lspci -v | grep VGA                                            ~
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
glxinfo -B | grep Device                                            ~
    Device: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Kabylake GT1.5  (0x5917)

(I can include lshw output, too -- but it's a big longer.)

I'm not able to follow the testing steps at this time, but I'll comment/if when I do.

[Wohlstand]

Hello!
I do have some freezes at me sometimes when I run heavy graphical (usually OpenGL) apps such as VirtualBox VM with enabled GPU acceleration, or game emulators like Citra.

The freeze may happen randomly, just running the game of VirtualBox VM for a long time. It's luck because freeze happens randomly, at some moment it may don't occur, but at others, happen often. To "escape" it, I had to switch between TTY and graphical mode.

However, when I run Cinnamon in software mode, freezes don't happen. Any ideas why that could happen?

I use Linux Mint 20.3, using video card Nvidia RTX-2060, and the problem is the same with both 470 and 510 Nvidia drivers. I'll try to disable the compositor-side VSync and try some, will it freeze or not...

P.S. Forgot to say, even without a freeze, Cinnamon gets a much more loaded CPU when running OpenGL game or VirtualBox VM. When running in software mode, Cinnamon doesn't load the CPU so much.

[rado84-github]

I've been experiencing this freezing in the past few hours. It happened out of nowhere, I was simply listening to an online radio and writing a post on a forum. Suddenly the radio got cut off, the keyboard stopped working for the most part (only some keys worked) and the menu froze (it wouldn't minimize).
Long story of my attempts to fix it short - I think the cause for this freeze is the X server. Because when I run Cinnamon in "Software rendering" mode, everything works just fine. IDK how to set it to run in this mode at every boot (at least until this issue is resolved), so if you know how, do tell, pls.

[Wohlstand]

IDK how to set it to run in this mode at every boot

On the login screen, click the icon at the right-top of the login box, and select the "Cinnamon (Software render)" in the list, and this gets being remembered:

[rado84-github]

IDK how to set it to run in this mode at every boot

On the login screen, click the icon at the right-top of the login box, and select the "Cinnamon (Software render)" in the list, and this gets being remembered:

(https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6751442/166009333-4bb5c7f8-85ac-4cb6-a588-4dba710fe95f.png)

I know that, this is how I set it in software rendering mode in the first place. I was talking about how to make it run in software mode automatically at every reboot, so that I don't have to do it manually.

I talked to a friend of mine who's way more savvy than me in the matters of xorg and the nvidia driver and he said there's a chance this freeze was caused by something called "wakelock". So I'll downgrade the nvidia driver and see how it behaves.

[Wohlstand]

I was talking about how to make it run in software mode automatically at every reboot, so that I don't have to do it manually.

At me, if you toggle some at this menu, it will stay even after a reboot, does it resets at you?

[Wohlstand]

btw, at my side, I did some small experiments:

• open System Settings
• open Common
• At compositor parameters, choose "VSync method" as "not selected"

I did this, and seems, the thing no longer freezes because of running games or VirtualBox VM... And keeping run in default mode. Try this, I'm curious how it will work at your side...

[rado84-github]

I couldn't get there. I think the video card is dying but it's doing it in a very strange way. In Windows it's working perfectly fine, whereas in linux freezes, crashes, I'm expecting a nuclear explosion at some point... Even software rendering mode froze, altough not as quick as the regular mode.

[Wohlstand]

Looks weird, but question: what Windows version, which video driver is set? Try using more graphical apps to load OpenGL/Vulkan to see what happens. At my mom on her older video card, there were a lot of BSoDs, but they are gone after I replaced it with a newer one. Cinnamon uses OpenGL actively, so, causes the video card to be loaded:

With my video card, it gets between 1-16% of GPU Utilization at idle when running default mode:

I going to try running the software mode and see the dynamic...

And right, if the video card actually dying, then it will glitch everywhere, to confirm that just use heavy graphical applications to load your GPU and see the behavior. Otherwise, blame bugs on video card drivers. Before recent time I used Nvidia driver 470, but after crashes of some game, I reported that, and they asked me to update video driver (510 is now at me, I was afraid it will work glitchy as my colleagues got, but phew, it works just fine)

[rado84-github]

It is dying, just not in the typical way with artifacts. My already installed distro (arch LTS) is no longer useable, the moment I run it and it freezes. Restarting X helps for a few seconds, then freezes again, the live DVD of any Linux distro also freezes and can't be installed or used for any operations. In Windows there are no artifacts (yet) but games that used to "fly" now have become sluggish - Forza 4 & 5, Mad Max, GTA 5, even Hard Truck Apocalypse. The frame rate is fine but when you move through the menus, you can see a huge lag between pressing the arrow key and the actual movement of the cursor through the menus.
It's clear it's dying. Fortunately it still has 7 months till the end of the warranty, so I'll take it to the shop where I bought it from.

[rado84-github]

You can scratch my posts here, it turned out the freezing wasn't caused by the video card but because of one of the memories - it has defected. After I removed it, leaving the other 3 on the motherboard, Cinnamon stopped freezing. So now all I have to do is buy one more piece of 8GB RAM.

[Wohlstand]

Really, my mom recently had an even worse case because of a faulty memory module, in her case, known to be stable software glitched weirdly, and OS had failed once per hour. Then I ran memtest, and I confirmed that it was a faulty module. Once I ejected it, everything started to work fine.