Cinnamon freezes randomly

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lucb1e

Cinnamon freezes randomly

Post by lucb1e »

Hello everyone,

I'm using Linux Mint Qiana (17), Cinnamon edition for just over a month, having used 16 before that and 15 before then. This issue started with LM 17. I generally do a dist-upgrade, but after the random freezes I tried a fresh install. My current Qiana install is a fresh install, but it still freezes randomly.

So what happens is that Cinnamon will freeze everything up for about 10 to 30 seconds. Sometimes it also takes over two minutes and I decide to kill it from Ctrl+Alt+F1. Sometimes it unlocks from that terminal (with the help of DISPLAY=:0 cinnamon --replace), sometimes I have to restart the session and loose any unsaved work. While frozen, the clock does not update, I cannot use alt+tab, I cannot open the start menu, I cannot click anything, I basically can't do anything besides moving my cursor around. The windows will also not update: if someone says something in a chat, I won't see it until it unfreezes. However music keeps playing, networking is uninterrupted and everything in ctrl+alt+f1 works fine.

While frozen, if I run top/htop/iotop in the ctrl+alt+f1 terminal, there is nothing unusual to see. Little cpu load, ssd is mostly idle, RAM is far from full, and I don't use swap. There doesn't seem to be anything odd in dmesg.

I haven't been able to find steps to reproduce the issue. The frequency seems to increase when I do a lot of alttabbing or when Libreoffice is open, but I really can't say that with any certainty.

Any ideas what might be causing it? I'm familiar with the terminal and know where to find config files, so I'm not a complete noob. I just don't know where to start looking.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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austin.texas
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Re: Cinnamon freezes randomly

Post by austin.texas »

Please post your specs:

Code: Select all

inxi -zv7
cpu overload is the first thing I would suspect, but you say that is not the case.
cpu overheating would be something to check as well
If you open Menu > Administration > Log File Viewer and go to the most recent entry, at the bottom, maybe you might get a clue from that when a freeze happens.
Mint 18.2 Cinnamon, Quad core AMD A8-3870 with Radeon HD Graphics 6550D, 8GB DDR3, Ralink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
Linux Linx 2018
lucb1e

Re: Cinnamon freezes randomly

Post by lucb1e »

Thanks for your reply!

These are the specs (posted them as code, let me know if I should use pastebin instead):

Code: Select all

System:    Host: luc-laptop Kernel: 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.8.2)
           Desktop: Cinnamon 2.2.16 (Gtk 3.10.8~3+qiana) dm: mdm Distro: Linux Mint 17 Qiana
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: N56VB v: 1.0 Bios: American Megatrends v: N56VB.202 date: 01/21/2013
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-3630QM (-HT-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 19157
           clock speeds: min/max: 1200/2401 MHz 1: 1300 MHz 2: 1800 MHz 3: 1200 MHz 4: 1400 MHz 5: 1200 MHz
           6: 1200 MHz 7: 1200 MHz 8: 1200 MHz
Memory:    Using dmidecode: you must be root to run dmidecode
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0166
           Card-2: NVIDIA GK107M [GeForce GT 740M] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0fdf
           Display Server: X.Org 1.15.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: nouveau
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel 7 Series/C210 Series Family High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1e20
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.13.0-24-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter
           driver: ath9k bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:0032
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet
           driver: alx port: d000 bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 1969:1091
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           WAN IP: <filter> IF: eth0 ip: N/A ip-v6: N/A
           IF: wlan0 ip: <filter> ip-v6: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 256.1GB (70.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: PLEXTOR_PX size: 256.1GB serial: P02301xxxxx2
           Optical: /dev/sr0 model: Slimtype DVD A  DS8A9SH rev: EAA2 dev-links: cdrom
           Features: speed: 24x multisession: yes
           audio: yes dvd: yes rw: cd-r,cd-rw,dvd-r,dvd-ram state: running
Partition: ID-1: / size: 64G used: 23G (38%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
           label: N/A uuid: a6xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxf
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 93M used: 4.0M (5%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 label: N/A uuid: Fxxx-xxx7
           ID-3: /media/luc/e0xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxe size: 172G used: 147G (91%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
           label: N/A uuid: e0xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxe
RAID:      System: supported: N/A
           No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
           Unused Devices: none
Unmounted: No unmounted partitions detected
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 50.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 238 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 5099.8/7870.9MB
           Init: Upstart v: 1.12.1 runlevel: 2 default: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.111 running in gnome-terminal) inxi: 2.2.7 
At the moment I'm high on RAM due to a Windows 7 VM (school...) but freezes also happen when I'm using <50% of RAM.

CPU overload is very unlikely. I can switch to a terminal on Ctrl+Alt+F1..6 without trouble and do anything, while my desktop environment is completely frozen. If it were CPU, switching would at least go slowly and I should totally see that in top/htop.

The logs show nothing of interest right now, I'll check again when a freeze occurs. It's the same as `tail /var/log/syslog` right? Cause I can do that in a terminal when the environment is frozen.
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