x session crashes randomly, but consistently fails

[linuxrawkstar]

Every, yes _EVERY_ time I log in to my mint desktop I can expect for the screen to flash black and immediately thereafter I'm presented with the login screen. My desktop session is completely lost, as was the state of each desktop application running at the time of failure -- such as google chrome, thunderbird, gnome terminal, and system monitor. I haven't been able to narrow the problem down to a given application; no matter what application or combination of applications I run, the problem still happens.

I'm attaching a file I found under my home directory called ".xsession-errors". It contains some messages that might provide clues to others about why my x session keeps bailing. When I see log messages like "...This shouldn't happen!", I grow suspicious that something is wrong with X or one of the applications running in it.

From the looks of the file, does anyone have any ideas of 1) what could be wrong, and 2) how I can make this stop happening? It is such an awful productivity killer to be working with a completely unstable desktop.

[linuxrawkstar]

Small complication -- there's no xsession-errors attachment because the forum forbids me to upload files with the extension of "txt" or "log". Seems kinda strange that such simple and generally harmless extensions would be forbidden, but ok, I'll play by the rules.

Here's a pastebin link to the contents of the file => http://pastebin.com/WFG2wHmV

[xpander]

it seems to not be MATE related from the logs.
it seems to be either gnome-shell or cinnamon.
i see clutter errors, nautilus errors, zeitgeist and gnome-shell ones. those are not part of MATE desktop.

if the x fails with gnome-shell.. its probably the 3d drivers which fail to load it up.

if its really mate u are trying to get in. then maybe u have some unneeded crap in the startup applications that wants to start and fails to do so with ur drivers.

[linuxrawkstar]

xpander, thank you 110% for your reply. I really appreciate the help! Thanks for helping me understand that this isn't really a MATE issue, or at least doesn't appear to be one.

Since my original post in this topic thread, I've been trying many things to get the random logout behavior to go away. I have thought to myself over and over that this seems like a hardware problem, probably a faulty graphics card or something. I decided I would go buy a new gfx card soon. I also continued to hunt around in other possible directions, such as BIOS firmware settings and upgrades, and then kernel tuning parameters.

I can't confidently say that it's working completely, but I did make a discovery that made my home-built computer boot faster and perform better -- AND my gnome session has NOT CRASHED for over 12 hours running and heavy use! The change was that I added the "nomodeset" flag in /etc/default/grub on the line that reads: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

After editing that file I called $ sudo update-grub

Then I rebooted into a much faster computer.

You see my computer is hand-built. Here is a summary of my hardware (output of `lshw`) => http://pastebin.com/r8mqdzzc

Because the problem seemed hardware related to me, I theorized that the issue might have had to do with ACPI functionality in the newest Linux Mint kernel (I hadn't been experiencing these problems before that upgrade). By using the nomodeset kernel flag, it signaled to the Linux kernel not to emulate a windows operating system's ACPI behavior when interacting with the BIOS/motherboard. Since making this change, I haven't had any problems. I'm hoping this trend continues! If I can go another couple days without a session crash, I'll consider the issue "solved", at least for me.

One final note: don't try using "acpi=off" as a kernel flag, as this has (accurately) been described elsewhere on the internet as a "nuclear bomb" approach to ACPI problems. I can confirm that using it is problematic, and may cause your computer to become unbootable until you reboot it and remove that option from the Linux kernel parameters from the grub prompt and also from your /etc/default/grub, etc.

it seems to not be MATE related from the logs.
it seems to be either gnome-shell or cinnamon.
i see clutter errors, nautilus errors, zeitgeist and gnome-shell ones. those are not part of MATE desktop.

if the x fails with gnome-shell.. its probably the 3d drivers which fail to load it up.

[linuxrawkstar]

I can't confidently say that it's working completely, but I did make a discovery that made my home-built computer boot faster and perform better -- AND my gnome session has NOT CRASHED for over 12 hours running and heavy use!

That dream is now dead

After a sustained period of heavy use, and despite obvious performance gains, I must with sadness report that the issue happened again. I was automagically logged out at a random time and presented with the login screen. This realllllly stinks! I'm going to continue to try to find a new, good graphics card, but I must admit I really had my hopes up. Things were going so well.

Another huge blow to the satisfaction-o-meter is that debugging X issues is apparently very complicated! Just take a quick look at this link and you'll know what I'm talking about => https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Backtracing

That link is mentioned in many ubuntu bug reports regarding X, so I know if this keeps happening, I'm eventually going to have to start really digging deep into X. This is such a shame and a hassle. I had been enjoying a steady level of productivity with my computer for a couple months now with a brand new installation of "Lisa" Mint. That relationship is really souring. The only thing that keeps me from running to another distro is that I've read it happens in Ubuntu and SuSE as well anyway. The root of my problem seems to go deeper than the Linux distro itself; other people out there are experiencing this and the bugs are unresolved. I found that out by searching an hour around here => https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs

I wish there was a quick and easy solution to this, but I don't think this would qualify as an open and shut case; this issue is going to be a really difficult nut to crack. I'm not looking forward to it _at all_.

[linuxrawkstar]

By way of follow up, I purchased a new graphics card and the problem has gone away.

[halfsoul]

Wow, you and I built almost the same system. Mine:
Mobo: X58A-UD3R
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
GPU: G92 [GeForce 9800 GT]

What new graphics card did you buy? Still nVidia or something else?

Also, did you file a bug report on launchpad already? I have the exact same problem. Sort of worried LM13 will crash and I'll lose everything before I finish this post...

[halfsoul]

Filed a bug report.