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1b1ed1a
(Get the code!)
I have been seeing this problem with the nouveau driver for a number of years now. Switching to the proprietary nvidia driver solves the problem but I really don't want to do that thank you very much.
I have seen it on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint... and only with the nouveau driver. Currently running Yakkety with LXDE and seeing a few crashes every day. The symptoms are always the same:
1. The screen "freezes"
2. The keyboard becomes non-responsive - not even caps-lock lights up.
3. The mouse will still move, but not properly (see below).
I have three screens on a pair of GT 610 cards. When the system freezes the mouse pointer still moves around the primary display quite happily. Moving the mouse off that display onto one of the others causes the pointer to just stop dead until you move the mouse back onto that screen again. Like the mouse cursor will no longer move off the screen and gets trapped there.
All other screen activity is frozen - any animations in a web browser, any video playing, any cursor blinking in a terminal window - all frozen. It's just the mouse pointer that still moves.
All keyboard activity is dead. Pressing caps-lock or num-lock no longer illuminates the LEDs on the keyboard. Re-plugging the keyboard does nothing. No access to any VT for debugging.
You can still SSH in, though there are no real clues in the logs as to what is going on (though I will check next time it happens). One curious thing - if you SSH in and do a reboot it gets part way through the shutdown sequence and just hangs completely. The only way out is to force a power-off with the power-button-
This is obviously something to do with the nouveau driver since I don't see any problems with the proprietary nvidia driver, and I have never seen it happen on my intel graphics laptop. Neither have I seen it on my nvidia graphics netbook - so chances are it is restricted to just a subset of cards or card combinations (maybe because there are two cards in there?)
This is a bug that has been lingering for a number of years and really does need clobbering somehow. We need to find a common denominator. Create a list of all the known affected cards and setups. See if we can find something that is common between all the affected setups.