System crashes randomly when a terminal application is active

[Vianney Stroebel]

Since my upgrade to Kubuntu 16.10, the system crashes randomly when some applications are active: the screen becomes black and the whole system freezes, even the keyboard (no access to Ctrl + Alt + F1).

This only happens when some specific applications are active, whatever I may be doing in it. So far, this bug has been confirmed in several terminal applications (Konsole, Gnome Terminal, Terminator, QTerminal) as well as Calibre Viewer and Gwenview.

This is making my work very difficult : I have to restart my system and all my programming environment several times a day.

Graphic controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
Driver: i915

[Vianney Stroebel (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8-launchpad)]

The system freeze happens several times a day, usually after using Konsole for some time.

However it also happened once when Gwenview was active. Those are the only two KDE Frameworks 5 applications that I use (mostly Konsole), so it may be related.

It has never happened when another application was active (so when I don't use Konsole for a week, it never happens).

This issue is unrelated to CPU activity or RAM.

Vianney

[Chrisitan (the-doctor)]

Got the same problem when using my Lenovo T410. System freezes randomly, found no alarming lines in syslog except for missing i915 firmware.

W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin for module i915

Since I updated to zesty, it seems to happen less often.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Vianney Stroebel (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8-launchpad)]

Some news: the same crash has also happened several times while the Calibre Viewer window was active. So at the moment, Konsole and the Calibre Viewer, both QT applications, seem to trigger this bug.

Chrisitan (the-doctor), which application windows are active when your system crashes?

[Chrisitan (the-doctor)]

I was using Konsole every time the system crashed. Same thing happened when I was using dolphin with an active terminal. Gwenview might have been opened (in the background) as well.

I recently switched to QTerminal and have not had a single crash since then, not sure if it was fixed in recent updates.

[Chrisitan (the-doctor)]

Still happening, especially when using the Konsole-plugin with dolphin. Crashes do happen with QTerminal too, but less often. Is there anything I can log/analyze, since I do not have any clue why this is happening?

[Vianney Stroebel (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8-launchpad)]

Still happening on Zesty. I have to restart my machine several times a day if I'm using Konsole and I can't find a good replacement for it.

Same with Calibre Viewer.

This bug has been declared 7 months ago now. Can anyone help us?

At least, somebody more knowledgeable than me could suggest how we could investigate further. I don't even know where to start...

[Vianney Stroebel (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8-launchpad)]

It happens when using Gnome Terminal and Terminator too.

[Vianney Stroebel (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8-launchpad)]

I updated the bug description.