keyboard / clicks unresponsive

[Fizz]

Hi all-

I am a new Mint and linux novice. I am running Mint 19.1 Cinnamon on an AMD Ryzen 2500U laptop. So far, it's working well and i'm mostly happy with it. I have run into a few issues but so far have found workarounds. I will ask about those later. However, this issue is a big problem because it brings my computer to a halt.

Every now and then, the system stops accepting any input from the mouse / keypad click and keyboard. The system is not frozen, because i can still move the cursor around the screen with the touchpad or mouse, but touchpad / mouse clicks do nothing, and the keyboard does nothing. The only solution is for me to hard reboot the machine.

Any thoughts? Thans for your help!

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, please move if appropriate.


Fizz

[Fizz]

Update-

I'm now also seeing this lockup that completely takes out the cursor motion too- so it's a complete lockup. I had a temperature monitor active during this time, and the temperature is only 70 degrees C, so there is no heating issue.

Can anyone help me in diagnosing this issue?

-Fizz

[Fizz]

Well, i didn't get a reply, but did a lot of research over the last week. So this is to wrap things up (i hope).

After messing with a number of boot settings, i was still getting random lockups / freezes. The last thing i did was to update to the 4.18 kernel (rather than 4.15). Since then, the system has run non-stop without a freeze for nearly 7 days. So i am hoping this was the fix.

Interestingly though, i have also put Tessa on my desktop machine, which uses a Ryzen 1600x. It has not experienced a single lockup and i haven't modified it at all (still on the 4.15 kernel).

-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

I get the same, with a Ryzen 2200g and an Athlon 200ge. Both of these (and, I suspect, the 2500U in your laptop) have onboard Vega graphics. On your desktop PC with the Ryzen 1600x,that has no onboard graphics (it's a CPU, not an APU like the others above), so you're presumably using an AMD graphics card
unrelated to Vega, or an Nvidia card.

So if your 1600x is working fine, then the problem must be related to the Vega graphics, perhaps the driver.

Personally, I'm on a 5.0.x kernel and am still getting the freeze on my Ryzen 2200g PC running on 19.1 MATE. The Athlon was also on 19.1 MATE a couple of months ago, so I know the problem affects both APUs there.

As I type, I'm on a 2nd PC with an Athlon 200ge, just installed today with the Beta of Mint 19.2 Cinnamon. So far OK, but I've not been on very long!

I find the freeze happens while I'm in Firefox, which is where most of my time is spent Same symptoms: mouse pointer moves, but no icons anywhere (Firefox or the OS itself) respond to clicks. While it appears that the keyboard is also unresponsive, you should find that this key sequence still works, and is a little kinder than just forcing a power-off. Search for REISUB in the forum, they'll do a better job of explaining than me.

[Fizz]

Yep, the 2500U does have integrated graphics (Vega , whereas the 1600X does not. So that could indeed be part of the issue.

Previously it was always freezing within 24 hours, sometimes significantly less. I don't think it was due to a power-down state (as i have read many places) since the cpu was constantly busy (running simulations overnight). But since the 4.18 kernel install, it's been up and running for more than a full week now.

If you're still having freezes, then i would recommend trying 4.18. I can't guarantee a fix, but it certainly seems to have done it for me.


-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

I don't think it was due to a power-down state (as i have read many places) since the cpu was constantly busy (running simulations overnight).
If you're still having freezes, then i would recommend trying 4.18. I can't guarantee a fix, but it certainly seems to have done it for me.

I agree that it doesn't appear to be power-related. I've had the PC come in and out of Suspend mode quite happily. Over the weekend I was playing Age of Empires through Wine for about 4 hours, the PC ran quite happily. But after maybe 20 minutes in Firefox scrolling around, the freeze just happened.

I'd have hoped that having gone from 4.15 (or so) up to 5.x, I'd have left behind whatever the problem was, if it was purely kernel-related.

With the recent release of the (mildly) upgraded 3000 series Ryzen APUs, there could be a fresh influx of users; maybe there'll be a bit more impetus to find a fix.

[MarkTheMorose]

Sad to say that the freezes are still happening in the beta of 19.2, on an Athlon 200ge test PC.

Kernel 5.0.0.20.

Let's see if the 5.0.0.23 just released will make any difference... (betting: no, since I think it's graphics-related).

[Fizz]

Well, looks like it wasn't kernel 4.18, but something else. After a reboot, i started having the lockups again, within just a few hours.

The one thing i think i had changed was to remove the idle="nomwait" and "rcu_nocbs=0-7" from the grub parameters. So I have gone back to kernel 4.15.0-55 and put the grub parameters back.

So far, so good, but we'll see if it holds

-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

I've continued to suffer freezes, and last night on my Ryzen 2200g system, it froze in unusual circumstance. Or at least, I think it froze, the display was blank after I switched my monitor back on after an hour or so. Maybe there's more than one element to the freezes: graphics and power.

I'm trying to use a test system with an Athlon 200ge (a cut-down Ryzen, in effect), but using a graphics card instead of the built-in Vega graphics on the APU. I say trying, as that PC seems to behaving oddly. It may be a hard drive problem, but having suffered boot troubles, I tried reinstalling 19.2 beta, to find an epically long install time of like 5 hours! The same on a 19.1 install. The test will have to wait until I can sort out another hard drive.

This is a real shame; the Ryzen APUs are great for budget builds, but seemingly only if you run Windows. Linux just doesn't seem ready for them.

[Fizz]

Well, i had another freeze with 4.15 kernel. So now i'm on the 4.18 kernel, AND i have idle="nomwait" and "rcu_nocbs=0-7" in the boot parameters. That is how i *thought* i had it last time, so i am theorizing that I booted that way but then modified them later without rebooting.

@MarkTheMorose: I wouldn't give up on AMD for linux yet. Maybe it isn't in the cpu itself. My desktop Ryzen5 1600x hasn't had a single hiccup and i haven't modified anything with the OS since install. And my Ryzen5 2500U was stable for nearly 3 weeks until these crashes, which makes me think i had it configured properly and i just have to recover what that was. Of course, it'd be nice if we didn't have to do these sorts of things, but if we can figure it out, it's a one-time tweak.

-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

@MarkTheMorose: I wouldn't give up on AMD for linux yet.

Having sunk a tidy sum into Ryzen APUs, I'm hoping this problem gets fixed soon, but I'm not sure the right people know about it, in order to come up with the fix.

The irony is that I shifted around my setups, and took a perfectly stable - fairly speedy - A8 (Bristol Ridge?) APU from my main PC, in favour of a Ryzen 2200G. The A8 keeps on working when the Ryzens cause Linux Mint to freeze up. If i didn't need that APU for doing video conversion work in a second PC, I'd swap it back!

[Fizz]

Well, i think it's stable again. I'm running kernel 4.18 with grub parameters of processor.max_cstate=5 idle=nomwait rcu_nocbs=0-7 . I have been running for 3 days straight now without any freezes or crashes.

Based on other things i have read, i suspect the last parameter, rcu_nocbs, is the important one. So i may experiment by going back to 4.15 and trying each combination one by one.

-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

Well, i think it's stable again. I'm running kernel 4.18 with grub parameters of processor.max_cstate=5 idle=nomwait rcu_nocbs=0-7 . I have been running for 3 days straight now without any freezes or crashes.

Based on other things i have read, i suspect the last parameter, rcu_nocbs, is the important one. So i may experiment by going back to 4.15 and trying each combination one by one.

-Fizz

That sounds promising. What do the grub parameters you mention actually do?

Thanks.

[Fizz]

I am not an expert in these things, so take what i say with a grain of salt. But based on what i've read online, they have to do with the following:

processor.max_cstate=5
This has to do with limiting the power saving state of the cpu. It won't reduce the power to the cpu too much which apparently can cause freezes at times. I don't think this was my issue, as i have my cpu working non-stop and was getting crashes outside of low-power states.

idle=nomwait
This disables the mwait state, not sure what that means but a number of people have claimed it has fixed their crashes.

rcu_nocbs=0-7
This has to do with the cores, and is dependent on the cpu that you have. For me with a 2500U, it has 4 cores, 2 threads each, so a total of 8. Hence 0-7. If you had a cpu with 8 cores, it would be 0-15. This has something to do with offloading threads (?) from one cpu to another. See here for details:
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blo ... cbsMeaning


Hope that helps.

-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

I am not an expert in these things, so take what i say with a grain of salt.

...

Hope that helps.

-Fizz

Well, I've tried these Grub parameters on both my PCs, and while it does seem to have improved matters, I just had another freeze 5 minutes ago.

Same pattern: I was scrolling around a web page in Firefox, and suddenly couldn't scroll any more. REISUB to the rescue once again...

Dear Messrs Torvalds and AMD, please fix this!

[Fizz]

Are you on the 4.18 kernel? I tried the grub parameters with 4.15 and had a couple of relatively quick freezes (within the day). But going back to 4.18 it hasn't crashed since.

Also, did you run a sudo update-grub after you updated the grub file, and then rebooted? I hope that doesn't sound insulting, but i had forgotten to run update-grub a couple times and so kept having the same issue. Since then, all has been stable.

And what is REISUB?

Interestingly, my desktop machine, a Ryzen 5 1600X with a Radeon 470 has been totally stable from the get-go. I have made no modifications to it whatsoever (ie default kernel and grub parameters, etc) and it has never once crashed or frozen. The laptop is all different hardware, so i suppose the issue could be almost any bit of hardware.


-Fizz

[MarkTheMorose]

Are you on the 4.18 kernel? I tried the grub parameters with 4.15 and had a couple of relatively quick freezes (within the day). But going back to 4.18 it hasn't crashed since.

Also, did you run a sudo update-grub after you updated the grub file, and then rebooted? I hope that doesn't sound insulting, but i had forgotten to run update-grub a couple times and so kept having the same issue. Since then, all has been stable.

And what is REISUB?

Interestingly, my desktop machine, a Ryzen 5 1600X with a Radeon 470 has been totally stable from the get-go. I have made no modifications to it whatsoever (ie default kernel and grub parameters, etc) and it has never once crashed or frozen. The laptop is all different hardware, so i suppose the issue could be almost any bit of hardware.


-Fizz

I'm on kernel 5.0.0.23. I did run sudo update-grub, and reboot. No, I'm not insulted by you asking.

REISUB = a kinder way to restart the PC than holding down the power button, when it becomes unresponsive.

Holding the Alt and SysRq keys, (newer keyboards seem to omit the SysRq text, but it's the Print Screen key also), in turn press and release the letters REISUB, waiting 5-10 seconds in between. Basically, it is meant to close down certain services and such, and the final B reboots the PC. I believe you can substitute an O (letter o) instead of the B, to turn the PC off instead. The mnemonic to memorise this is Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key see under 'Uses' for the use above,

[Fizz]

Well, my 2500U notebook seems pretty stable in the current configuration. It's been running non-stop for more than 13 days now, and that's with doing my simulations pretty much non-stop.

Meanwhile, my desktop 1600X has been running non-stop for 45 days, still on the 4.15 kernel with no extra grub parameters from what came with the original installation.

Of course, it'd be nice to know what the exact cause of the previous freezes was and which solution was the fix.

But i see that support for the 4.18 kernel has now expired. And the 5.0 kernel is only supported until this February. What does that mean? It seems i need to be on 4.18 for my notebook to be stable (haven't tried 5.0), but i understand that 5.0 has better support for newer AMD graphics. And yet, since the notebook is now stable, i am a bit nervous to update.

Advice? Thanks!


-Fizz

[deepakdeshp]

If you install a new kernel and face problems you can revert to the old kernel. In grub choose advanced option, then choose the required kernel from which you want to boot.

[Fizz]

Yep, reversion is always a nice option. I'll be sure to do plenty of backups too, before applying new kernels.

But what does it mean when a kernel is no longer supported? After February, it seems the only supported Kernel for Mint will be 4.15. Why that one as opposed to kernel 5.x? Perhaps it is naive to think so, but wouldn't a later kernel be more preferable (support more hardware / features / etc)?

-Fizz