Gnome3 desktop freeze in Mint 12 when using alt tab

[Brian]

Gnome 3 periodically freezes, and the desktop becomes mostly unresponsive. It appears to be intermittent, and related to alt-tab.

* Desktop freezes
* alt+tab dialog does not disappear
* No windows respond
* Ripple effect is frozen in upper left corner
* Buttons in toolbar (volume, power, monitor, etc) appear to activate when clicked, but no dialog appears
* One application had the "close window" icon that you see when hovering over an app in the overview screen
* Alt+F2, r successfully reloads desktop, even though no dialog appears.
* Ctrl+alt+backspace works

This appears to be a different issue than https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/891655, although commenters 1, 2, 3 in 891655 appear to be having the issue being reported here.

[kingtz (tzgorr)]

I just installed Mint 12 x64 (GNOME) tonight. Installed all the updates and am experiencing this issue. I have had to restart by computer 3 times in the last 3 or 4 hours now.

Just some things to note:
* I don't use the alt tab, I get frozen when I use the "Activities Overview" (by bringing my cursor to the top left corner) to switch between workspaces.
* Mouse, trackpad and keyboard are all unresponsive. Even REISUB doesn't work. I have to press the power button and hold down.
* I have NOT tried Alt+F2, r. Don't know if it works.
*I have NOT tried ctrl+alt+backspace either. I'll try these two next time it freezes again.

So yeah, I don't know if it's the same bug, but the symptoms are the same. I hope we find a fix soon or this OS is unusable for me if I need to restart my computer every hour.

[Torsten (thpost)]

I ve got a reproducible behaviour here:

* click 'Activities'
* in search field (upper right corner) type 's'
* screen flickers and does something
* click 'Activities' again
* type 's' in search field

leads to gnome freeze

OS: Linux Mint 12
Kernel: 3.0.0-16-generic (default)
GPU: Nvidia GForce 6600, driver version 295.20

[drey (inhuman-irk)]

I've read the duplicate bug thread, but there is no any information in it about freezes on Activities screen + 's' letter typing.
I'm experiencing the same behavior of Activities.
And at the same time I can see in console some errors in /var/log/syslog like these:
Jun 6 14:30:11 claw kernel: [215390.739808] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Jun 6 14:30:11 claw kernel: [215390.739810] ata3.00: error: { UNC }
Jun 6 14:30:11 claw kernel: [215390.874726] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jun 6 14:30:11 claw kernel: [215390.874741] ata3: EH complete
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528499] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528504] ata3.00: BMDMA stat 0x4
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528508] ata3.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528514] ata3.00: cmd 25/00:08:70:99:82/00:00:37:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528516] res 51/40:00:76:99:82/40:00:37:00:00/00 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528519] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Jun 6 14:30:13 claw kernel: [215393.528522] ata3.00: error: { UNC }
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660645] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660663] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660666] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660671] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660676] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660679] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660691] 37 82 99 76
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660696] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660703] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 37 82 99 70 00 00 08 00
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660714] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 931305846
Jun 6 14:30:14 claw kernel: [215393.660737] ata3: EH complete

[Marco (marcorestom)]

Im using MATE session and i SOLVED the ALT-TAB freeze problem by disabling ALT-TAB thumbnails. Control Center -> Windows -> "Disable Thumbnails in Alt-Tab"

Good luck!