[conspire] Mysterious freeze-ups (was: Happy New Preferred Application!)

Tue Jan 12 21:47:16 PST 2021

Roger's Dell XPS tower + 27 inch 2560x1440 display
 o Xubuntu 20.04 (updated again today)
 o dual boot with Win10 which I use mostly and has not been freezing
 o two keyboards

System details
-----------------------
$ uname -a
Linux roger-XPS-8700 5.4.0-58-generic #64-Ubuntu SMP
 Wed Dec 9 08:16:25 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107
 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] (rev a2)

Settings > Display
2560x1440 60Hz

Settings > Additional Drivers
Using recommended nvidia-driver-460

$ modinfo nvidia | grep ^version:
version:        460.32.03

Nvidia.com (I drilled into Linux drivers) release date for driver v. 460.32
 is Jan 07, 2021
 So hopefully this driver has the security patches Rick mentioned.

Two keyboards
 Dell USB keyboard
 Datahand keyboard (connected via PS/2 to USB adapter)
--------------------------

*Freeze* happened again soon after restarting with that new Nvidia driver.
Shucks.

Caps-lock LED on my regular keyboard did not light up when I hit
caps-lock there during the freeze.

Caps-lock LED on my Datahand keyboard does light up during the freeze,
but maybe Datahand is weird that way. It is self aware or something.

Why two keyboards at once? Datahand happened to me like 20 years ago
and now I don't know how to type on anything else, unfortunately. I
use the regular keyboard to control my Minecraft avatar. I just plug
both the Datahand and the regular keyboard into separate USB ports.
Works fine on Win10. Maybe not so fine on Linux?

To eliminate the two keyboad factor from the freeze puzzle I have
unplugged the regular keyboard from the USB ports for now.

So far no more freeze. So far...

Let's see how the evening gets on without the regular keyboard.

Any idea if having two keyboards connected to my computer via USB at
the same time could actually cause system freeze up?

Thanks you guys for your interest and tips!

Roger         *a navel orange is seedless; that's why it's got a navel*
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit)#Navel_oranges

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 2:54 AM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>
> Changing your Subject header, which was cute but uninformative.
>
> Quoting rogerchrisman at gmail.com (rogerchrisman at gmail.com):
>
> > Oops, crashed again. Display and input freeze. No display corruption,
> > just frozen in time.
>
> Well, that's definitely _different_ from the X11 display semi-dissolving
> into little blocky things (or squares or wavy lines, or whatever it was
> you said).  But it's also difficult to nail down to a root cause.  I
> tend to think something like that indicates dodgy hardware that suddenly
> has a coronary and results in the visual symptom of an apparent
> total-freeze, but that's a surmise and not supported by evidence.
>
> Am guessing that "frozen" includes the mouse pointer, which is pretty
> much the last bit of X11 functionality to go when _software_-level
> problems cause a visual effect of 'freezing'.  Perhaps you can confirm.
>
> If there are LEDs on your keyboard to indicate things like CapLock or
> NumLock, when you observe a "freeze" like that on-screen, it is
> worthwhile toggling the keys that, in normal operation would switch
> those LEDs on or off.  If perchance even _that_ no longer works, then
> that's strong evidence of a serious hardware problem in the motherboard
> or CPU.
>
> But, once again, I'll point out that you can use a Linux live distro
> (booted from a USB stick) to get a bit of parallax on the problem, e.g.,
> find out whether the problem persists if running a quite different OS
> setup that uses nothing at all of your installed system on the HD or
> SSD.
>
> Last, it's worthwhile keeping an eye out for what if anything correlates
> with when the freeze occurs.  Long ago, I had a problem that correlated
> strongly with the system running long enough to reach elevated operating
> temperature.  Once I spotted this apparent correlation, I tested my
> hunch by doing something that generated heat faster, in this case doing
> kernel compilation.  Sure enough, the problem arrived sooner.
>
> It turned out, I'd made a bonehead error concerning the CPU heat sink,
> and inadvertently thereby caused heat buildup.
> If there are LEDs on your keyboard to indicate things like CapLock or
> NumLock, when you observe a "freeze" like that on-screen, it is
> worthwhile toggling the keys that, in normal operation would switch
> those LEDs on or off.  If perchance even _that_ no longer works, then
> that's strong evidence of a serious hardware problem in the motherboard
> or CPU.
>
> But, once again, I'll point out that you can use a Linux live distro
> (booted from a USB stick) to get a bit of parallax on the problem, e.g.,
> find out whether the problem persists if running a quite different OS
> setup that uses nothing at all of your installed system on the HD or
> SSD.
>
> Last, it's worthwhile keeping an eye out for what if anything correlates
> with when the freeze occurs.  Long ago, I had a problem that correlated
> strongly with the system running long enough to reach elevated operating
> temperature.  Once I spotted this apparent correlation, I tested my
> hunch by doing something that generated heat faster, in this case doing
> kernel compilation.  Sure enough, the problem arrived sooner.
>
> It turned out, I'd made a bonehead error concerning the CPU heat sink,
> and inadvertently thereby caused heat buildup.a  (Long story, but this
> was an AMD K6, an awesome CPU that was almost totally impervious to
> being destroyed by owner incompetence such as putting the heatsink on
> 180 degrees rotated, thereby putting it in contact with only about 20%
> of the CPU top surface.)
>
> --
> Cheers,                         "2021 showed up, and told 2020 'hold my beer.'"
> Rick Moen                                                   -- @justinaireland
> rick at linuxmafia.com
> McQ! (4x80)
>
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