Getting random freezes with fresh Mint install

[dogshed]

I had an old Dell laptop that froze all the time. Facebook in Firefox seemed to be the issue.
I now have a a brand new laptop I started using in August with 16 gig of RAM with a fresh Mint installation that I just updated yesterday.
It will start to slow and the mouse cursor will lag, then completely stop.
However, with this newer computer it will unfreeze after a minute or so.
What can I do to track down the cause?

[dorsetUK]

Oh - timing.

Please can you post your system specs.

If you click on the Start button and type - system reports – and then launch / run that program. Next, on the left hand side of System Reports window, click on System information, then the Copy button.

Come back here and Paste.

That will give us the details of your computer and then someone will be able to help.

If you’re Terminally based then open your Terminal and paste

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxpmrz

into it and then hit Enter/Return.

Go to Edit, Select All, and then Copy, come back here, click on the code tags, </>, and then paste, Ctrl V.

[dogshed]

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.2.0
    Desktop: Cinnamon 5.6.7 Distro: Linux Mint 21.1 Vera
    base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 15 3511 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 06F315 v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
    v: 1.15.1 date: 07/28/2022
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 37.9 Wh (100.0%) condition: 37.9/40.3 Wh (94.2%)
    volts: 12.5 min: 11.2 model: BYD DELL PG8YJ1B status: Full
Memory:
  RAM: total: 15.37 GiB used: 2.69 GiB (17.5%)
  RAM Report:
    permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required.
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Tiger Lake rev: 1 cache: L1: 320 KiB L2: 5 MiB L3: 12 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 964 high: 1192 min/max: 400/4700 cores: 1: 711 2: 1081
    3: 836 4: 1192 5: 1060 6: 821 7: 977 8: 1037 bogomips: 44851
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] vendor: Dell
    driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:02.0
  Device-2: Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1:2
  Device-3: Sunplus Innovation Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB
    driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-6:4
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5
    direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio vendor: Dell
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3
  Device-2: Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1:2
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-53-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
    driver: rtl8821ce v: v5.5.2.1_35598.20191029 port: 3000
    bus-ID: 0000:01:00.0
  IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: br-21387e5fb084 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: unknown
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-2: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-3: tun0 state: unknown speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A
  IF-ID-4: veth83c9edc state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-5: vethc923928 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-6: vethe928e5e state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-7: vethed47e60 state: up speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Realtek Bluetooth Radio type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
    bus-ID: 1-10:5
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: up address: <filter>
    bt-v: 2.1 lmp-v: 4.2
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
    v: 0.6 bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 78.73 GiB (6.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: BC711 NVMe 256GB
    size: 238.47 GiB temp: 31.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM035-1RK172 size: 931.51 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 107.03 GiB used: 78.59 GiB (73.4%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p7
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 296 MiB used: 145.1 MiB (49.0%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 963.8 MiB (47.1%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos:
  Packages: 2577
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-earth-pro.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com vera main upstream import backport
    2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teams.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable main
Info:
  Processes: 337 Uptime: 1d 20h 6m Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers:
  gcc: 11.3.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16 inxi: 3.3.13

[dorsetUK]

Hi dogshed.

As you’re on an 11th gen chip you may need a newer kernel. You can try the 5.19 kernel from Update Manager. If that doesn’t work then you can install the latest 6.0-oem kernel with

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install linux-oem-22.04b

then reboot.

Or the latest 6.1-oem kernel with

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install linux-oem-22.04c

then reboot.

[dogshed]

Thank you. I'll start with update manager and work my way up. I didn't realized there were some updates piling up.
I think this is the same issue that locked up my previous computer and has been happening over many updates.

[dogshed]

I have this in syslog:
Feb 5 19:39:20 Haili kernel: [385181.122249] oom-kill:constraint=CONSTRAINT_NONE,nodemask=(null),cpuset=user.slice,mems_allowed=0,global_oom,task_memcg=/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-c2.scope,task=Isolated Web Co,pid=1157502,uid=1000
Feb 5 19:39:20 Haili kernel: [385181.122313] Out of memory: Killed process 1157502 (Isolated Web Co) total-vm:3158268kB, anon-rss:468232kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:1480kB, UID:1000 pgtables:2832kB oom_score_adj:167
Feb 5 19:38:54 Haili rtkit-daemon[5472]: Supervising 20 threads of 15 processes of 1 users.
Feb 5 19:39:20 Haili systemd[1]: session-c2.scope: A process of this unit has been killed by the OOM killer.

[dogshed]

I'm pretty sure it's firefox.
However, I expect Linux Mint to keep one program from taking over and freezing everything.

[linuxovios]

This is not normal.

What 3rd party programs have you installed and what are you doing in Firefox when this happens?

How did you manage to go out of memory while having 16GB RAM ?

[mikeflan]

What can I do to track down the cause?

Start htop in a terminal as soon as you see any lag. Click on CPU% and look for processes at the top of the list that use a lot of the CPU. You can leave htop running if you want to.

[Petermint]

Start htop in a terminal as soon as you see any lag.

I suggest starting htop or system monitor immediately after a clean boot to establish what is normal. Is there a memory hog active in the background?

Then start one application at a time to see the difference.
In your Web browser, open one site at a time looking for those gorilla sites swamping your machine.
Noscript in Firefox, or equivalent, will reduce Web browser swampiness.

Kernel 5.15 works for Gen 11 on my machine. You might have different support chips or BIOS or one of the weird Intel chips. The Gen 11 errors are mostly boot errors and black screens, not out of memory. Out of memory could also be something like the system partition is full, the page file cannot expand, or ???

[dogshed]

What 3rd party programs have you installed and what are you doing in Firefox when this happens?

Facebook

[dogshed]

My new Dell laptop from Costco has a small SDD and a larger spinning hard drive. Having two drives may be why it was on sale.
I moved stuff to the big drive and I believe that freed up space for the swap file on the SSD.
It worked a little better. The freezes were much shorter.
I then changed the the swap settings as outlined in this webpage along with some of their other suggestions.
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... -mint.html
The first things they recommend are changing the swapiness to 25 and enabling zswap.
We'll see how it goes.

[dogshed]

This is not normal.

What 3rd party programs have you installed and what are you doing in Firefox when this happens?

How did you manage to go out of memory while having 16GB RAM ?

I was embarrassed to admit I was Firefox. I'm sad that they just aren't as good as they used to be. I wish I had the money to fund some improvements.
Now for the real embarrassment. I've been running facebook. I wish it were easier to switch to an alternative.

[dogshed]

Start htop in a terminal as soon as you see any lag.

I suggest starting htop or system monitor immediately after a clean boot to establish what is normal. Is there a memory hog active in the background?

Then start one application at a time to see the difference.
In your Web browser, open one site at a time looking for those gorilla sites swamping your machine.
Noscript in Firefox, or equivalent, will reduce Web browser swampiness.

Kernel 5.15 works for Gen 11 on my machine. You might have different support chips or BIOS or one of the weird Intel chips. The Gen 11 errors are mostly boot errors and black screens, not out of memory. Out of memory could also be something like the system partition is full, the page file cannot expand, or ???

Adding Noscript will be my next step. Thank you.

[dogshed]

The freezes are less severe, but still happen.
I know it's firefox.
However, is there a setting somewhere that will keep firefox from locking up everything? Is there some way to limit the resources used so that I can still use my mouse?

[linuxovios]

So , using chrome or other browser solves your problem?

[dogshed]

I don't use Chrome enough to say it solves the problem. I've been using the Firefox password manager so it's a hassle to use Chrome. Maybe I'll look into other password managers that are separate from the browsers, but that's a whole other issue.

[dogshed]

Start htop in a terminal as soon as you see any lag.

I suggest starting htop or system monitor immediately after a clean boot to establish what is normal. Is there a memory hog active in the background?

Then start one application at a time to see the difference.
In your Web browser, open one site at a time looking for those gorilla sites swamping your machine.
Noscript in Firefox, or equivalent, will reduce Web browser swampiness.

Kernel 5.15 works for Gen 11 on my machine. You might have different support chips or BIOS or one of the weird Intel chips. The Gen 11 errors are mostly boot errors and black screens, not out of memory. Out of memory could also be something like the system partition is full, the page file cannot expand, or ???

After a few freezes I installed noscript. Mostly it keeps it from freezing. I do find it a hassle to guess which things to turn on for a particular web page. Often I end up turning everything on, so I'm not sure how that's different than not having noscript installed.
Once is locked up while using noscript, but I was able to use my mouse to exit Firefox and restart Firefox.