All Apps Experiencing random freezes

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iIMMIi
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All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

From time to time, when using Mint Cinnamon the whole app UI that I am using freezes and the application becomes unresponsive. It takes up to a minute until it leaves that state and everything is fine again.

I experience this with Chrome, Nemo and sometimes ever the whole Cinnamon UI. But probably happens to all apps, since these are the only ones I regularly use.

At first, I thought it was because of low RAM (have only 4GB) or fully occupied CPU (is 8 years old) but monitoring it with conky, both were not the reasons. Disk and GPU were not at their limit as well.

I don't know what the reason could be, then and thus need some ideas. Please let me know if you need some logs or hardware specifics and I'll gladly provide them.

I am really grateful for any help that you can provide! Thanks!
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by AZgl1800 »

Personally,

I think you have already hit the problem. I also only have 4 gB of RAM, and I experience the same problem at least once a day.

It usually happens when I have too many apps up at once...
and especially when I am doing a lot of surfing with Firefox and have 10-15 tabs open....

then I have to use ALT-SysReq REISUO or REISUB
whichever feels good to me at the moment.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

AZgl1500 wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 4:17 am Personally,

I think you have already hit the problem. I also only have 4 gB of RAM, and I experience the same problem at least once a day.

It usually happens when I have too many apps up at once...
and especially when I am doing a lot of surfing with Firefox and have 10-15 tabs open....

then I have to use ALT-SysReq REISUO or REISUB
whichever feels good to me at the moment.
I know your problem (had it often enough in the past and have since become way more careful with using a lot of RAM) and I am sure that's not what I experience. I see freezes even with 2 GB of RAM being free, with only a few tabs open, swapping not even having begun. The freezes happen as often as every few minutes and unlike your swapping freezes, my system recovers in a matter of seconds without reboot.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Cosmo. »

Swapping with a very slow drive?
Open the system monitor -> resources and see, if swap gets used.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

No, issue happens when swap is not used. Also, Swappiness is set to 1 and memory is nowhere near full.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Cosmo. »

Switch in the monitor to the processes page and sort it for CPU resources. This is a little bit problematic, as you can most likely not bring the monitor in front of the open windows, if the situation occurs. Watch also the average load information at the top of this page. It gives the values of the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. It does not say, which process gives problems, but can probably see, if there is a peak for the last minute.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Joe2Shoe »

I had the same issue on 2 laptops running LM Cinnamon 18.3 64-bit, 2.2GHz Core2Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM each. Installed LM Mate 18.3 64-bit and problem is gone.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

Cosmo. wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:37 am Switch in the monitor to the processes page and sort it for CPU resources. This is a little bit problematic, as you can most likely not bring the monitor in front of the open windows, if the situation occurs. Watch also the average load information at the top of this page. It gives the values of the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. It does not say, which process gives problems, but can probably see, if there is a peak for the last minute.
Actually, there are no peaks. And since I am able to bring up System Monitor during the freeze (since most of the time only one app freezes, not the whole System UI), I can also tell that Chrome does use up to 15% of CPU resources while it freezes, but there is no process that uses more than that and the sum is nowhere near 100%.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Cosmo. »

Does it happen on specific web sites? How does Firefox perform on those sites?
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Pjotr »

Please generate an overview of your system like this:

- Launch a terminal window (this is how to launch a terminal window);

- make the terminal window full screen, to avoid chopped lines;

- copy/paste this command into the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz
(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

- Press Enter.

- Copy/paste the output in your next message.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Petermint »

Some SSD will freeze like that when it runs out of erased blocks and has to catch up. If only one application is writing lots of data, that application will freeze. A better SSD will have a controller that keeps ahead of the erases.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

Pjotr wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:39 pm Please generate an overview of your system like this:

- Launch a terminal window (this is how to launch a terminal window);

- make the terminal window full screen, to avoid chopped lines;

- copy/paste this command into the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz
(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

- Press Enter.

- Copy/paste the output in your next message.

Code: Select all

B@BP ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: BP Kernel: 4.13.0-32-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.7 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3) Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia
Machine:   Mobo: Dell model: 00CKNG v: A04 Bios: Dell v: A04 date: 11/26/2010
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5 M 560 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10639
           clock speeds: max: 2667 MHz 1: 1333 MHz 2: 1599 MHz 3: 1333 MHz 4: 1866 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF108M [GeForce GT 420M] bus-ID: 02:00.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1366x768@60.01hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 420M/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.111 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Card-2 NVIDIA GF108 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 02:00.1
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.13.0-32-generic
Network:   Card-1: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 04:00.0
           IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
           driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 09:00.0
           IF: enp9s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 750.2GB (21.3% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST9500420AS size: 500.1GB
           ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: SSD_840_EVO_250G size: 250.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 15G used: 12G (86%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb7
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 0.48GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/zram0
           ID-3: swap-2 size: 0.48GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/zram1
           ID-4: swap-3 size: 0.48GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/zram2
           ID-5: swap-4 size: 0.48GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/zram3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 57.0C mobo: 0.0C gpu: 0.0:62C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 225 Uptime: 5 min Memory: 1799.1/3682.0MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.2.35
I've allready tried uninstalling zRAM -- after reboot, the issue was still there, so I don't think that it has something to do with zRAM.
Of course I can't say for sure, but I don't think that the USB-SSD is the cause since the issue started to appear months after I started to use the SSD. Furthermore, no extensive Disk I/O can be observed during the freeze (less than 50MB/s, USB cable is capable of up to 200MB/s without freezing in read/write tests).
Cosmo. wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:27 pm Does it happen on specific web sites? How does Firefox perform on those sites?
Firefox freezes as well although not as often and not as long. It's not limited to specific sites
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Pjotr »

OK, two things:

1. Try the latest kernel of the 4.4 series. Update Manager - panel: View - Linux kernels. After installing it, make sure you boot from it (it's under the header Advanced in the Grub bootloader menu).

2. Free some disk space on your root partition. Currently, it's much too full.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Cosmo. »

Create a fresh new user account and compare there. If this does not give a difference, boot the live system and compare there.

Besides that: What is the meaning of having 4 swap partitions?
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Pjotr »

Cosmo. wrote: Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:05 am Besides that: What is the meaning of having 4 swap partitions?
zRam:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... nable-zRam
(item 1.3, left column)
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Cosmo. »

Ahem, this link says nothing else than this is wrong. At first, because 4 GB RAM is obviously more than 768 MB, and at second: not for production systems.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by Pjotr »

Cosmo. wrote: Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:20 am Ahem, this link says nothing else than this is wrong.
It also says this:
Now check whether it works, with the following terminal command:

cat /proc/swaps

Press Enter.

If all has gone well, you should receive a report about one or more /dev/zram "partitions". zRam is active then; no need for further action.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

zRAM is probably not the problem here since the issue did not disappear after disabling zRAM.

I am currently running the 4.4 Kernel. I've also managed to reduce the used space of / to 73%. But unfortunately the freezes didn't stop :(

The last few times I watched it, Disk I/O was at 0 during the freezes. I don't know whether that's because conky, which I use to monitor Disk I/O, hangs as well (it does) or because the SSD is actually unresponsive.
I tried changing the Chrome Cache Directory to one on the internal HDD but it didn't help. I'll try to move my whole Chrome User Directory to the internal disk and test whether that helps.
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by iIMMIi »

So the problem is definitely a crappy USB cable. Because Chrome doesn't freeze now that its user profile directory is on the HDD. However, other programs keep freezing but that's no problem for me.
Until I get a replacement for the cable; What do you think about copying the user profile directory shortly after boot and keeping the directory on the SSD in sync every 0.5 seconds or so with r-sync while actually using the HDD? Or is there a way to just sym-link some files (the session backup which is supposed to restore your session after crashes is probably the most write-intensive file) and achieve the same effect?
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Re: All Apps Experiencing random freezes

Post by BG405 »

A bit late to this thread but here's a tip: avoid long USB cables as these are often problematic with devices such as scanners, USB optical drives, hard drives etc.. I have several posh-looking leads which are OK for some things but not the aforementioned. :wink:
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