Mint 17 "Qiana" Cinnamon freezing

[gtmaskall]

There has been much heat generated by this pretty common complaint, but I've seen very little light. I'm sick of going around in circles seeing similar-but-not-quite problems and suggestions.

I've long had issues with Cinnamon freezing. Fortunately, a Ctrl-Alt-F1 and then Ctrl-Alt-F8 gets it back again these days, but it's a major pain in the backside. One post I read enquired about the contents of /var/log/syslog. I was monitoring this file and after the last freeze, these lines were appended:
Dec 11 22:53:34 jaka acpid: client 1456[0:0] has disconnected
Dec 11 22:53:35 jaka acpid: client connected from 1456[0:0]
Dec 11 22:53:35 jaka acpid: 1 client rule loaded

(dammit, just did it again twice - definitely that error!)
So, this would implicate acpi in the problem? I had taken an upgrade of the nvidia driver today (to 331.113) and had kinda hoped it might fix the bug, but clearly not.

I am intending to upgrade to 17.1 "Rebecca", but am waiting a few days for a more convenient time. Can anyone offer any knowledge/experience of whether this issue is resolved in 17.1, or am I likely to be disappointed?

Regards,
Guy

[RamBurner]

I'm actually considering going back to 17 Cinnamon because of the CPU hogging and lag results in moving windows on desktop using 17.1 Cinnamon.
I didn't have the problem on 17 Cinnamon.

[SallyK]

Just as an information point, I'm one of the users with a NVIDIA graphics card who found that Cinnamon 2.0 and 2.2 locked-up regularly. I upgraded to 17.1 on Saturday night, and I haven't had a lock-up since, using the PC for several hours at a time. It really seems to me that using 17.1, Cinnamon 2.4 and the 304 NVIDIA driver, as instructed in the release notes, has fixed the problem.

[gtmaskall]

I wonder if you're just lucky, Sally.

The release notes only seemed to refer to issues booting, I thought. I have issues on both my home laptop and on my work machine. My work machine is also now running Mint 17.1 with the latest recommended kernel. It just froze, requiring a reboot. I believe the acpid is implicated in both. Ctrl-Alt-F1 and then Ctrl-Alt-F8 did not bring Cinnamon back to life. Here is the relevant bit from my syslog:
Dec 17 10:28:01 linux01 acpid: client 1513[0:0] has disconnected
Dec 17 10:28:02 linux01 acpid: client connected from 1513[0:0]
Dec 17 10:28:02 linux01 acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Dec 17 10:28:18 linux01 acpid: client 1513[0:0] has disconnected
Dec 17 10:28:43 linux01 acpid: client connected from 1513[0:0]
Dec 17 10:28:43 linux01 acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Dec 17 10:29:58 linux01 acpid: client 1513[0:0] has disconnected
Dec 17 10:30:05 linux01 console-kit-daemon[2270]: GLib-CRITICAL: Source ID 291 was not found when attempting to remove it

Notice there is no final "client connected" entry. I think on my home laptop the above c-a-F1/c-a-F8 sequence kicks it back into life, but not on this machine. The acpid disconnection is implicated in both!

[SallyK]

It may well be that I fall into a limited group whose issues have been fixed in Cinnamon 2.4, but I still haven't had a lock-up since I upgraded. Before that, I sometimes had multiple lock-ups within an hour, and never managed a whole day's usage without at least one. My lock-ups could be cleared by Ctrl-Alt-Delete to log out, though, and didn't actually require a full reboot.

This is the bit of the release notes I was referring to:

Solving freezes with some NVIDIA GeForce GPUs

If you are unable to boot Linux Mint with an NVIDIA card, or if you are experiencing constant freezes and system lock ups, please append "nomodeset" to your boot arguments. At the boot menu of the live DVD/USB, press Tab to edit the boot arguments and add "nomodeset" at the end of the line.

If you're still having issues, you can also remove "quiet splash --" from that same line.

Alternatively you can use the "nouveau.noaccel=1" boot argument.

Once the system is installed, use the Driver Manager to install the nvidia-304 driver.