Freezes/breaks GUI on Ubuntu 18.04

[Tim]

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver a couple of days ago.

I used sudo apt-get install indicator-multiload to install SLI.

I ran indicator-multiload. A tiny icon appeared in the menu area.

I right-clicked on it, selected preferences, and then adjusted the width of the indicator. Didn't seem to work (number in preferences increased, but size of indicator didn't seem to). Added the option for disk activity — got a text readout.

About 10 seconds later — while continuing to look through the preferences — my entire GUI locked up. I couldn't do anything except move the mouse.

Didn't know about REISUB at the time, so had to do a hard reboot.

When the system came back up, it entered the GUI for about a second (I got to see the desktop for that long) before automatically exiting the GUI and going back to the Login screen. If I logged back in the system would hang at a blank purple screen. This was repeatable.

Booting into the CLI via GRUB, and issuing sudo apt-get purge indicator-multiload restored the GUI to a functioning state.

Reinstalling indicator-multiload resulted in 1 sec GUI failure (auto kickout to Login screen) as before.

Not sure where to go or what to try from here.

***********************
Please, remove indicator-multiload from archive, as we now have a better gnome-shell suite.
***********************

[George Hopkins (george-hopkins)]

I experience similar issues as reported above. At the moment, I can't reproduce the GUI lockup (I had that earlier though). However, the GUI feels slow. gnome-shell and indicator-multiload need almost 20% of the CPU.

I attached an excerpt of the syslog while indicator-multiload is running.

[dino99 (9d9)]

You should not use that old 'indicator-multiload' but the now well integrated 'gnome-shell-extensions' & 'gnome-shell-shell-extension-system-monitor' (all from archive), then activate them via 'gnome-tweaks'

[dino99 (9d9)]

oops,
not 'gnome-shell-shell-extension-system-monitor' but 'gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor'

[Tim (t69)]

Thanks for the suggestion dino99. I installed https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/ and while it doesn't display system load it does display cpu, gpu, network, disk, and even thermals. All-in-all a nice little extension. Thanks!

[German Palacios (gfpalacios)]

Confirmed. I had the same behaviour. After installing ubuntu 18.04, then the system indicator multiload, an infinite loop login came up. I had to uninstall the indicator to get a successful login.

[Nenad Mitic (nenad-mitic)]

Same. Just installed 18.04, and indicator-multiload kept me in the login loop. Had to uninstall in maintenance mode

[michelf41 (michel-franckart)]

Kubuntu 18.04 on amd64 freezes now and then for me too. Haven't found any correlation yet.

[acss (alexandre-css)]

Thank you dino99, 'gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor' (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/) works fine and it seems to be a good replacement for indicator-multiload.

[Alexandre Verri (averri)]

I have installed the Ubuntu 18.04 and it's impossible to use the system, it's freezing constantly. I was using Ubuntu 17.10 with no issues. My laptop is a MSI GS60 Ghost Pro.

[László Tóth (premissa72)]

Confirmed. My system freezes randomly. I used gnome, but the problem occured extremely frequently. Now I am using XFCE and the freeze have decresed but exists. The system stops and about half minute will be usable again.
I think it correlates to high cpu usage.

[Manoj Paul (manojpaul2012)]

I have the same problem. UI seems unusable randomly.

[Marc D. Tessier (marctessier)]

Same issue here as well. I had no problems under 17.10. After doing a fresh install of 18.04.1, I started having repeated system lock ups and freezes. Fiddling with anything in the Settings app seems to increase the chances of a lockup, but I haven't been able to correlate it to anything substantial. The lockups require a hard reboot to resolve.
I have a 2017 Razer Blade laptop.

[j de lima (jdelima307-ziggo)]

same issue here. my computer started freezing randomly when i use google translate since 13:00h NL time today.
this did not happen before today. i upgraded from 16.04 some three days ago.

[Yating (syscl)]

Same issue on my Dell Precision M3800, there's no such an issue on Ubuntu 16.04. I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04.1 and upgrading the kernel to 4.15.0-36 right after the installation finish, but the system still freezes randomly. Sometimes the Gnome 3.28 will freeze at all and then fall back to the login screen (asking for a re-login), and then later on, kernel panic on CPU. I have no idea why this will happen.

[FontsDeSacalm (sacalm)]

Ubuntu 18.04 fresh install, with multiple gnome extensions.

Randomly freezes GUI, only mouse cursor is responsive. ALT+F2 is also not working, but with CTL+ALT+F4 you can access terminal. This happens usually when using opera/firefox, or when watching some video at full screen, but I still don't have a reproducible pattern.

With TOP I see that gnome-shell is consuming 100% of CPU with high PID. I tried to open gedit and says that GTK is not available.

So seems that problem comes from gnome interface, I don't know how to extract more data like extensions use, errors, logs etc., so if someone tells how to do a correct report I will do it.

Intel Core I5-3570 16GB
Kernel 4.15.0-38-generic

[Dmitry (b1azer)]

Hi,

I'm experiencing the same issue on desktop and laptop. First I thought the problem with my hardware. But after making fresh install on Dell laptop, I'm experiencing the same issue.

The GUI freezes completely except for mouse cursor. If I wait for a few minutes there is a chance it will unfreeze. CTRL+ALT+F2 is not working for me.

I installed latest updates but nothing seems to work.

[Dmitry (b1azer)]

I just wanted to point out that I did not install indicator-multiload or any extensions.

[Nick Rowan (nnrowan)]

I am having the same issue with 18.04LTS/Gnome several times a week: Everything freezes except mouse cursor. Time in the status bar freezes, tooltips don't show up. SSH works and the system seems to be healthy otherwise. Can switch CapsLock/NumLock on the keyboard, but otherwise Keyboard isn't responsive. Ctrl+Alt+F2 doesn't work. REISUB combo works

[Dmitry (b1azer)]

After inspecting more carefully, I believe it may be related to memory limit. I have 8GB of RAM on both machines and I usually have a lot of tabs open. I noticed that memory usage is above norm prior to freeze (around 95%).

[Nick Rowan (nnrowan)]

@Dmitry: I have 32 GB of memory on my laptop and 16 GB on desktop. It does not happen with Kubuntu or Cinnammon over Ubuntu, or Fedora. Only pure Ubuntu (don't remember the name of their Gnome 3 fork).

[jambyc (jambyc)]

Any luck resolving this issue?

[ww (wegwerp)]

Happened to me just now while resizing the width of the graphs, froze after a few seconds, then entered into a login loop. Could fix it with CTRL-ALT-F2, login, then 'apt-get purge multiload-indicator'. Had the login-loop happened some time later, I would not have associated the problem with the indicator app, and I would have never been able to fix it myself, so this this would have effectively bricked my laptop. Please fix or disable the app before it does more damage.

[Gitau Harrison (gitauharrison)]

The regular momentary freezing I experience on my Ubuntu 18.04 is so annoying!! I cannot base it on anything substantial. I don't know how to even fix it once and for all, except being forced to reboot my laptop every time it happens.

[David Herzog (dherzogbh)]

This happens to me too.
I had top running:
Reason for this Ubuntu 18.04 freeze seems to be indicator process...
Top line:
COMMAND:indicator-+ PR:20 NI:0 VIRT:29,255g RES: 0,014t SHR:216 $CPU5% %MEM:94,2
This indicator process floods my memory... No way to stop it after login!

[Tomislav (hefest)]

Dino says:

> You should not use that old 'indicator-multiload' but the now well integrated 'gnome-shell-extensions' & 'gnome-shell-shell-extension-system-monitor' (all from archive), then activate them via 'gnome-tweaks'

I disagree. I wouldn't have wasted my time if it had not been available: it should either work or not be available.

Furthermore, the Gnome system-monitor extension at https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/ doesn't work for me. It says:

"Dependencies missing, please install libgtop, Network Manager and gir bindings..." (and this in a very unfriendly, can't copy/paste modal dialogue!)

I have installed all the dependencies, but the plugin doesn't seem to work.

[Chuck (okcrum)]

I aggree with Tomislav. It's still broken in 20.04. If there's no intent to upgrade or fix it, then it should be removed from available packages.

[bsy (bennet-yee)]

I think I just ran into this -- on 22.04, no less.

After I increase the display width, the GUI locked up, the CPU fan went to max speed, and I could not get to a text-mode console because Ctr-Alt-Fx were unresponsive.

Hard power cycled. Logged in. The moment the GUI came up, the CPU fan went to max speed and everything was unresponsive. No mouse tracking, etc, just like before.

Hard power cycled. Ran `dconf dump /de/mh21/indicator-multiload/` to a file, edited the `width uint16 = 3xx` value back down to `100`, and then I was able to log on.

Since multiload was still a weird square icon and not displaying useful data, I just got rid of it. Will try to see if the gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor suggested above.