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GDM freezes after Ubuntu upgrade

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Ian Briggs

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Nov 15, 2009, 9:22:43 AM11/15/09
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I've been running Ubuntu dual-booted on an Asus laptop for a couple of
years, with no problems for the first year or so. Then about 12 months
ago I started getting intermittent screen freezes, after variable
lengths of session time (but many sessions were OK, and I was busy, so I
lived with the occasional annoyance). But after upgrading to Ubuntu
9.10, I can now rarely get more than a few seconds after GDM creates the
desktop before it freezes, and very rarely it freezes while still
booting or creating the desktop.

The desktop freezes, with the exception of the mouse pointer which still
moves (although the spinner icon is no longer animated). I can't
Ctrl-Alt-F2 any more, or Ctrl-Alt-Del either. So I wait 10-15 seconds
until the HDD activity light stops, and then use the main power button
to switch off. If I Ctrl-Alt-F2 as soon as I log into GDM, the console
session works absolutely fine for as long as I want -- but if I then
Ctrl-Alt-F7, the graphical desktop freezes after a few seconds. I've
tried leaving it 20 minutes or so, in case it unfroze, but it stayed
frozen.

FWIW, I'm running AWM -- and also the GDM login started displaying boxes
instead of characters when I did the upgrade to 9.10, although that may
be a separate issue.

I don't think it's a RAM/HDD failure because (a) the freeze point is
somewhat variable, and (b) console sessions are absolutely fine.

I've got really lazy since I started using Ubuntu a few years ago, and
I've forgotten all the basic stuff I used to know about X/GDM
initialisation and config files (and reading around now, I've just
discovered that inittab no longer exists...).

Any thoughts or pointers where I could poke around to identify the
problem? Or even a graceful way to shutdown without Ctrl-Alt-<anything>!

Thanks in advance,
Ian

--
To email, replace the obvious decoy with the name of the day after monday.

Bryce

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Nov 15, 2009, 10:53:15 AM11/15/09
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Ian Briggs wrote:

> I don't think it's a RAM/HDD failure because (a) the
> freeze point is somewhat variable, and (b) console
> sessions are absolutely fine.

Console sessions don't require nearly as much memory.
Why not run memtest86 to rule out a memory problem
as a first step?

Bill Marcum

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Nov 16, 2009, 6:47:47 AM11/16/09
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On 2009-11-15, Ian Briggs <sp...@ianbriggs.net> wrote:
>
> Any thoughts or pointers where I could poke around to identify the
> problem? Or even a graceful way to shutdown without Ctrl-Alt-<anything>!
>
You can use Alt-Shift-Sysrq-S and then Alt-Shift-Sysrq-B. I've been running
the 2.6.28 kernel, but it still freezes sometimes, and I had to write
a script to create the /dev/snd/* and /dev/input/* files. I also installed
the old gdm-2.20 package. The new version didn't give me a place to type my
name.

> Thanks in advance,
> Ian
>

Ian Briggs

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Nov 21, 2009, 12:59:45 PM11/21/09
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After several hours of experimenting with my GDM freeze problems, I got
the following results for different boot options:

[no ACPI options]
Console resolution 128x48. Desktop always freezes. Ctrl-Alt-[Fsomething]
inoperative after freeze.

"acpi=off" or "acpi=ht"
Console resolution 80x25. Desktop usually OK, but occasionally scrambles
and freezes (with some text visible along the lines of "CPUOK" and
"CPUfrequency"). Ctrl-Alt-[Fsomething] switches terminals OK after
freeze. Processor scaling unsupported, and processor overheats ("CPU0:
Temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled").

"pci=noacpi" or "acpi=noirq" or "pnpacpi=off" or "noapic" or "nolapic"
Console resolution 128x48. Desktop usually freezes, but occasionally OK.
Ctrl-Alt-[Fsomething] inoperative after freeze. Processor scaling on
demand.

So I can get reasonable functionality with "acpi=off" but at the cost of
processor overheating.

Any ideas how to get the functionality without any overheating?

Ian Briggs

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Nov 21, 2009, 1:01:16 PM11/21/09
to
In article <3oq7t6-...@marcumbill.bellsouth.net>,
Bill Marcum <marcu...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> On 2009-11-15, Ian Briggs <sp...@ianbriggs.net> wrote:
> > a graceful way to shutdown without Ctrl-Alt-<anything>!
> >
> You can use Alt-Shift-Sysrq-S and then Alt-Shift-Sysrq-B.

I learn something new every day!

Ian Briggs

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Nov 21, 2009, 1:38:51 PM11/21/09
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In article <hdp85d$spg$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Bryce <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Why not run memtest86 to rule out a memory problem
> as a first step?

Seems OK -- memtest86+ didn't find any problems.

Darren Salt

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Nov 21, 2009, 2:59:28 PM11/21/09
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I demand that Ian Briggs may or may not have written...

> After several hours of experimenting with my GDM freeze problems, I got
> the following results for different boot options:

> [no ACPI options]
> Console resolution 128x48. Desktop always freezes. Ctrl-Alt-[Fsomething]
> inoperative after freeze.

[snip]


> Any ideas how to get the functionality without any overheating?

BIOS and/or kernel upgrade, perhaps?

--
| Darren Salt | linux at youmustbejoking | nr. Ashington, | Doon
| using Debian GNU/Linux | or ds ,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + http://www.youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk/ & http://tlasd.wordpress.com/

programming: n. The process of putting bugs into a program.

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