System freezes (hard lock) on Linux Mint 14 64

[darkkhaine]

Hello to everyone,

I experience some freeze on my computer : the sceen freezes, the music continues on playing, but the mouse or keyboard becomes unresponsive. The only thing i'm able to do is a hard reboot. The last freezes happened when i was on firefox and was listening to music. I'm on Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon 64 bits.

A quick search gives me this post that has the same issues, but since the hardware is different, i don't know if a kernel update would solve the problem (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=114568).

Can you help me identified the cause of this problem please ?

sudo lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller [8086:29c0] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port [8086:29c1] (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 [8086:2948] (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge [8086:244e] (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller [8086:2916] (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:2922] (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series] [1002:68b8]
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series] [1002:aa58]
03:00.0 SATA controller [0106]: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller [197b:2363] (rev 02)
03:00.1 IDE interface [0101]: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller [197b:2363] (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet [10ec:8167] (rev 10)
04:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet [10ec:8167] (rev 10)
04:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) [iOHCI-Lynx] [104c:8023]

inxi -SGx
System: Host: gregoire-desktop Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2)
Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series] bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 driver: fglrx Resolution: 1440x900@59.9hz
GLX Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series GLX Version: 4.2.12002 - CPC 9.012 Direct Rendering: Yes

Any help would be appreciated

[catweazel]

I experience some freeze on my computer : the sceen freezes, the music continues on playing, but the mouse or keyboard becomes unresponsive. The only thing i'm able to do is a hard reboot.

It's more than likely a hardware fault. Perhaps you could start troubleshooting with a RAM test. If you're overclocking, that will do it.

[xenopeek]

When it freezes, what have you tried on the keyboard? Ctrl+Alt+Backspace will terminate the X server, kicking you back to the login screen. Ctrl+Alt+F1 will bring you to the virtual terminal. Will any of these work?

After a freeze occurs you will want to look in the file /var/log/syslog. It has timestamps, so take note of the time of the crash (or wait a few minutes before restarting your computer so you have a wider time gap). See if you can find errors or warnings in the 100 or so lines before the time of the crash. If you do find errors, that will make suggesting a solution much easier.

[darkkhaine]

I tried to use the keyboard but none of these combination worked.
I see several times this error in the syslog, but i'm not sure if this is the cause of the freeze as i didn't write down the exact time of the freeze :
Feb 13 08:56:23 gregoire-desktop kernel: [ 3295.564436] Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
Feb 13 08:56:35 gregoire-desktop kernel: [ 3307.728579] end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
By the way, there is a lot of information whitin the same minute in the log file, is this the lo of the boot ?

I will run a memtest to see if the Ram is faulty (i run one memtest two months ago and it was fine).

Edit : I have done 3 passes of memtest without errors.

[a0mn2]

yep same here glad i'm not the only one. nothing installed besides firefox, no plugins, everything default

simply watching utube videos then for no reason gui started to become laggy, then net not responding, pressed the power button and had to suspend and reload the os, restart was not necessary for me. functions operated correctly.

anyone know how i can check what caused it?

[darkkhaine]

Well for me the system freezes at once, there is no lag before it. I didn't have a freeze today, and yesteray i was downloading a big file of 3.4Go so this may be related to my hard drive but i'm not sure.

[darkkhaine]

I just had another freeze. I tried ctrl+alt+backspace but it didn't worked.
In my sys. log, the freeze starts at this time (this is just the beginning of the log) :
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774776] Xorg: page allocation failure: order:5, mode:0x40d0
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774784] Pid: 1365, comm: Xorg Tainted: P O 3.5.0-17-generic #28-Ubuntu
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774787] Call Trace:
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774800] [<ffffffff811281ab>] warn_alloc_failed+0xeb/0x140
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774807] [<ffffffff81675d30>] ? __alloc_pages_direct_compact+0x17f/0x191
Feb 16 08:53:46 gregoire-desktop kernel: [73437.774813] [<ffffffff8112bdf9>] __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x659/0x920

I searched this bug, and it doesn't seem there is a solution to that bug yet. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/993187 for those of you concerned. I am currently using the 3.5.0-17-generic kernel, i don't know if a new kernel would solve the problem.

[d00med]

This is being reported elsewhere on the forum, and doesn't seem to be graphics card specific, as that bug report says. My system freezes constantly, but in Cinnamon and not in XFCE. Doesn't matter if I'm using Firefox or Chromium. I'm using kernel 3.8.1, and it's gotten a lot worse.

Edit: Tried rolling back the kernel to various versions but get the same issue. XFCE is unusable as well, or any DE that utilizes Compiz.

[papazulu]

Same here.

I have installed mulitple versions of Linux over the last year on my current hardware setup and they all give me hard freezes at some point while watching youtube videos in higher quality. I have suspected this might clear up once I install ATI proprietary drivers but I am not at all optimistic about this. In fact I seem to remember last year doing just that and it still freezing up during certain activities. This, frankly, is very distressing because if I cannot watch youtube videos on high graphics settings then that is an insurmountable hurdle to me using linux. I watch a lot of tutorials on programming and if I can't find a solution to these hard freezes (on multiple distributions) then I will have to go back to Windows and struggle to setup Ruby on Rails on that. I have gotten Ruby on Rails setup fine numerous times on linux but inevitably, everytime I am watching a Rails tutorial on youtube at some point i get a hard freeze. And there is no defectiveness in the hardware itself because I can play numerous graphics intensive games fine on Windows. This is specifically a linux issue.

Also I wish there was a standard instruction guide to installing ATI proprietary drivers from command line for Debian/Ubuntu/Mint. There is not! When I first installed Linux Mint 13 a year or so ago I think I used GUI to install proprietary drivers and it worked. However on my current Mint 14 install I did not get the GUI prompt to install proprietary drivers, so I havent taken any action yet. Everything is just as I installed it. I am currently using generic Mint drivers and have not attempted any other install.

My current hardware:
Asus P5QL-Pro
Intel e8400
Gskill RAM (2x2gigs=4gigs)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500gb
Asus HD6670 (EAH6670/DIS/1GD5) (fairly new)
OCZ ZS Series 750W 80PLUS Bronze (fairly new)