System freezes using Unity on IBM Thinkpad Z60m

[Cristian Mammoli]

Binary package hint: unity

Description: Ubuntu Natty (development branch)
Release: 11.04

Unity:
  Installed: 3.6.8-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 3.6.8-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.8-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

After a random time (30 minutes - 1 hour) the system hard freezes:
can't move mouse, can't switch to tty, can't send magic sysrq, can't ping the computer from network
This only happens when using unity, with a "ubuntu classic" session with compiz everything runs fine for many hours

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: unity 3.6.8-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.38-generic 2.6.38
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-7-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: compiz
DRM.card0.LVDS.1:
 status: connected
 enabled: enabled
 dpms: On
 modes: 1280x800 1280x800 1280x720 1152x768 1024x768 800x600 848x480 720x480 640x480
 edid-base64: AP///////wAkTXMjAAAAAAAPAQOAIRV4Cg8Ql1hSiCgjUFQAAAABAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBxxsAoFAgFzAwIDYAS88QAAAZJhcAoFAgFzAwIDYAS88QAAAZAAAADwCBCjKBCigUAQAyDAAAAAAA/gAxNTRXWDItVEwwMQogAMs=
DRM.card0.VGA.1:
 status: disconnected
 enabled: disabled
 dpms: On
 modes:
 edid-base64:
Date: Sun Mar 27 23:02:14 2011
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: natty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus: virtualbox-ose, 4.0.4, 2.6.38-7-generic, i686: installed
GraphicsCard:
 ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300] [1002:5460] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: IBM Device [1014:058d]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110324)
InstallationMedia_: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110324)
InstallationMedia__: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110324)
MachineType: IBM 2529F8G
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-7-generic root=UUID=d59c64b7-2b65-4bf1-b5be-61e2115606c6 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.38-generic 2.6.38
ProcVersionSignature__: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.38-generic 2.6.38
Renderer: Unknown
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 12/20/2005
dmi.bios.vendor: IBM
dmi.bios.version: 77ET54WW (1.14 )
dmi.board.name: 2529F8G
dmi.board.vendor: IBM
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: IBM
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnIBM:bvr77ET54WW(1.14):bd12/20/2005:svnIBM:pn2529F8G:pvrThinkPadZ60m:rvnIBM:rn2529F8G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 2529F8G
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad Z60m
dmi.sys.vendor: IBM
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.4git20110322-0ubuntu5
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.23-1ubuntu5
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.10.1-0ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6~3ubuntu11
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.0-0ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.14.0-4ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110107+b795ca6e-0ubuntu6

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

I created /etc/x11/xorg.conf with the following config:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "x300"
 Driver "radeon"
 Option "DRI" "off"
EndSection

And the system seems stable now: no freezes for 5-6 hours

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

This looks like more of a graphics driver bug that unity is triggering. marking incomplete until we hear back from X on the issue.

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

Hi, adding the xorg.conf option mitigated the issue but system still freezes a couple of times every day.
Sadly I didn't find a way to reproduce it but it often happens when I click with the "ubuntu" menu button on the bar or when I use <super> +w for the "expose" effect

The same effect in vanilla gnome (Ubuntu Classic session) never freezed the system.

Thanks

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

"can't move mouse, can't switch to tty, can't send magic sysrq, can't ping the computer from network"

These are more consistent with a kernel lockup rather than X or drm. With gpu lockups, typically the mouse still moves, sysrq still works, and you can ping and ssh the computer from the network.

Check in syslog or kern.log to see if you got a kernel OOPS or some such. Or do a dmesg in a terminal session and then reproduce the error and see if anything gets displayed there. Beyond that, the kernel team may have more specific tips.

[cgarre (cgarre)]

i have dell studio 1555 and i too see this, though in my case i can go to tty , and i can move mouse, just that the screen is sort of dead .. it refreshes well .. meaning coming back from tty it shows everything, as though its like an image. I can move my mouse but nothing responds !i am not sure how to give more debug info if something like that happens ? can i run crash reporter in command line (since i get into tty and my internet connection continues to work). Usually i get back by doing a sudo service gdm restart, but thats sort of like a logout login.

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

There is no way to reproduce or trigger the bug. Or at least i didnt find it. Dmesg and kern.log dont show any warning. I think the only sane way to debug would be through serial port logging. Too bad this is my work machine and I cant run around with 2 notebook for the whole day.

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

Ok, I hooked the notebook with my workstation with a usb to serial cable and configured rsyslog to send kern.* to ttyUSB0. Let's wait for the next freeze.
I would like to setup the kernel to directly send output to serial via the "console=ttyUSB0,38400n8" but the device isn't available at boot time. Do you know a way to set up kernel output to serial _AFTER_ boot (via /proc or something)?

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

The notebook crashed again and not a single line was logged. Any help is very appreciated.

[Cristian Mammoli (cristian-mammoli)]

bump...

[Samantha April Davis (samanthad)]

I have a Lenovo X120e and I'm also seeing this behavior! Machine is also an AMD system running a Radeon graphics card (in this case a 6310). Instability when running both the open source driver and AMD's Catalyst driver.

[Samantha April Davis (samanthad)]

I'm getting the same behavior on my X120e regardless of whether or not I'm running Unity or Gnome without effects. It just happened to me and a few seconds before the crash I got what appeared to be a band of interlaced images of what might have been miniature images of my screen (although I'm not sure, it was a repeated image, though) when I brought up the application menu in Unity. The output of the kernel panic did not write to the kernel log, unfortunately, but the computer held together just long enough to dump a panic on my screen. I faithfully copied what was on my screen down and proofread it so I can be reasonably sure that what I am presenting is accurate and that the machine code is bit perfect (there's a part where there are a lot of spaces which I can not verify the number of spaces exactly).

The computer hard-locked after what must have been less than a second after dumping the information.

[Samantha April Davis (samanthad)]

This is the kernel log for today to accompany the aforementioned screen dump.

Again, I'm almost certain this is not a Unity bug!

[Samantha April Davis (samanthad)]

>.< I should have mentioned the crash containing the flushed data happened on April 19th between 22:21:40 and 22:59:45

[Samantha April Davis (samanthad)]

Occurs in instances other than when Unity is running. Produces a kernel panic.

[Hendrik Schrieber (hennekn)]

What graphics driver do you use? I'm seeing this bug with a Radeon X1250 (also a Laptop model) using radeon-Driver. Unity-2D works fine, but 3D freezes.

[Nicolas Schweiger (nschw)]

This also affect me as 2011/05/06, I'm on a AMD64 x2 cpu with a Nvidia GTS 450 card. I'm getting random complete system freeze while using Unity, sometimes It will work fine even up to a day of uptime, sometimes it crash within few minutes or few hours and for no apparent reasons. No system freeze whatsoever using Ubuntu Classic and I have been using Ubuntu on this same machine since 8.04 and this only happen while using the Unity desktop.

[Ben Scholzen 'DASPRiD' (dasprid)]

I can confirm this bug on MSI M670 (GeForce Go 6100), running Unity with the Nuveou drivers (experimental 3D, since Unity requires it). Haven't tested with Gnome Classic yet. Freezes occur after 30 to 60 minutes,

[Reinis Ivanovs (dabas)]

I'm getting random system freezes like described here as well. Laptop model is Dell Latitude E5410, experienced no problems with 10.10 or 10.04. It usually happens at least once a day with no clear pattern. Mouse can be moved, but nothing responds and the screen is frozen.

[iBiryukov (ilya-live)]

Getting similar bug with my ATI Card.
The screen freezes. Then after about 5 seconds turns off and then everything reverts back to normal.
Occasionally, the system does the above but doesn't recover.

I didn't have this problem on versions prior to Natty.

[Gareth Stephens (f-launchpad-gstephens-fastmail-co-uk)]

I am also seeing similar/the same behaviour on a Dell Latitude D820 using the built in Intel Graphics. It is hard to tell exactly what causes it and to reproduce. It seems more likely to happen when running a java based GUI application (Oracle's SQL Developer) and seems to be coupled with less severe GUI crashes where the window manager crashes, I see the console for a few moments before gdm kicks off again. Session is lost and I have to log in again.

Using the unity interface is virtually unusable (frequent crashes) using previous "classic" interface, seems to help but is extremely frustrating to use.

Never a problem under 10.04.

[entonjackson (aj-mysc)]

I'm having random freezes on my Dell Vostro 1520 as well. I don't think it's a intel-graphics driver problem, as ati and nvidia card users are experiencing this problem as well.
hope this will be fixed sooner or later...

[Sebastian (sebastianhaselbeck)]

also random freezes (screen goes blank) on thinkpad edge 13 with ati/amd combo. open source drivers. both in unity and classic interface. REALLY annoying. if I had to rely on this machine for work I would have to return the computer

[Jason Smith (jassmith)]

This should be fixed with up to date compiz