[Solved] System freezing - Mint 13 Cinnamon

[al3xsh]

Switching to the 64 bit version seems to have fixed the issue for me. I tried updating via the nightly ppa, but just lost all windows decorations, etc.

Alex

[ashtonford]

the best solution is to use mint 12 and cinnamon,things are rock solid 0 freeze ups with my desk top and sony lap top life is good.,

[Lolo Uila]

Interesting thread. I've been testing a lot of distros lately to try and find the perfect one for my Netbook, and so far Mint-13/Maya Cinnamon has been the most trouble free. Only reason I'm not totally sold on it is that it's a bit resource heavy for the little Netbook. Even with 2GB of RAM I find it a bit sluggish.

I just tried some of the "guaranteed to fail" tests without incident. But what I found interesting is that someone who said they did have this problem posted specs for a Netbook that was virtually identical to mine. Only difference was the brand (Asus/Acer) and 1GB of RAM vs 2.

A lot of you are attributing it to Cinnamon, but there were reports from some using MATE, and a few from Ubuntu users who were not using either Cinnamon or MATE. Then there were several reports of bad hash checks on the ISO files. That is quite unusual. It would be unlikely for a bad ISO to find its way on to a mirror server, since there is error checking in the network transmission protocols.

This really does seem to be a case of multiple bugs leading to the same end symptom. Different triggers on different systems, so what fixes it for one would not necessarily fix it for someone else. What I don't understand is how 2 virtually identical Netbooks could be affected differently (unless the person with the Asus Netbook got one of the bad ISO files).

I'm going to try it on my desktop and see what happens...

[Lolo Uila]

Okay, my desktop did experience the problem. Launched Firefox, opened a large Libre Office Writer document and scrolled up and down without trouble. Then I created a new document, added a table and started copying and pasting. Didn't take long to freeze up. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace got me out of it and back into a working system.

I did an apt-get update & apt-get upgrade to pull in all upgraded software. I noticed there was a kernel update as well, so I did a dist-upgrade to grab that too. Rebooted, tested, and it still froze. Tried the cinnamon-stable updates, and nope, still froze. Then I did the nightly, and after beating on it quite heavily I have not been able to get it to lock again.

So that does appear to be a fix, but it doesn't explain the people who were not running Cinnamon that had the same problem. Which is why I suspect we're all not experiencing the same problem. Just the same affect from different problems. Or perhaps its a common library that is used by more than Cinnamon that affected the others? It will be interesting to see if this "fix" does not work for anyone.

[SunWorks]

Updating Cinnamon to the latest Nightly build (via the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA) solved the problem for me too. Thankfully!!!

I even did a large presentation with all sorts of programs open (FireFox, Chrome, Google Video, M$ Windows in VirtualBox, etc...) the other night for a large group and it went very well.

• Thinkpad T60 15"
• 3gb Ram.
• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500
• Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

Hopefully there is a more permanent fix coming... this is not good for a newbie.

[kmb42vt]

Updating Cinnamon to the latest Nightly build (via the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA) solved the problem for me too. Thankfully!!!

I even did a large presentation with all sorts of programs open (FireFox, Chrome, Google Video, M$ Windows in VirtualBox, etc...) the other night for a large group and it went very well.

• Thinkpad T60 15"
• 3gb Ram.
• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500
• Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

Hopefully there is a more permanent fix coming... this is not good for a newbie.

Good! Your Thinkpad is only one generation behind my two R61s (Intel Mobile 965/965GM chipset with an Intel Mobile X3100 HD graphics controller). Updating to the latest Cinnamon nightly fixed the problem for me as well. Now all the the devs need to figure out just why it fixed it.

[SunWorks]

Yeah... I'm very pleased now and glad things are working.
IMO, this box may be one of the finest values in computing price/power I've seen and Mint Magic is good too.

best to you,
clinton

[KoHoSo]

I am sorry to report that, after a week of heavy use, my computer froze again while using LibreOffice Calc. I will edit my previous post that cinnamon-stable fixed the problem. I have just installed cinnamon-nightly and hope that will be the end of this for me.

[Midnighter]

Forgive me not reading all 20 pages, so i may have missed this, but I got sick of random freezing, googled til my eyes fell out, compared notes, re-installed, and didn't install the Nvidia graphics drivers, and have had zero freezes, leading me to see a connection between the nvidia drivers and this issue. Annoying, but since the newest wine doesn't seem to want to work with Pulseaudio anynmore, I can no longer play Far Cry in mInt anyway, so there goes half my needf for them. : /

I've pretty much proven it's not any sort of proprietary video driver that causes the problem or any "specific" hardware setup. And although one or the other or both can exacerbate the situation, they are not the cause. I have a desktop PC with an Intel Core2 quad processor, Nvidia chipset and a dedicated Nvidia GT 430 video card. I use the latest version of the Nvidia driver offered in the repos and have absolutely no freezing problems at all.

I also have a Lenovo Thinkpad R61 with a Intel Core2 (Mobile) dual core processor, Intel 965 chipset, Intel wireless hardware and video hardware (X3100 HD). It requires no proprietary drivers at all since all are already built into the kernel and the laptop experiences the freezing problem--badly. But it's not the kernel.

What solved the problem for me and others who have the same problem, as I have posted previously, was to add the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA, modify my /etc/apt/preferences file to accept updates from the PPA and update cinnamon and muffin and their associated dependencies using MintUpdate.

Right now, to me at least, it appears that it might be a problem in "libmuffin" but that's not for sure yet. All I know is that the updates from the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA solves the problem. If you want to give it a try follow this procedure:

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=103054&start=220#p593454

I like the part where you ignored what I actually said, and suggest I claimed something I did not. I never said the nvidia driver was the cause, I simply said not installing it led to no lockups. Try reading what is "actually" said, and not what you want it to say.

[kmb42vt]

Forgive me not reading all 20 pages, so i may have missed this, but I got sick of random freezing, googled til my eyes fell out, compared notes, re-installed, and didn't install the Nvidia graphics drivers, and have had zero freezes, leading me to see a connection between the nvidia drivers and this issue. Annoying, but since the newest wine doesn't seem to want to work with Pulseaudio anynmore, I can no longer play Far Cry in mInt anyway, so there goes half my needf for them. : /

I've pretty much proven it's not any sort of proprietary video driver that causes the problem or any "specific" hardware setup. And although one or the other or both can exacerbate the situation, they are not the cause. I have a desktop PC with an Intel Core2 quad processor, Nvidia chipset and a dedicated Nvidia GT 430 video card. I use the latest version of the Nvidia driver offered in the repos and have absolutely no freezing problems at all.

I also have a Lenovo Thinkpad R61 with a Intel Core2 (Mobile) dual core processor, Intel 965 chipset, Intel wireless hardware and video hardware (X3100 HD). It requires no proprietary drivers at all since all are already built into the kernel and the laptop experiences the freezing problem--badly. But it's not the kernel.

What solved the problem for me and others who have the same problem, as I have posted previously, was to add the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA, modify my /etc/apt/preferences file to accept updates from the PPA and update cinnamon and muffin and their associated dependencies using MintUpdate.

Right now, to me at least, it appears that it might be a problem in "libmuffin" but that's not for sure yet. All I know is that the updates from the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA solves the problem. If you want to give it a try follow this procedure:

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=103054&start=220#p593454

I like the part where you ignored what I actually said, and suggest I claimed something I did not. I never said the nvidia driver was the cause, I simply said not installing it led to no lockups. Try reading what is "actually" said, and not what you want it to say.

I did not ignore what you said and I did not suggest anything. I simply reported my experience as a response to yours since any info, similar or not, is going to be helpful with this problem. Right now, no one really knows why this is happening even though the problem seems to be solved for many users by installing the latest Cinnamon nightly builds.

So I probably should have worded the beginning of my post like this then?:

"For my part, I've pretty much proven it's not any sort of proprietary video driver..."

[Shadowfax]

Nightly build did it for me...
Desktop graphics ATI X1300
Laptop graphics Intel GMA

[PcMojo]

The nightly build seems to have fixed it for me, but my question is -- what next? I don't want to keep updating the nightly build. I want to have the next stable release that has this issue fixed. If I now turn on the stable ppa and turn off nightly ppa, will it upgrade to the old stable that I just replaced or will it wait for the next higher version of cinnamon-stable?

[kmb42vt]

The nightly build seems to have fixed it for me, but my question is -- what next? I don't want to keep updating the nightly build. I want to have the next stable release that has this issue fixed. If I now turn on the stable ppa and turn off nightly ppa, will it upgrade to the old stable that I just replaced or will it wait for the next higher version of cinnamon-stable?

You can safely disable the PPA and and Cinnamon will remain "as is" (the last version you updated to using the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA). If you "purge" the PPA using "ppa-purge", only then will you revert back to the original. So if you're happy with Cinnamon the way it is, uncheck the "cinnamon-nightly" PPA via "Software Sources" (there should be two entries) and you're good to go until the next official Cinnamon update.

[esteban1uy]

FINALLY!!!

After trying almost everything I could imagine I was able to reproduce the infamous freeze... and it's 32bit specific!!!
So the problem is hardware related, 64bit are not affected (this post got the key).

Here you have another "infallible" method to get the freeze in your 32bit system:

-Open LibreOffice Writer, go to "Table" and then "Insert". Accept the default 2x2, and once it's inserted move the mouse pointer to the upper border of the table so it looks like this:


-Now move the cursor horizontally back and forth and... Bam!

The solution: update to cinnamon-nightly as explained here and forget the rest.

Soon I'll be posting another way I've found to get rid of the freeze (that keeps the original cinnamon installation, no ppa at all), but only for those users that really love doing experiments and crazy stuff.

[kmb42vt]

FINALLY!!!

After trying almost everything I could imagine I was able to reproduce the infamous freeze... and it's 32bit specific!!!
So the problem is hardware related, 64bit are not affected (this post got the key).

Here you have another "infallible" method to get the freeze in your 32bit system:

-Open LibreOffice Writer, go to "Table" and then "Insert". Accept the default 2x2, and once it's inserted move the mouse pointer to the upper border of the table so it changes to this:


-Now move the cursor horizontally back and forth and... Bam!

The solution: update to cinnamon-nightly as explained here and forget the rest.

Soon I'll be posting another way I've found to get rid of the freeze, but only for those users that really love doing experiments and crazy stuff.

Damn! You beat me to it. I isolated the freeze to the 32 bit version but not to what the problem exactly was. Good on ya! Okay, so I'm plenty crazy. Let me know what your other work around is--I'll try it and if it works and you're sure about the 32 bit thing, Clem should be notified.

[esteban1uy]

Damn! You beat me to it. I isolated the freeze to the 32 bit version but not to what the problem exactly was. Good on ya! Okay, so I'm plenty crazy. Let me know what your other work around is--I'll try it and if it works and you're sure about the 32 bit thing, Clem should be notified.

Ok, here we go...

So you love doing crazy stuff, and for some other crazy reason you want to keep the default cinnamon installation instead of using the cinnamon-nightly ppa... but without the freeze. Then something has to change... and that's Clutter (the software library that Gnome3 based desktops use to do all the graphic stuff).
We are going to patch and recompile Ubuntu's Clutter package.
Let's start changing our sources.list in order to get Clutter's source code:

Code: Select all

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Change it to this:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ maya main upstream import
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ precise partner
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ precise free non-free

#deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu precise-getdeb apps
#deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu precise-getdeb games

Save it and run a "sudo apt-get update".
Now it's time to get the development tools. Run this at a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install build-essential fakeroot dpkg-dev devscripts

And now the dependencies to compile Clutter:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get build-dep clutter-1.0

Let's create a folder to build our patched clutter:

Code: Select all

mkdir mypatchedclutter
cd mypatchedclutter

And now let's get the source code:

Code: Select all

apt-get source clutter-1.0

Ok, here the fun part. Go to your personal folder/mypatchedclutter/clutter-1.0-1.10.6/clutter/ and open a file named clutter-actor.c. At line 15364 you'll find this piece of code:

Code: Select all

static gboolean
_clutter_actor_get_paint_volume_real (ClutterActor *self,
                                      ClutterPaintVolume *pv)
{
  ClutterActorPrivate *priv = self->priv;

  /* Actors are only expected to report a valid paint volume
   * while they have a valid allocation. */
  if (G_UNLIKELY (priv->needs_allocation))
    {
      CLUTTER_NOTE (CLIPPING, "Bail from get_paint_volume (%s): "
                    "Actor needs allocation",
                    _clutter_actor_get_debug_name (self));
      return FALSE;
    }

Now change it to this and save it (we've only added a line with "return FALSE;"):

Code: Select all

static gboolean
_clutter_actor_get_paint_volume_real (ClutterActor *self,
                                      ClutterPaintVolume *pv)
{
  ClutterActorPrivate *priv = self->priv;
  return FALSE; //This is my dirty dirty patch
  /* Actors are only expected to report a valid paint volume
   * while they have a valid allocation. */
  if (G_UNLIKELY (priv->needs_allocation))
    {
      CLUTTER_NOTE (CLIPPING, "Bail from get_paint_volume (%s): "
                    "Actor needs allocation",
                    _clutter_actor_get_debug_name (self));
      return FALSE;
    }


Now move up to the /mypatchedclutter/clutter-1.0-1.10.6/ folder, open a terminal there and execute this:

Code: Select all

dch -i

The dch tool will ask you to choose an editor, just use the 2nd option (nano). Then you'll see some text lines, you only have to fill the empty line starting with a "*" with some indication of the change you just made, then press Ctrl+O to save that and then Ctrl+X to exit the dch tool:

Code: Select all

clutter-1.0 (1.10.6-1~precise1ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * My ugly dirty patch

 -- Esteban <esteban@esteban-cinnamon>  Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:39:13 -0300

clutter-1.0 (1.10.6-1~precise1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * No change upload to Ubuntu 12.04 (LP: #1003208)
    - Fix broken scrolling for embedded GTK+ widgets (LP: #990302)

 -- Jeremy Bicha <jbicha@ubuntu.com>  Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:57:46 -0400

clutter-1.0 (1.10.6-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.

 -- Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org>  Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:13:10 +0200


Ok, now we're ready to compile!!!
At the same terminal (started at /mypatchedclutter/clutter-1.0-1.10.6/) execute the following code and wait a couple of minutes for the compilation to finish:

Code: Select all

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

You'll see a lot of warnings and other info. Don't worry, let the thing run and at the end you'll find 7 new patched clutter packages at your /mypatchedclutter/ folder.
So now let's install the 3 relevant ones. Open a terminal at your /mypatchedclutter/ folder and execute this code:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg -i gir1.2-clutter-1.0_1.10.6-1~precise1ubuntu1_i386.deb libclutter-1.0-0_1.10.6-1~precise1ubuntu1_i386.deb libclutter-1.0-common_1.10.6-1~precise1ubuntu1_all.deb

Then restart, select Cinnamon at the login manager and... bye-bye freeze!!!

Ok, that's nice for an experiment, but now you want to go back to the original clutter packages (and you're so much loved cinnamon freeze). Open a terminal and execute the following:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-clutter-1.0=1.10.6-1~precise1 libclutter-1.0-0=1.10.6-1~precise1 libclutter-1.0-common=1.10.6-1~precise1

Oh yeah... freeze... I'm at home again.

[esteban1uy]

And from where comes the idea to patch that function?
Well, after installing some -dbg libraries and a little debbugin' I found this:

Code: Select all

#0  0x0024e416 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1  0x01084380 in poll () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#2  0x07bcb120 in ?? () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#3  0x07bcca50 in ?? () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#4  0x07bccd07 in xcb_wait_for_reply ()
   from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#5  0x0237a6f2 in _XReply () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
#6  0x02375f0b in XSync () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
#7  0x001aa07a in ?? () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#8  0x001ad353 in ?? () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#9  0x001857e3 in ?? () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#10 0x006392f4 in meta_error_trap_pop_with_return ()
   from /usr/lib/libmuffin.so.0
#11 0x00629a12 in meta_window_actor_pre_paint () from /usr/lib/libmuffin.so.0
#12 0x00629cda in ?? () from /usr/lib/libmuffin.so.0
#13 0x00285736 in _clutter_actor_get_paint_volume_real (pv=0x978de7c,
    self=0x978dcb0) at ./clutter-actor.c:15420
#14 _clutter_actor_get_paint_volume_mutable (self=0x978dcb0)
    at ./clutter-actor.c:15496
#15 0x0028dda4 in _clutter_actor_finish_queue_redraw (self=0x978dcb0, clip=0x0)
    at ./clutter-actor.c:7203
#16 0x002ef19e in _clutter_stage_maybe_finish_queue_redraws (
    stage=<optimized out>) at ./clutter-stage.c:4102
#17 _clutter_stage_do_update (stage=0x8b35bc0) at ./clutter-stage.c:1225
#18 0x002d2b81 in master_clock_update_stages (stages=0x9389638,
    master_clock=0x8b32820) at ./clutter-master-clock.c:386
#19 clutter_clock_dispatch (source=0x8b36580, callback=0, user_data=0x0)
    at ./clutter-master-clock.c:519
#20 0x00490d86 in g_main_context_dispatch ()
   from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#21 0x00491125 in ?? () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#22 0x0049156b in g_main_loop_run () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#23 0x00642630 in meta_run () from /usr/lib/libmuffin.so.0
#24 0x08049f27 in main ()

This is the "backtrace" of the cinnamon process under a freeze (induce the freeze, switch to a console, find the pid of the cinnamon process, attach the debugger and make a "bt").
I wish someone would have taught me how to debug a process some time ago, but eventually I learned it by myself.
If you can't do something by yourself, how the hell you gonna show it to somebody else? Can I get an amen in here?

PS: I almost forgot... You can also get rid of some of the freezes in LibreOffice + Cinnamon (without any patch of ppa) just disabling those horrible yellow tooltips (open Writer, go to "Tools"->"Options"->"General" and untick any "Tooltips" checkbox). That, of course, only fixes LibreOffice+Cinnamon freezes.

[palo]

Excellent!!! esteban1uy!!
The insert table caused it to fail as you desribed and disabling tooltips worked. LO is the only thing that caused me a problem. The PPA change I avoided because of the problem with loosing themes and just don't have enough ram for 64 bit. So it is a good temporary fix here.

Pat

[esteban1uy]

Excellent!!! esteban1uy!!
The insert table caused it to fail as you desribed and disabling tooltips worked. LO is the only thing that caused me a problem. The PPA change I avoided because of the problem with loosing themes and just don't have enough ram for 64 bit. So it is a good temporary fix here.

Pat

I'm really happy to see it works for you.

[kmb42vt]

@esteban1uy - Now that ( your patch) sounds like just the ticket to this old geek. I'm off to watch my wife's store for the day but as soon as I get the chance I'll purge the nightly PPA on my laptop and do the clutter patch just to say I did. I don't do much compiling any more so this could be a lot of fun.

Excellent work (and a big, Amen!)