Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

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spoo333

Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Hello,

For months I've been having random display manager (?) lockups on all my computers. I used to have Cinnamon lockups when I was still using kernel 5.4. After switching to 5.11 a lot of issues disappeared. Then, perhaps around late July?, random screen lockups started happening. This is the case on three computers. One i9 Intel 32GB Nvidia 1650 desktop (Nvidia proprietary driver 470.74) and two i5 laptops with 16GB and onboard graphics. All of them are on the most recent kernel 5.11 and Linux Mint 20.2 fully updated.
What happens is that the screen and keyboard/mouse freeze, audio carries on playing in the background. After a few seconds, usually no more than 45 or so, everything returns back to normal. I never lose any work, but those involuntary pauses are not helpful, particularly when doing time critical work such as music recording or trading shares :wink:
Grateful for any suggestions you can offer. I've considered switching to Gnome Desktop for time critical work, but would obviously prefer to stay with Cinnamon.
Thank you!
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by Michael_Hathaway »

Would you happen to know how much memory you are using during the freezing? I have had similar situations to this, but when it happened to me, I had used up all 32Gb of my ram. When I closed out all my web tabs, the system came out of limp mode.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

As far as I can tell, there is an abundance of RAM available. The swap file is not used at all.
At some point I thought the issues might be down to non-standard GTK themes etc. I reset everything to the default mint-y theme. That seemed to cure it initially, but eventually the same lockups started happening
Last edited by spoo333 on Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by SMG »

spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 1:32 pmGrateful for any suggestions you can offer.
Can you let us know what operating system and Cinnamon version you are using (ie. the output of inxi -Sx )? There were updates made to the latest version of Cinnamon to help with issues which might relate to memory.
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spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Sure, here we go.

laptop 1:
1.png

laptop 2:
2.png

desktop:
3.png
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Michael_Hathaway wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:49 pm Would you happen to know how much memory you are using during the freezing? I have had similar situations to this, but when it happened to me, I had used up all 32Gb of my ram. When I closed out all my web tabs, the system came out of limp mode.
Here is a screenshot of System Monitor. Please note that high cpu usage is because the computer is converting a 4k video file atm.
Screenshot from 2021-10-24 01-16-32.png
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by Michael_Hathaway »

8.7Gb of swap file being used. Impressive. I'm going to let SMG handle this, she has forgotten more about Linux than I know. :wink:
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by SMG »

spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:10 pmSure, here we go.
You are running the latest versions available. That is what I wanted to confirm.

There were changes made in the latest version of Cinnamon which fixed some memory leaks and also made changes such that Cinnamon would be "controlled" as to how much memory was used so it would never continually grow in usage. This is a guess on my part, but I'm wondering if the fixes put in place might be contributing to the cycling you are seeing, especially since July is the timeframe of that release.

Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon: New Features under the 'Cinnamon 5.0' section has a subsection 'Performance and resource usage' which explains the changes made and has a screenshot of the location where adjustments can be made. Maybe some adjustments to the default values would help address the issue you have been noticing.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Michael_Hathaway wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:25 pm 8.7Gb of swap file being used. Impressive. I'm going to let SMG handle this, she has forgotten more about Linux than I know. :wink:
Yes, but only since I started running the 4k file conversion. Before that swap was zero or near zero. What has been puzzling is the high cache usage ... Perhaps time to reduce swappiness or whatever it is called ...

Anyway, thanks Michael for trying to help
Last edited by spoo333 on Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by SMG »

Note in the section I mentioned it indicates, "If that maximum amount is reached Cinnamon will restart itself. You won't lose your session or your windows, Cinnamon will just be unresponsive for about a second while it restarts itself internally."

It is possible the guestimate by the developers may not be as accurate in your situation because you are running the low-latency kernels (and I understand why you are using them) and what other software is running at the time the "lockups" happen.

Given you said the problem seemed to appear in July, maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself? Or maybe use higher memory limits? My thoughts would be to start tweaking the values on that settings page.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

SMG wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:25 pm
spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:10 pmSure, here we go.
You are running the latest versions available. That is what I wanted to confirm.

There were changes made in the latest version of Cinnamon which fixed some memory leaks and also made changes such that Cinnamon would be "controlled" as to how much memory was used so it would never continually grow in usage. This is a guess on my part, but I'm wondering if the fixes put in place might be contributing to the cycling you are seeing, especially since July is the timeframe of that release.

Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon: New Features under the 'Cinnamon 5.0' section has a subsection 'Performance and resource usage' which explains the changes made and has a screenshot of the location where adjustments can be made. Maybe some adjustments to the default values would help address the issue you have been noticing.
Thank you, SMG, I'll give this a read
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

SMG wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:33 pm Note in the section I mentioned it indicates, "If that maximum amount is reached Cinnamon will restart itself. You won't lose your session or your windows, Cinnamon will just be unresponsive for about a second while it restarts itself internally."

It is possible the guestimate by the developers may not be as accurate in your situation because you are running the low-latency kernels (and I understand why you are using them) and what other software is running at the time the "lockups" happen.

Given you said the problem seemed to appear in July, maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself? Or maybe use higher memory limits? My thoughts would be to start tweaking the values on that settings page.
Thanks, everything you say makes sense. I do have very high ulimit and fs.inotify.max_user_watches on the desktop machine. Perhaps there is a connection.
However the second laptop with the normal non lowlatency kernel exhibits similar Cinnamon performance issues and has out-of-the-box settings, ie non tweaked.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself?". I've used the key combo esc+ctrl+alt a few times to restart Cinnamon, but the problem is that the key combo is useless during one of those freezes as keyboard input is ignored for the duration of the freeze :) Hope I'm making sense.

Anyway, I'll check out the Cinnamon tweaks later on. Thanks for all your help, once again :)
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Think I get now what you mean by "maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself?" - you mean I might have disabled the auto-restart feature. I'll go check ...
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Screenshot from 2021-10-24 01-46-49.png
First time I've looked at those settings. Think those are the default settings. What do you reckon would be a good setting for each of the computers? ie for the 32GB and the two 16GB machines?
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by motoryzen »

spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:48 pm Screenshot from 2021-10-24 01-46-49.png

First time I've looked at those settings. Think those are the default settings. What do you reckon would be a good setting for each of the computers? ie for the 32GB and the two 16GB machines?
I found I had to disable that new feature of " Restart Cinnamon when it uses too much memory" by default that is set to 2 GBS. Now this was when I had 32GBs as well as also 128GBs of ddr4 ram running at 3200mhz. After disabling it ...it became one less reason to cause me having the EXACT same problem you did , spoo333. For me I had to shuffle my ram sticks around. WHY..that worked and stopping the random ( and complete) crashes/lockups..i don't know.

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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by SMG »

spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:45 pm Think I get now what you mean by "maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself?" - you mean I might have disabled the auto-restart feature. I'll go check ...
The default used to be (ie. before July) to not have it restart. Maybe the fact it is restarting is the issue now. If you have plenty of memory, you may not have to worry as much about a possible memory leak causing issues. Therefore, you could turn off the option to have Cinnamon restart itself.

You could always restart Cinnamon manually when it is more convenient to you (with the Ctl-Atl-Escape) rather than letting Cinnamon automatically do it.
spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:48 pm What do you reckon would be a good setting for each of the computers? ie for the 32GB and the two 16GB machines?
I do not do the type of work you do, so I really do not know what might be best for your situation. My suggestion would be to turn off the auto restart and see how that works for you. If that does not, then you could start cranking up the amounts to see what works best.
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spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

motoryzen wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:02 pm
spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:48 pm Screenshot from 2021-10-24 01-46-49.png

First time I've looked at those settings. Think those are the default settings. What do you reckon would be a good setting for each of the computers? ie for the 32GB and the two 16GB machines?
I found I had to disable that new feature of " Restart Cinnamon when it uses too much memory" by default that is set to 2 GBS. Now this was when I had 32GBs as well as also 128GBs of ddr4 ram running at 3200mhz. After disabling it ...it became one less reason to cause me having the EXACT same problem you did , spoo333. For me I had to shuffle my ram sticks around. WHY..that worked and stopping the random ( and complete) crashes/lockups..i don't know.

Asrock x570 taichi mobo with bios/uefi 4.40
5900X cpu
128GBs of ram Kingston Hyper X Predator CL18 3600mhz running at cl18 at 3200mhz 1T
rx 580 8GB
Thanks motoryzen for sharing your experience and insights! I have now disabled the restart feature. Will keep monitoring the situation. Hopefully I won't have to play around with my ram sticks :)
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

SMG wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:03 pm
spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:45 pm Think I get now what you mean by "maybe you just do not want Cinnamon to restart itself?" - you mean I might have disabled the auto-restart feature. I'll go check ...
The default used to be (ie. before July) to not have it restart. Maybe the fact it is restarting is the issue now. If you have plenty of memory, you may not have to worry as much about a possible memory leak causing issues. Therefore, you could turn off the option to have Cinnamon restart itself.

You could always restart Cinnamon manually when it is more convenient to you (with the Ctl-Atl-Escape) rather than letting Cinnamon automatically do it.
spoo333 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:48 pm What do you reckon would be a good setting for each of the computers? ie for the 32GB and the two 16GB machines?
I do not do the type of work you do, so I really do not know what might be best for your situation. My suggestion would be to turn off the auto restart and see how that works for you. If that does not, then you could start cranking up the amounts to see what works best.
Sound advice, thanks. I've disabled the auto restart option on all three computers. I'll see how it goes over the next couple of days. Will be back to either mark this thread solved or cry for more help :)
Thank you all for your assistance. Great to have this community.
spoo333

Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by spoo333 »

Been trying different settings on all three computers over the last week and a bit. To recap: computer 1 desktop/server 32GB, Intel i9, Nvidia 1650, lowlatency 5.11 kernel; computer 2 laptop 16GB, i5, intel onboard graphics lowlatency 5.11 kernel; computer 3 laptop 16GB, i5, intel onboard graphics standard 5.11 kernel.

I've been trying different settings on all three computers. The settings that works best on all three computers is to disable "restart Cinnamon when it uses too much memory". It still results in lockups, usually about 3-5 a day, sometimes at very inopportune times, lockup times ranging between 10-50 seconds roughly. I played around with the Memory limit (MB) and Check Frequency (seconds) settings, but nothing I tried improved the situation. The lowest memory limit I had was 1024 and the check frequency was down to 15 seconds. I didn't go higher than 4096 MB or 600 seconds. Been checking memory usage straight after lockups and Cinnamon's memory usage in System Monitor was never anywhere 1 GB, more in the 500MB +/-.

Reverting to kernel 5.4 is not tempting as there were a lot of issues with Nemo that got cured by switching to 5.11 or a Nemo/Cinnamon update. Is it possible that something 'happened' from 19.3 and kernel 5.0(?) that causes those lockup issues? Computer 1 was working flawlessly with Mint 19.3 and kernel 5, I didn't own the laptops at the time.

Going back to 19.3 and kernel 5 is not an ideal situation either for a number of reasons.

Wait for a new kernel that might fix the problem or a Cinnamon update?

I will run a thorough RAM check on all computers but it seems unlikely that all three computers could suffer from a similar RAM problem, particularly because one laptop had the RAM replaced and tested by a professional a couple of months ago.

For now I'll just hope that a future update will cure the issue.
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Re: Cinnamon random lockups for 10-45 seconds

Post by SMG »

spoo333 wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 11:48 pm Been trying different settings on all three computers over the last week and a bit. To recap: computer 1 desktop/server 32GB, Intel i9, Nvidia 1650, lowlatency 5.11 kernel; computer 2 laptop 16GB, i5, intel onboard graphics lowlatency 5.11 kernel; computer 3 laptop 16GB, i5, intel onboard graphics standard 5.11 kernel
Often the generation of the processor is more key to understanding how well it will work with a kernel than saying it is i9, i7, or i5. My i7 built a decade ago is not the same as an i7 from two years ago even though they are both i7s.

The low-latency kernels are not considered supported kernels. I do not know how their differences might impact this situation, so I do not know what to recommend which might help. We would probably have to check logs to get an idea of what is happening.
spoo333 wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 11:48 pmI've been trying different settings on all three computers. The settings that works best on all three computers is to disable "restart Cinnamon when it uses too much memory". It still results in lockups, usually about 3-5 a day, sometimes at very inopportune times, lockup times ranging between 10-50 seconds roughly. I played around with the Memory limit (MB) and Check Frequency (seconds) settings, but nothing I tried improved the situation.
Maybe you can try turning off all the effects as a test? Open the Effects app and move all sliders to the left to turn them off.
spoo333 wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 11:48 pm Reverting to kernel 5.4 is not tempting as there were a lot of issues with Nemo that got cured by switching to 5.11 or a Nemo/Cinnamon update. Is it possible that something 'happened' from 19.3 and kernel 5.0(?) that causes those lockup issues? Computer 1 was working flawlessly with Mint 19.3 and kernel 5, I didn't own the laptops at the time.
There were a lot of underlying changes between Ubuntu 18.04 (LM19.3) and Ubuntu 20.04 (LM20) so it is likely we are not talking apples and apples given the apps used on those two base versions would be different along with the operating system differences.

Kernel 5.0 was a short-term hardware enablement kernel. Support for it ended several years ago.
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