Lenovov L480 crashes

[Dario Kampkaspar]

[Sorry for not using ubuntu-bug. Selecting “other problem” continues as if it were “Display”, the option “Display” gives an error; continuing after “other problem” and “crash”, I end up in a dialog saying “text”]

I have a Lenovo L480, about 1 year old. I originally installed Ubuntu 19.04 as dual boot alongside the pre-installed Windows 10.

From the start, I had problems with the system freezing at random points. Originally, that happened about once a day.
Cursory inspection seemed to suggest that it was gnome-related, so I switched over to Kubuntu 19.10 (fresh install) to see whether that was indeed the case. This combination ran fairly stable. Also updating to Kubuntu 20.04 initially did not change this stability.

In the past few days, though, crashes have reappeared and are becoming more and more frequent: I had to start typing this message 3 times.
These crashes seem to appear at random (i.e. there is no single program that causes them, no single interaction or fixed system uptime) but there are distinguishabe patterns:

1) the system completely freezes at some point (that may be when doing noting, typing or moving the mouse);
2) one or more processes spike to 100% CPU core usage, keyboard and mouse input is initially still accepted; these processes often are (but not limited to) Chrome, Firefox or a Java application. There are sub-patterns:
    1) KDE is affected, too, so while I can move the mouse and type in the last active window, I cannot switch to any other window or interact with the panel; this curiously is most often the case, when the crash trace in `syslog` mentions that programme.
    2) KDE is slightly affected in that I can switch to other windows and interact with them but not with the panel (in this case, sometimes I get a notification of a plasmashell crash).
    3) I can open the application launcher and try to reboot; in most cases the system will hang trying to reboot:
        1) The system completely freezes when trying to reboot (at different stages).
        2) It produces some stack traces (at times seemingly in a loop) to console after exiting X or Wayland.
        3) It produces one stack trace, keyboard input is possible but nothing else happens (i. e. Ctrl-Alt-Fx works but no other keyboard input is accepted).

I have been booting into Windows at several points, e.g. to use the Lenovo tools to install updates. I have not encountered any crashes or freezes in Windows. I also ran Lenovo’s system checks (including full RAM check) which reported no hardware problems.

The incidents are not related to external hardware and can happen with or without external USB or monitor (any combination) and both on AC and battery.
Also, they have occurred both when conntected to a WiFi, not connected at all and connected to LAN (did not check whether WiFI was active at that point, too).

The amount of information in `/var/log/syslog` differs heavily. In case of pattern 1), no error messages immediately before the end of logging can be found. In case of pattern 2), there may be longer traces, but occasionally even they get interrupted in the middle (in the attached syslog, see 2020-06-16T12:33:56).

As these patterns produce different output to syslog and different programmes are affected for pattern 2, I have attached the complete `/var/log/syslog` which contains several occurrences today (I have not had a clean restart today, all cases were hard resets).

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System info:

Machine type: Lenovo L480, 20LS0025GE
BIOS date: 2020-02-18, version R0QET61W (1.38)
(K)Ubuntu 20.04, upgraded from (K)Ubuntu 19.10 on 2020-05-19

dario@dario-ThinkPad-L480:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 (rev 07)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 08)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th/8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)
00:15.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #2 (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #8 (rev f1)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f1)
00:1d.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #11 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point LPC Controller/eSPI Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (4) I219-V (rev 21)
03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Lenovo Device 0005
04:00.0 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. SD/MMC Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)

dario@dario-ThinkPad-L480:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 009: ID 2cb7:0210 FIBOCOM L830-EB-00
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 06cb:009a Synaptics, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04f2:b604 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Integrated Camera (1280x720@30)
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:9540 Alcor Micro Corp. AU9540 Smartcard Reader
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

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If you need anything else, I'll of course try to provide as much information as possible.
Thanks id advance for looking into it.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1883740/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Dario Kampkaspar (dariok)]

Several more crashes have occurred since I originally opened this report. If any segfault gets logged, it’s always different programs, Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird, some Java program, KWin – the list is extensive.

For now, I'll switch back to Windows for work but I'm happy to test anything needed to clear up this issue.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. If you are still experiencing this problem and to help us find the cause of the crash please follow these steps:

1. Look in /var/crash for crash files and if found run:
    ubuntu-bug YOURFILE.crash

Then tell us the ID of the newly-created bug.

2. If step 1 failed then look at https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/ID where ID is the content of file /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id on the machine. Do you find any links to recent problems on that page? If so then please send the links to us.

3. If step 2 also failed then apply the workaround from bug 994921, reboot, reproduce the crash, and retry step 1.

Please take care to avoid attaching .crash files to bugs as we are unable to process them as file attachments. It would also be a security risk for yourself.

I'm setting this bug to "Incomplete" awaiting further responses regarding any other bug reports that might be raised.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]