Cinnamon Freezes When Mounting USB

[Jacob von Chorus]

When inserting a USB mass storage device into my computer, Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon (to which I just upgrade to from 17) freezes for a couple seconds. It does not occur every time but when it does, the desktop ceases to be interactive for a few seconds.

I am able to reproduce it by inserting a USB mass storage device while doing something on my desktop.

[lencho (lencho)]

In my experience it's just a general problem with Linux and USB. I often experience freezes, hangs or even crashes when doing heavy operations with a USB device (copying big files or many small files, mounting a media that has many files on it).
Probably not entirely a Mint problem, but it is true it's getting worse with this release (17.1 64bits).

[Jacob von Chorus (jacobvonchorus)]

As much as I like this new release, I've found Cinnamon (Mate has been fine so far) to be far less stable. It seems to now randomly freeze up for a few seconds. Sometimes it's worst and I have to hard boot my computer because the entire computer freezes up and I can't even switch to another tty.

[lencho (lencho)]

Same experience here, considering switching back to 17.
Experienced a sudden hang for more than 5 minutes yesterday while doing nothing in particular.
If anyone has any idea how to detect what could cause this? I don't know where to look at, logs etc.

[Kevin Peters (peterskm)]

I've been running 17.1 64-bit version of Mint with Cinnamon and it wasn't until more recently that the hanging while mounting a USB stick started occurring. It appears something has been introduced more recently to cause this.

[Tony (buteido)]

I've got the same issue (Mint Cinnamon 17.1 64-bit). It happens with both my USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 drives. I've tried different (USB 2.0 and USB 3.0) ports too.

[Arnaud Ungaro (aungaro)]

Hi, same here !
Freeze when plug my USB3 HDD
I have to boot the laptop with the HDD already plunged in.

Dell Latitude E5440

Mint 17.1

Linux daedalus 3.16.0-29-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 16 20:54:13 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
Base Board Information
 Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
 Product Name: 07PVXN
 Version: A00
 Serial Number: /B9FWM12/CN129634AF0031/
 Asset Tag: XXXX
 Features:
  Board is a hosting board
  Board is replaceable
 Location In Chassis: Not Specified
 Chassis Handle: 0x0003
 Type: Motherboard
 Contained Object Handles: 0

[David Stamper (davidls)]

Linux mint 17.1 cinnamon dual boot xp pro. Freeze on usb mounting frequently. Custome image from home folder for desktop background. Noticed when doing hard reboot after freeze that desktop would be reverted back to default background. Started using o.s. supplied backgrounds and problem went away. So I right clicked inside /usr/share/backgrounds and chose open as root. Created a folder for my custome backgrounds. In order for them to show up, I still had to add the folder by clicking the + button. I now can use my custome backgrounds for my desktop and I have not had a single usb mount failure or freeze since then.

[Benoit V (yquux)]

Linux Mint 17.1 - 64 bit on a SSD / Celeron J1900 (Shuttle XS35V4) - kernel 3.13 (recommended one).
I have the same bug since a few days now (but switched to 17.1 quickly and didn't notice it first - it might be something recent). To be noted that I often use apt-get update / upgrade so don't really follow the 1-2-3-4-5 priorities in Mint Updater.

It would freeze the screen when mounting SD card, USB hard drive (USB 2.0 or 3.0) - mouse still working but no response (nothing can be clicked/open).
Only way to escape is reboot / sometimes ctrl + alt + f2 works, but coming back to cinnamon it says it doesn't work normally.
I initially thought it was a Nemo issue - but got the same issue when being on the desktop.

Available to give any expected details...

[Tony (buteido)]

When the problem occurs, I just switch to a tty and use kill -9 [ ID of cinnamon --replace]. Then CTRL+ALT+F8 to go back.

[xam85it (xam8re)]

It's really a problem for me.
I'm developing on a usb board, that each time it're-programmed, it's reboot. Each 3/4 usb reboot, cinammon hang.

[Johan Lundahl (yohan-lundahl)]

This happens for me too from time to time.

DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=17.1
DISTRIB_CODENAME=rebecca
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca"

On a Dell Precision M4600.

[Ryan S Kingsbury (ryanskingsbury)]

Affects me too - Mint 17.1 x64 with the 3.16 kernel.

In my case, sometimes inserting a USB stick results in a complete desktop freeze (no mouse input, CTRL ALT BACKSPACE doesn't work, etc.). I haven't been able to determine what combination of USB stick / filesystem / port triggers the problem.

[xam85it (xam8re)]

affect on HPZ800 also.