[radeon] Screen freeze

[Robin]

This may be correlated to the move to Bionic Beaver(?) LTS, now 18.04.4. It may also be correlated to getting low on disk space on my system drive (50GB SSD) and putting pressure on swap space. e.g when system HDD <= 1GB. My secondary HDD is a 1TB USB spinning device that sometimes seems to go into sleep mode and then fails to rapidly respond to IO request or may be is in a 'hot IO' state. On my Bus I have a low capacity HDD that is essentially unused because it rarely comes ready when I boot. If it is partially alive it is conceivable that it might be chattering and so competing for IO interrupt handling bandwidth?

The problem only occurs when I have selected the desktop management tile from the 'side tray' and if I then shuffle or better align the windows inside one of the four desktops so as to stop them running into the neighbouring desktop area. Particularly, it seems to me, when at least one of the desktops is quite busy with windows open in it and the overlapped desktop has a few also. The fewer windows in total across the desktops the less likely it seems that rearranging a few will have any bad effect.

When the freeze occurs then 60%(?) of the time it ends in a 'big red switch' reboot. The cursor stays active but ineffective. Keyboard combinations, like Alt+W, will sometimes succeed in bringing up to full screen mode and active the desktop that was in focus and constitutes a recovery. Other times, and keys, will delete focussed windows in the focussed desktop, and Tab will move focus around the 4 desktops. SHIFT+Print Screen also executes but just takes the whole screen and dumps it somewhere I haven't yet located... with sound effect.

Hope this helps... I am not at fully at home with Ubuntu/Linux yet... having spent a lifetime on glasshouse legacy IBM mainframe field systems engineering. I am making myself more system disk space meanwhile, and while extract my old Maxtor. It would be nice if I didn't have to up my system disk to hundreds of GB!
best regards,
Rob

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: xorg 1:7.7+19ubuntu7.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-101.102-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-101-generic x86_64
.tmp.unity_support_test.0:

ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.15
Architecture: amd64
CompositorRunning: compiz
CompositorUnredirectDriverBlacklist: '(nouveau|Intel).*Mesa 8.0'
CompositorUnredirectFSW: true
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Thu Jun 4 11:31:56 2020
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: bionic
DistroVariant: ubuntu
ExtraDebuggingInterest: Yes
GpuHangFrequency: Several times a week
GpuHangReproducibility: Occurs more often under certain circumstances
GpuHangStarted: I don't know
GraphicsCard:
 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Trinity [Radeon HD 7480D] [1002:9993] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Trinity [Radeon HD 7480D] [1043:8526]
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-11-27 (1284 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-101-generic root=UUID=1d959d4a-ac83-43a5-8c0f-a6956d68c1f8 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=1
SourcePackage: xorg
Symptom: display
Title: Xorg freeze
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 10/10/2013
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 0802
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: A55BM-E
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev X.0x
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr0802:bd10/10/2013:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:rnA55BM-E:rvrRevX.0x:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.family: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.13.1+18.04.20180302-0ubuntu1
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.99-1ubuntu1~18.04.2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 19.2.8-0ubuntu0~18.04.3
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 19.2.8-0ubuntu0~18.04.3
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.19.6-1ubuntu4.4
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.10.5-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:18.0.1-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20171229-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.15-2
xserver.bootTime: Sat Aug 18 06:53:30 2018
xserver.configfile: default
xserver.errors:

xserver.logfile: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
xserver.version: 2:1.18.4-0ubuntu0.7
xserver.video_driver: radeon

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This detail:

> The cursor stays active but ineffective.

suggests that Xorg is still running and it's only the compositor (compiz/unity) that's having trouble.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Next time the freeze happens please:

1. Reboot.

2. Run:

   journalctl -b-1 > prevboot.txt

   and attach the resulting text file here.

[Robin (cyfahead)]

The system 'hung' on me again. Active cursor etc. but I didn't explore for fear of changing any status data.. just hit the button and rebooted after attempting PrtScrn [but can't find where that image got written]. Ran journalctl -b-1 > prevboot.txt which is attached here.

I was in the 4-way split desktop. Only 1 was active this time. It had 2 windows open in it. 1 was overlapping its desktop area (top-left) into the next below it. As i dragged that window down into the bottom left desktop area the system froze.

No contention for resources apparent this time.

[Robin (cyfahead)]

.. just in case it is relevant... my display is a bit of an anachronism. It is a old wide-screen AOC F22+ LCD Monitor.

[Robin (cyfahead)]

UPDATE: 11h41GMT Fri 12 Jun 2020 Rob Jarvis: Freeze occured again today, second time since original report. This time I was able to Alt+F2 and switch into the desktop in focus in the 4-part desktop 'palette' view. This killed the freeze. The freeze seems to be associated with 2 factors which may be related, or not:

1) a having desktop with windows which overlap out of the visible area. When swithcing into dektop palette mode the previously out of sight bits of the windows in the one desktop then show as overlapping into the adjacent desktops in the palette view (clearly all 4 are mapped into the same large pixel space).

If I try to tidy up the overlaps in the palette view I am likely to hit a freeze. If I return to the single desktop and tidy up the windows by reducing their size and ensure all fit into the active desktop, then return to the palette view, I can then shuffle the smaller windows from one desktop to another without hitting a freeze, unless...

2)... I drag a window diagonally, say from Top-left to bottom right, so that the subject window traverses more than 2 desktop areas. Then I am more leikely to see the freeze... it seems. If I drag a desktop completely from that top left to top right and then wholly from there to bottom right it seems to stay well behaved and doesn't freeze.. so far.
==> END OF UPDATE 11h41GMT Fri 12 Jun 2020

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xorg-server (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

I'm setting the status of this bug to 'Incomplete' as it's not seen any activity for some time. If this is still an issue when using a currently maintained release of Ubuntu then please let us know which one(s) otherwise this bug report can be left to expire in approximately 60 days time.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xorg-server (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]