mint 19 Cinnamon freezes running on Dell Latitude E6430 laptop with 860 EVO SSD

[DISSIDENT]

this present post reports a similar problem as described in this other post:
laptop freezes - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=281895

I am running mint cinnamon 19 64-bit, fresh install that is a day or two old, with disk encryption, and home folder encrypted.

after a few hours of operation, laptop freezes randomly, mouse pointer won't move. happens every couple of hours or so. a few times I didn't reboot the frozen laptop, instead I came back to the frozen laptop a few hours later, and it had unfrozen.

In one instance, I was able to bring up the program switching menu thingy in the middle of the screen with alt-tab, and then I had that menu overlay stuck across the middle of the screen.

does not respond to alt-F2 when it freezes.

the use of the laptop mainly consists of running LibreOffice writer, and watching youtube videos, and browsing web sites, with maybe 10 to 15 Firefox tabs open each in 5 different windows for a total of 50 or so tabs open.

using mint cinnamon 17 and mint cinnamon 18, I have not experienced this issue before on this exact model laptop (although I don't remember if I have used mint on this exact laptop before)

It seems that what I am doing different from mint 17/18, is that I am now running mint 19, and I am now running a different SSD - (Samsung 860 EVO 500GB)

could be an issue with graphics drivers? Or the SATA drivers? on next reboot I will check the BIOS if RAID is enabled, and report back. I'll run memtest too.

I don't believe the laptop is overheating.

thanks for any suggestions

Code: Select all

hello@hello-Latitude-E6430:~$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: hello-Latitude-E6430 Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64 gcc: 7.3.0
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.8.8 (Gtk 3.22.30-1ubuntu1) Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Dell product: Latitude E6430 v: 01 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Dell model: 09YC31 v: A00 serial: N/A BIOS: Dell v: A16 date: 08/19/2014
Battery    BAT0: charge: 99.9 Wh 113.4% condition: 88.1/99.9 Wh (88%) model: Sanyo DELL NY38W2A status: Full
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5-3320M (-MT-MCP-) arch: Ivy Bridge rev.9 cache: 3072 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10365
           clock speeds: max: 3300 MHz 1: 3210 MHz 2: 3140 MHz 3: 3197 MHz 4: 3106 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF108GLM [NVS 5200M] bus-ID: 01:00.0
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: modesetting,nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1366x768@60.01hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile version: 4.2 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-20-generic
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: f080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
           IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 03:00.0
           IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (3.3% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_860 size: 500.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 453G used: 12G (3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1
           ID-2: /boot size: 704M used: 79M (13%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 4.19GB used: 0.54GB (13%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 57.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 48.0
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 233 Uptime: 2:06 Memory: 3212.3/3848.6MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 7.3.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191) inxi: 2.3.56 
hello@hello-Latitude-E6430:~$ 

[DISSIDENT]

I noticed something interesting -- when I open the Driver Manager, it tells me that for the NVIDIA GF108GLM [NVS 5200M], "This device is using an alternate driver." and it tells me that the nvidia-driver-390 is (recommended) but instead l am using the xserver-xorg-nouveau driver version 1:1.0.15-2...

So I'm going to now switch to using the nvidia driver and see if the freezing issue goes away.

[bjmh46]

Ive experienced the same type of freeze on a latitude e6530 (i7,8gb, ssd). I tried the proprietary drivers but went back to the nouveau. I then disabled the nvidia card, and run off the intel 4000 graphics. The freeze happens on all three, so I figure it's something else. Since it will eventually un-freeze like yours, it's not a showstopper since I don't run 19 as an everyday OS--primary OS is 18.3 xfce. Interestingly the freeze only happens with the latitude, as I haven't seen it on a thinkpad t530, or an old hp-g60. I did see it on a thinkpad l430 once or twice, when I booted the latitude ssd as a usb drive, so it could be hard drive (ssd) related.
I've lokked through logs, but couldnt see anything.

[DISSIDENT]

Thanks for the info. FYI, I've seen on these Latitudes (6430/6520, etc) where an SSD will get substantially different read or write speeds, depending on if the Latitude is powered on with or without a power adapter connected. (connecting or disconnected the power adapter after boot doesn't change the read or write speed if I recall correctly, I think it has to be rebooted to reconfigure the read/write speed) I mention this because if this freezing is related to the SATA interface, it might only happen at a given SATA speed, which apparently seems to be throttled by the BIOS depending upon availability of the power adapter at boot.

[MrEen]

Hi DISSIDENT.

Based on another post with a similar issue, upgrading the kernel "solved" the problem. Your inxi output above shows you still running the original kernel from your installation.

Good luck.