(COMPIZ ???) Laptop with 8.10 crashes randomly CAPS lock flashes...

[Don Zavitz]

Just using the basic system I encounter random crashes, I have no other software besides a fresh install. When the system finally hard locks (I can't restart X with ctrl-alt-backspace) or anything...only the CAPS lock key on my laptop starts to flash... I have included my dmesg

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

Ive run into this twice recently my screen is blank, caps lock light blinks, also my wireless light was blinking. Every time it has happened to me I was away from the computer. Ive experienced another system crash with slightly different symptoms, namely that when I get back to my computer everything has disappeared from my screen except the desktop background and the mouse which can be moved. This is reported at bug#284057.

Is this a kernel crash because its a full system lockup? If so it should be marked that.

What else can I do to help diagnose this?

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

i was asking around the irc chan today and i got a "get rid of pulseaudio" comment, the person didn't even ask me any questions, just a straight out get rid of pulseaudio, its always pulseaudio's fault, use alsa....well being sceptical i went to system>preferences>sound and even though i had some devices set to auto, i set all of my audio devices to alsa...i've been going for 7 hours now on the laptop...

my problems were also happening when i was away...which made me think it was resuming from hiberanate...but after i switched all my audio to alsa, i've come out of hibernate maybe 8 times today...so I don't know where this goes from here...but maybe thats all it takes is simply getting rid of pulseaudio

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

How often does this happen for you? It is so infrequent in my case that I
don't believe I can even accurately reproduce it. Makes diagnosis pretty
tough. Any idea what information I should collect after next time it
happens?

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

well for the last couple of days i would say every 3-4 maybe less hours...i also have been trying to reproduce it but aswell its hard when it only happens when your idle...next time it crashes on you, read over your /var/log/messages and try to find what time the crash was and look back the last few lines, im trying to look in mine, its hard its a 2gb log haha but im gonna try and see if theres anything related to pulseaudio in there

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

i couldn't find anything in /var/log/messages related to pulseaudio crashing my system but im going on 9 hours of on/off use going in/out of hibernation so i don't know if i can confirm this bug at this time or what...maybe wait a few more hours and see if it crashes

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

ok i made it 10 hours before it hard locked again on me...so i went back to just before the crash, and there's absolutley nothing to look at just a bunch of ----MARK------'s so...i have posted my /var/log/messages and dmesg maybe someone else can take a look at this and tell me whats causing these crashes? or am i even looking in the right places to try and track this down?

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

disabled compiz to see if that is causing the problem...

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

running 12 hours now with compiz disabled

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

billybigrigger@billybigrigger-laptop:~$ uptime
 20:45:52 up 1 day, 9:40, 2 users, load average: 2.50, 2.27, 2.12

I wish i could give more info on this??? compiz disabled and running for over a day, I usually don't run my laptop this long so I guess this problem is solved, no desktop effects it is...

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

Im still unable to reproduce this reliably I tried a fair amount today and only had it happen once. I have not tried with compiz off. Its too bad we have not attracted the attention of someone more knowledgeable yet. If it continues to appear to be a compiz bug at some point we should mark it as affecting compiz and report it upstream to the compiz bugtracker. I don't know at what point his makes sense.

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

well i havent had a problem with compiz turned off...and yes i agree with you, why isnt someone more knowledgeable looking at this????

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

Well for one thing the number of bug reports its tremendous just for example
the number of bugs reported between november 5th (yesterday) and 11:10
november 6th (today) is over 500. I would imagine developers have specific
tasks to do and very few if any are payed to fix our problems its not like
we have paid for a support contract. I think few developers spend time
looking through bugs. They let the volunteer triagers categorize bugs and
weed out the junk waiting until the particular package they develope on is
marked for a bug. This is why if we new it was deffinately a compiz problem
it would make alot of sense to marke it as affects compiz because then a
compiz developer would at least be notified. This is my very rough
understanding of how the system works. I could easily be wrong. I think its
amazing this even exists where anyone can sign up to launchpad and
immediately start participating however they are comfterbul. Nothing like
this exists to my knowledge for windows or mac.

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

well there's a few compiz updates today...Thursday Nov 6 2008

compiz compiz-core compiz-gnome compiz-plugins compiz-wrapper

im gonna update and try and get normal desktop effects going...to see if i get a crash again...

maybe we should start to diagnose this ourselves, compare hardware...something i agree with you on what your saying about the dev's not getting to look at this, obviously more important...but your right, maybe if we can narrow down to what package is causing the problem, it might get some more attention...

also ill post my lspci i guess maybe its a hardware issue?!?!?!? but no messages or dmesg errors so i dunno, might help anyway...

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

enabled compiz after updating and had a hard lock 2 hours later...I'm going to say this is directly related to compiz, at least on my machine. I don't see how it wouldn't be, had the laptop running for over a day without compiz and then after 2 hours of being enabled, my system hard locks??? :P

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

I installed compizconfig-settings-manager then opened it via System>Prefs>CompizConfig Settings Manager then enabled the Compiz Crash Handler plugin...logging to my ~/compiz dir I created...hope to get something out of the crash handler as to get a better idea of what's happening.

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

im still not able to reproduce this Im getting the other system freeze I mentioned above a few times a day below are my lspci and lsusb. From your reports this does seem to be compiz related.

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

I'm having the same issue - fresh install of 8.10 on a Lenovo X61s. The system will randomly freeze anywhere from 5 minutes to as long as 7 hours.

I've disabled Visual Effects, rebooted, with no change in behavior.

I've uninstalled compiz and compiz-core, rebooted, with no change in behavior.

There's nothing in the logs that I can identify as related.

Can anyone suggest anything I can do to help diagnose this issue? It's critical for me.

Thanks!

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

LinuxLars: we are in the same boat you are...trying to diagnose...

btw what arch are you guys running?? x86 or x64??? i had x86 installed on my dual core while this was happening...running a clean install of 8.10 x64 now to see if this is still happening...

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

BTW Elias, what kind of laptop do you have? your hardware looks very similar to mine, HP dv9700

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

Its a thinkpad x61 7675cto im running 64 bit ubuntu.

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

may i ask if you've uncovered anything else? i haven't had any problems so far with this clean x64 install...going on 6 hours now with desktop effects set to extra in System>Preferences>Appearance using the NVIDIA 177 restricted driver...i wish i could track down these crashes in a log file...but every log i've scoured i've come up dry...:(

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

We're running x86. Odd - and I feel a little silly - I hadn't thought of running the 64 bit version. My longest run without a lockup was around 7 hours. Keep me posted if the 64 bit continues to work.

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

well according to Elias it's still a problem in x64, he's been running it the whole time...

btw...

billybigrigger@laptop:~/.gimp-2.6/gradients$ uptime
 22:37:37 up 7:37, 2 users, load average: 0.22, 0.30, 0.31

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

I'm a little concerned that "affects compiz" might be sending the team down the wrong path in looking for a solution. My system locks up on me even after compiz is fully removed.

I also note that on the same machine, Fedora 9 works fine, even with compiz running.

Fedora kernel: 2.6.25-14.fc9.i686

In the forums, this appears to be related to the kernel and wireless driver:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=968792

To quote the significant solution:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
System lock-ups with Intel 4965 wireless
The version of the iwlagn wireless driver for Intel 4965 wireless chipsets included in Linux kernel version 2.6.27 causes kernel panics when used with 802.11n or 802.11g networks. Users affected by this issue can install the linux-backports-modules-intrepid package, to install a newer version of this driver that corrects the bug. (Because the known fix requires a new version of the driver, it is not expected to be possible to include this fix in the main kernel package.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have to have my laptop configured and running for a meeting Thursday-Friday, so I'll have to wait until Monday the 17th for testing.

Cheers!

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

I of course, in a surge of confidence, installed 8.10 64-bit Sunday. Patience is just not my thing.

However, after updating, and then adding intrepid backports to the software source, and updating again, my 8.10 system has been up now for just over 16 hours - a record.

I'm hopeful that at least for me, this fixes things.

I'll post as soon as if locks ups again, or if it doesn't, in a couple of days.

Cheers!

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

16 hours and 52 minutes. Then a freeze up. Rats.

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

I misread the "solution" - I thought adding backports to the software source was the issue. In Synpatic Manager, there's also a linux-backports-modules-intrepid. I just installed that. Stay tuned.

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

Different user, same story.

Specs:

Ubuntu 8.10 with the 2.6.27-8-generic on a Lenovo IdeaPad Y510. This is an absolute show-stopper for me; I've had it freeze up on me numerous times while writing documents. Today it happened twice, and I lost my work -- yes, I autosaved, but OO.org 3.0's autosave and autorecovery doesn't work quite like it's name suggests. So I've taken to frantically saving my work every 30 seconds to make sure I don't lose something that might prove important.

Symptoms are the same: I'll be working along, and usually somewhere between 30-180 minutes in, a hard freeze; the wireless and caps lock lights flash, nothing works, and I have to power down with the power button, which must be playing hell with my hard drive.

I'm attaching my dmesg.log, dmesg.0.log, lspci-vvnn.log, and messages from today (Nov. 17). I'm also going to try removing the entire pulseaudio system; I seem to remember that being a problem in 8.04, and I haven't removed it yet, even though I don't use it.

One thing: Could this be a NetworkManager issue? Is it a wireless thing? The one thing I notice is that this seems to occur a lot when I'm on my university's open wireless network (since the new NetworkManager can't connect to the secure network anymore). It doesn't occur nearly as much on my WPA2 home network.

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

I was just on ubuntuforums and found an extremely long thread discussing a bug similar if not identical to this. The link is http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=832383&highlight=flash+64+alpha&page=3

There are many already filed bugs mentioned through out the thread the only one I looked into is bug#244429. It is possible that these two bugs are duplicates of each other.

[Elias K Gardner (zorkerz)]

The link above is slightly incorrect sending you to the third page of responses beginning of the thread is at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=832383&highlight=flash+64+alpha&page

post #52 provides links to a number of launchpad bugs there are many other links and mentions through out the thread

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

Just wanted to say that after removing pulseaudio, things seemed to work on my network at home. But again, once I got on the insecure network at my university, it froze right up -- about 2 minutes after booting up. I had Firefox and OpenOffice 3.0 open, but I'm almost positive now it's a NetworkManager issue.

[Evan Carroll (evancarroll)]

I can verify this on lenovo's r61i and x60s. Computer lockup with flashing caps-lock button. Did not happen in 8.04, so far fruitless in debugging or reproducing.

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

I've rolled back to 8.04. Everything I've tried with 81.0 results in a system freeze with the caps lock flashing randomly between 3 minutes and 8 hours.

Using a Lenovo X61s.

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

Lenovo folk, can you post your wireless card specs? I'm further under the impression that this is an Intel 3945/NetworkManager issue, and if our cards are all the same, it might be worth filing a different bug.

[Ken C (kenneth-chenis)]

I see this issue all the time too - but ONLY when using my wireless - compiz works fine for days on end but when I go wireless, i'm usually locked up in a few minutes to a few hours. Lenovo T61P with an Intel PRO/Wireless 4965

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

Yep -- it's specifically an issue with the 4965, and can be a problem for the 3945. That's in the "Other Known Issues" at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810.

Here is what's working for me:

I removed every backport, but I didn't purge them. Then I commented out all by the 2.6.27-7-generic kernel in my /boot/grub/menu.lst.

That kernel, at least in my case, doesn't have any hard locks. I know the backports module is supposed to take care of the hard locks, but it also kills my wireless; with the backports installed, no networks show up in NetworkManager, and when I try to modprobe it, it spits an error. So the fix introduces another problem -- wireless can't lock up your machine if it doesn't work, can it. Sort of like burning the village to save it.

[Don Zavitz (dzavitz)]

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)

billybigrigger@laptop:/var/log$ uptime
 15:44:20 up 1 day, 14:13, 2 users, load average: 2.26, 2.09, 2.10

i didnt have a lock up, but decided to install linux-backports-modules-intrepid anyway since i have the 4965, btw i havent experienced any lock ups for a while, over a day uptime on my laptop

installing the backport now

[Petri Partanen (petr1200)]

I have this similar crash several times a day.

HP G7000 laptop, crash happens when I touch the touchpad and try to move the cursor. Caps lock light starts to blink and the computer no longer responds to anything. It happened several times when I booted with the LiveCD and moved the cursor (Compiz is not installed by default?).

[LinuxLars (lwilson-casadelnorte)]

My Lenovo lspci output is attached. Certainly sounds like the wireless. Has someone testing a wire-connected 8.10? (I'm needing my laptop in production for another couple of weeks).

Cheers!

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

Okay, so I had a bit of a breakthrough today.

The Problem
Like many of you, I've been getting some random lock-ups; kernel panic with a hard freeze I could only end with a hard reset. This seems had something to do with the wireless card, iwl3945 -- it really didn't like one of the networks at my university, and whenever I got on that network, it crushed my system.

I read in a number of places that in order to fix this, you needed to install linux-backports-modules-intrepid. Okay, why not. But that introduced the other problem; the hard freezes may have stopped, but it broke wireless. No networks could be seen, and the module couldn't be modprobed. Of course it fixed the problem -- how can the wireless card bring down the system if it's broke?

Removing the backports fixed the wireless, but left the freeze problem.

The problem has persisted up to the most recent kernel, which jumped to 2.6.27-10-generic in my updates, skipping 2.6.27-9-generic.

The Fix
After some more research, I found some references to "proposed" as a possible culprit, although I couldn't find enough to tell me what they meant. So I experimented. I commented out the proposed repositories in my sources.list and did all the updates and autocleans..

The first thing I noticed was that the 2.6.27-10-generic kernel was no longer available, but the 2.6.27-9-generic was. I added the 2.6.27-9-generic kernel, made sure I had the backports installed, the headers, restricted modules, all that stuff, and rebooted.

AND WIRELESS WAS THERE. AND IT WAS GOOD.

So far no freezes (although it's a U.S. holiday and I'm not on my university's network), wireless is working fine, and everything seems happy. I ran this laptop for over 18 hours now without a problem.

So if you're having any hardware woes, consider commenting out the intrepid-proposed lines, re-installing some things, and it may solve some of your issues.

[SlaveToSoftware (mike-killoran)]

You might want to see if this bug applies to you:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta/+bug/300693

This is occurring on Thinkpad's. Mine is a T61. The network card is (just type 'lspci' in a shell):

Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

[Scott Howard (showard314)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release (maybe live CD)? Thanks in advance.

There seem to be a few others with this bug, so before sending it to developers can you include the following files (just to make sure an error isn't occuring somewhere):
~/.xsession-errors
 /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and the output of lspci -vvnn (to determine hardware).

[Scott Howard (showard314)]

From a reporter:

 Scott - thank you for asking. And I am so sorry about the delay. Vacation
and work crises got in front of this.

It seems to have cleared for me - but I have Visual Effects disabled (and
it's not letting me enable them - maybe I removed something I shouldn't
have).

I have attached the files you requested.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

This was never a compiz problem (caps lock flashing means kernel panic) and seems to be fixed now, closing bug.