Mouse/video driver conflict causing crash

[shanen (Shannon Jacobs)]

This is the same bug I reported earlier as the white screen of death:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/159594

In that report, I speculated that it might be Firefox-related, but now I'm pretty certain that it is not related to Firefox, but is most visible there because that's the main application I use on the afflicted machine.

The crash usually results in a totally white screen, though I have seen at least one case of a bar code like pattern in the lower right, and one case where the entire display was striped with various colors. In every case the machine is completely hosed. There is nothing to be done but cut the power and reboot. Near as I can recall, the fan is always running when it is in that state. I hope that is not symptomatic of any thermal problem or related to the crash, but at least the machine hasn't started smoking (yet).

I have not been able to find any particular stimulus that makes the crash reproducible. However, I am fairly sure it is related to mouse movements and that the crash can only happen when the mouse is moving. The visible display (of the white screen) may be related to a driver conflict, but that's also kind of speculative. However, I strongly suspect the problem is related to window-focus problems the machine exhibits pretty often. These are normally recoverable events, but I suspect the crash is a case when the same root problem is not caught at the recoverable condition, but just goes all the way to death.

The frequency of the crash is around once per day, though sometimes I won't see it for several days, and other days there may be two of them. I don't recall seeing more than two in a short period, but it's already to the point where I feel I can't rely on the machine for any serious work in Linux--it can crash at any time.

As noted in the other bug report, I'm looking for any kind of diagnostic data or some way to make the bug reproducible.

The afflicted machine is my only Sharp running Linux, and is also the only one with an AMD CPU. Various other distinctions, including a TV tuner (which I'm not trying to use from the Linux side).

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

thanks for reporting! could you appach any detailled information (logs?) to help track down the problem?

[shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen)]

Most of my comments about this bug (which still hasn't gone away) are in the other bug report. However, as regards your question here, I have been unable to find any logs that contain any useful information about what has gone wrong. Basically, that mean means I went back after crashes and searched in all of the log files listed in the log viewer. I looked at the events just before the crash for anything that seemed to be relevant, and I also looked at the logs of the next boot to see if there was anything that might have been a correction for a problem from the crash. I haven not been able to recognize anything that seemed to be significant or related.

Are there some other logs to look for? Is there some special kind of information I should be searching for?

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

i'd definitely suggest to merge these two bug reports. put all information from here over there and mark this one as a duplicate!

could you try to generate system load (watch some hi-res-video or two at one time) and have a look if it makes things better or worse?

[shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen)]

I don't understand the system well enough to know how to merge or close bugs, but I don't think there is much new information in this bug report that needs to be preserved in the other one... The original bug report was based on a feeling that the underlying bug might be related to Firefox, but at the time I created this one, I was inclined against that theory...

I can't get any definitive evidence either way. I suppose right now I'm back to the Firefox-related theory, but my observations are just too tentative. This is in small-scale statistics. For example, I haven't seen the crash in several days now, but there are times when I'll see it every few hours.