I'm still plagued with Total Freezes / Lockups. Nothing at all in syslog to point to what went wrong before the system froze, every time.
Prelude:
I was also having the same problem described in
bug #1032980 ; LMDE MATE/Cinnamon 2012/04 installation always freezes at some random point of copying files. Similar hardware too here, i5-3210m (intel hd 4000) ivy bridge, Radeon HD 7670 -- Dell Inspiron 15R 5520. But I somehow eventually got it to install, but once I did, the display x-offsetting was wrong -- screen was shifted to the right (and wrapped around left) of the LCD, from boot (right after console switches to high res). The only thing that would mitigate that was disabling i915 modeset, which wasn't acceptable as I needed KMS to turn the radeon off via vgaswitcherro switch in debugfs (from /etc/rc.local). So for a while, I used liquorix kernel 3.4, and then switched back to the new kernel from incoming: 3.2.0-3-amd64 (3.2+45), and now freezing.
General info:
Only using LMDE incoming repos. Only foreign packages are from dell factory installed ubuntu for dell bcm43142 wlan/bluetooth card driver, and dell_laptop module -- both dkms installed. Freezes occur whether or not btusb module is loaded (when I don't often use). only using the "wl" module (for wifi).
fglrx not installed, radeon turned off at boot via debugfs vgaswitcheroo switch. Always using i915 video.
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet pcie_aspm=force"
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf
options radeon modeset=1
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf
options i915 modeset=1 i915_enable_rc6=1 i915_enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1 semaphores=1
/home/jas# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3868 1090 2777 0 121 416
-/+ buffers/cache: 552 3315
Swap: 4310 0 4310
Description of the problem:
Freezes can happen every other day, after several days, or twice or three times in a row, like this morning. Without any prior warning or signs. Last 3 times this morning while using firefox,first time when opening an image link (the image rendered half way and laptop froze). The second two times while hovering over left-side of browser for tree-style-tab (ff-extension) auto-hidden vertical tab list to show (w/ transparency). Only a terminal with 2-3 tabs and pluma open, otherwise. And only additional (mate) applets used are CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor 1.4.0 & MATE Sensors Applet 1.2.0.
Problem was exacerbated yesterday when I changed /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf
from:
options i915 modeset=1 i915_enable_rc6=1 i915_enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1 semaphores=1
to:
options i915 modeset=1 powersave=1 semaphores=1
And so I switched back. Freezes didn't occur until this morning.
The one thing I've been doing more lately, is:
echo "min_power" | tee /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy
It seems to immediately quite down the laptop's fan, which is always otherwise running, regardless of AC/BAT status.
Is there anyway to make the kernel spit out anything to anywhere (local disk, remote syslogger, a network-connected vt) before freezing?
Any pointers to how to debug this? I feel I have absolutely nothing I can point my finger at with certainty to warrant filing a bug report.
Apologies if this shouldn't be posted here. Please let me know if I should rather start a new thread.
Thanks
Edit: from preliminary research, seems it is a problem with Ivy Bridge and Intel HD 4000 in 3.2.x Kernels:
Partially Sane developer (blog) - Ivy Bridge HD4000 Linux Freeze
Hardforum: Linux Bug Ivybridge
Ubuntu bug #999910 [IVB]12.04 64 bit System freezes (mouse, keyboard)
Guess I will have to deviate from LMDE's default (3.2.x) kernel.