xorg hang after longer (12h) idle time

[Rolf Offermanns]

Binary package hint: xorg

I leave my machine running when I leave office in the evening. The session is locked (KDE -> KMenu -> Lock Session).

When I get back the next day, I unlock the session and everything is frozen. Mouse is moving, but I can't click on anything. Keyboard is non-functional. The window dedorations are gone.

I can ssh to the machine (sometimes switching to console mode does work, but most of the time it doesn't).

The Xorg process is running at 100% CPU. There is nothing in the system log files that would indicate an error.

An strace to the Xorg process shows only one "SIGALRM" line.

Everything was fine sometime ago. I don't know exactly when it broke.

Does anyone has a clue what's going on?

[Rolf Offermanns (rolf-offermanns)]

Bug #61250 seems to be the same (although it is quite old). I am running feisty (latest updates installed as of 14.06.2007).

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Can you install the -intel driver and see if it occurs for that as well?

This sounds an awful lot like a bug we hit with nvidia back on Dapper when the randomized screensaver would start an OpenGL screensaver and the system would lock up. However, you're not using Dapper, and not using the nvidia card.

[Rolf Offermanns (rolf-offermanns)]

What -intel driver are you talking about? I think I am already running the i810 driver. Is there another one?

Regarding the screensaver... I do not use any kind of screensaver. When I lock the session the screen just wents black.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

There are feisty backports of the xserver-xorg-video-intel 2.0.0 driver here:
    http://people.ubuntu.com/~kyle/testing/crestline/

The Xorg project is introducing the new -intel driver to replace -i810 and other intel drivers with one unified one.

[Patrick Salami (pat-entitycom)]

I'm running Kubuntu Feisty and I have an nvidia geforce 6200. I encounter the exact same problem: after leaving the computer running over night, I come back and xorg is at 100% (on one of my CPUs) and the window decorations have disappeared. Since I have a dual CPU system, my guess is that it is more tolerant towards this, so although X is completely frozen (only the mouse moves), I can ctrl+alt+F1 to a console and take down the system cleanly. (however, if I switch back to the X server before rebooting, the window decorations are gone)

After a reboot everything is fine. I also ran strace on xorg when it goes berserk, but the only thing that was noteworthy that I came up with was also the SIGALRT message. Comparing it to an strace of xorg in normal conditions (when it's not going berserk), however, revealed that the SIGALRT message also comes up during normal operation, and neither that nor any other calls that xorg makes while it's berserk indicate anything out of the ordinary.

Further, I have taken advantage of the dual CPUs to examine all logs in detail as the problem occurs: nothing out of the ordinary, in fact, since the system has been sitting idle, hardly any activity is logged. I checked the KDE settings and they are showing the screen saver to be off. I do have kpowermanager installed (because I had a problem where my network card would stop working after a while otherwise), but it's set to "Performance" and the screen saver, auto-suspend for the screen, and in fact all other power-saving options are unchecked. My screens do turn blank, however, after a period of inactivity, so it's possible that this is related.
On a side note, I have three monitors on two nvidia cards, running on xinerama with the 9755 nvidia binary drivers. All signs point to this not being a driver problem, however, unless nvidia and intel use some of the same libraries in their drivers.

I also wanted to point out that I usually don't lock my screen when I leave, so that might not be relevant to this particular problem.

In addition, my GLX does not work for some reason. Whenever I try to run a glx-enabled app, the app crashes, although it is installed, because the glxinfo command outputs a grid with the glx info.
Rolf, please let me know the status of your GLX (try running a GLX screensaver and see what happens), as well as any power management software (such as kpowersave) that you may have running on your system. Also, do you have a screen save enabled and do your screens go into auto-suspend mode after a period of inactivity?

This is a really tricky problem and I really have to find a solution because it's starting to happen even after shorter periods of inactivity. The intervals are seemingly random, making the problem virtually impossible to reproduce and difficult to troubleshoot, but usually the problem happens after long periods of idle time (although it has occurred after only a few minutes of idle time), and every time it happens my workflow is interrupted, so it's really starting to bother me. It's also embarrassing if you're about to show someone (i.e. a client) something on your computer and it's completely frozen. If we put our notes together, ...

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

freerick, I think your issue is unrelated to Rolf's since he's using i810 on Intel graphics, whereas you have nvidia hardware. please open a new bug for your issue.

[MsShu (sinyushkin)]

Hi all! I used to have a similar problem on my Kubuntu 7.10 system. Searching for any answer on the web I came across this bug report on Mandriva bug tracker http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=31145. I did have superkaramba running on my desktop all the time I encountered the problem. Having read this disucssion I tried to switch off superkaramba at all and leave my PC being idle for a couple of hours. When I came back the X server wasn't frozen as it had uset to be previously. So, maybe it is some suprekaramba themes that is the cause of all evel on your PC, too? Have you got it running?