The (near) Daily Chrome Video Freeze [likely solved]

[f2x]

OK, so on my living room computer I am running Mate desktop via tasksel on LMDE 5. Heresy, I know, but it gets worse. I also installed Chrome as my main web browser. I had done the same thing on LMDE 4 and everything worked fine back then, but now I've got this somewhat near daily random freeze-up when watching streaming video on the Chrome browser. To be clear, it seems to only happens when streaming a video in Chrome. It has never done it in Celluloid. Basically the screen freezes, the keyboard/mouse is completely non-responsive, and the audio gets stuck in a 1 second loop of whatever was last playing. The only way out is to power it down and boot it up again. The glitch will not occur again for at least another 24 hours, but it can strike at any hour of the day.

One thing I tried was adding this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="intel_idle.max_cstate=1"

It was added to the end of /etc/default/grub file and then I updated grub. It had something to do with random freeze-ups I used to get on this processor using LMDE 2 and earlier. But that wasn't it. These video system freeze-ups are a different animal.

I'm pretty sure this is also a hardware specific bug, because this is one of three computers that I configure in exactly the same way. My laptop and nightstand computers do not have this issue.

I have not tried the Ubuntu Mint 21 yet. I'm using older machines, so I like to squeeze out every last drop of speed that I can... that, and I've just grown used to the LMDE environment, but if nobody has any insight as to what is causing the freeze-ups, that will be my next step... The final step is to just replace my 8 year old antique relic, but I'd feel better if I didn't have to toss out another PC.

Sorry so long, and thanks if you have any ideas on this issue.

https://termbin.com/t855

[blackcarajillo]

Did you try to enable or disable Marco's compositor?

[f2x]

Did you try to enable or disable Marco's compositor?

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I remember back in the old days tirelessly trying to get compiz working on KDE. It's such old magic it isn't even magic anymore. Definitely worth a look...

Or rather would have been. Oddly enough my last system freeze-up was on the 6th, two days after I initially posted this. Not sure what changed. Maybe an update came through.

My other two computers are still both rock solid as well, and I hardly notice any difference from LMDE 4, and IMHO that's the highest praise anyone can give a Debian upgrade.

It's a good call though, and if it locks up again, I'll be turning the compositing off.

Thanks,
- f2x

[chris_heath]

this started happening to me recently after upgrading to v21 (cinnamon edition)
always happens when playing video in chrome (youtube)

video freezes
audio loops the last 1 second
no response to any input
must hard reset via power button

I can't seem to find anything in any of the logs... I'm assuming this is a kernel bug...

Did you ever figure out what fixed your issue?

[f2x]

No. I gave up and got a new computer

[chris_heath]

ok thanks,
I think that it might be that I removed my swap partition
i'm adding it back now