[arch-general] Application stability problems (kernel 3.1, Intel hardware)
Hello all! I'm encountering some very strange problems with my ArchLinux lately... And I was wondering if someone has similar problems? Context: switched to 3.1.1 kernel, all packages are updated. I have a Lenovo X1 Thinkpad -- mainly everything is Intel based. Strange behaviour: * Firefox crashes randomly (or takes the CPU to 100%); (no error on stderr;) * All OpenSSL based programs complain from time to time of invalid received data; * Flash makes strange noises, strange display artefacts, usually just crashes; * mouse jumps in the upper left corner (or sometimes just stays at top or left); * nothing strange in dmesg; Observations: * it doesn't happen with a custom built kernel 2.6.38.x; * it does happen with either custom 3.1.1 kernel or ArchLinux built one; * it seems that when I'm at the office (with a LAN connection) it doesn't happen as often; * it seems that at home (with a Wifi WLAN) it does happen a lot; Thanks, Ciprian. P.S.: At the moment I don't have time to diagnose better the problem...
On 11/18/2011 09:41 AM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:
Hello all!
I'm encountering some very strange problems with my ArchLinux lately... And I was wondering if someone has similar problems?
Context: switched to 3.1.1 kernel, all packages are updated. I have a Lenovo X1 Thinkpad -- mainly everything is Intel based.
Strange behaviour: * Firefox crashes randomly (or takes the CPU to 100%); (no error on stderr;) * All OpenSSL based programs complain from time to time of invalid received data; * Flash makes strange noises, strange display artefacts, usually just crashes; * mouse jumps in the upper left corner (or sometimes just stays at top or left); * nothing strange in dmesg;
Observations: * it doesn't happen with a custom built kernel 2.6.38.x; * it does happen with either custom 3.1.1 kernel or ArchLinux built one; * it seems that when I'm at the office (with a LAN connection) it doesn't happen as often; * it seems that at home (with a Wifi WLAN) it does happen a lot;
Thanks, Ciprian.
P.S.: At the moment I don't have time to diagnose better the problem...
Ciprian, I have just experienced a complete crash of my i686 server running 3.1.1 - this server never crashes, and I can't explain what caused it to crash. This box is an older Gigabyte GA-7400SL with Athlon XP 3200 (boots to runlevel 3) (nothing in the logs points to any specific problem): Last entry before crash (nothing remarkable earlier): Nov 17 16:53:00 phoenix dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<david>, method=PLAIN, rip=66.76.64.12, lip=192.168.7.15, mpid=26105, TLS First entry after restart: Nov 18 09:57:21 phoenix kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset ?? So something has happened. I've increased the log debug level and will keep watching. I am also interested in whether others have experienced this. On the plus side, the hwclock/sysclock drift I experienced with 3.0.x kernels is gone in 3.1: [10:22 providence:/etc] # date; hwclock -r Fri Nov 18 10:22:47 CST 2011 Fri 18 Nov 2011 10:22:47 AM CST -0.031797 seconds If I catch anything useful in the logs, I'll pass it along... For your specific issues:
Strange behaviour: * Firefox crashes randomly (or takes the CPU to 100%); (no error on
stderr;)
* All OpenSSL based programs complain from time to time of invalid received data; * Flash makes strange noises, strange display artefacts, usually just crashes; * mouse jumps in the upper left corner (or sometimes just stays at top or left); * nothing strange in dmesg;
This all looks "Desktop" related (except the SSL invalid received data). Have you tried another desktop? (i.e. fluxbox, openbox, gnome, kde, etc..) If you are using either kde4 or gnome shell, they are both under heavy development and I wouldn't put it past being a desktop issue. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 18:34, David C. Rankin <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
On 11/18/2011 09:41 AM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote: [...]
If I catch anything useful in the logs, I'll pass it along...
For your specific issues:
Strange behaviour: * Firefox crashes randomly (or takes the CPU to 100%); (no error on stderr;) * All OpenSSL based programs complain from time to time of invalid received data; * Flash makes strange noises, strange display artefacts, usually just crashes; * mouse jumps in the upper left corner (or sometimes just stays at top or left); * nothing strange in dmesg;
This all looks "Desktop" related (except the SSL invalid received data). Have you tried another desktop? (i.e. fluxbox, openbox, gnome, kde, etc..) If you are using either kde4 or gnome shell, they are both under heavy development and I wouldn't put it past being a desktop issue.
Thanks David for the feedback. I haven't tried any other desktop environment -- and don't have time to fiddle around with them. But still my desktop environment is **very minimal**: * Window Manager -- i3wm; * terminal -- urxvt with screen; * no XDM, no PulseAudio, (only local DBus), no NetworkManager, no thrills; * pretty much a heavily trimmed down ArchLinux; (actually except the minimum necessary daemons to run the system (i.e. udev, wpa_supplicant, dhcpcd, agetty) and some stable userspace tools (i.e. ssh-agent, gpg-agent) there isn't much else; I've weeded out everything I don't necessarily need...) As such I'm not sure where to "point" the "blame". Aaa... It seems that Firefox still crashes even with 2.6.38. But the other problems I haven't encountered... So I blame Firefox for itself dying, maybe i3wm for the mouse thinggy (which if I restart X is solved), but for the OpenSSL stuff? Ciprian. P.S.: 3.1.0 was **very very very** unstable for me... It just froze in a matter of minutes... (Not even SysRq+O doesn't solve the problem...)
I have identical symptoms after my recent upgrade, so I thought that I add my observations. I bought Lenovo T520 (90% intel based devices) and was migrating everything from old R61. I installed core version of newest Arch, setup ssh session between two notebooks and wanted to copy HDD contents, as I always did when I switched notebooks. But I couldn't due to constant ssh connection problems. I tried turning off various TCP offloads with ethtool, but it didn't help. I ended up copying the data via the external HDD. As there was no X running on those computers, I don't thing that the network problems are X server related. But there are also those: * Firefox random crashes. After a reboot it runs for 10…15 minutes and then starts crashing like hell. HW acceleration disabled, no Flash plugin, but still crashing. GDB stacktrace shows segfaults in /usr/lib/firefox/libxul.so preceeded by a couple of calls in libpng. * There were problems with Flash alone, too, but I worked around them by: 1. disabling "Hardware acceleration" in right-click Flash config, 2. exporting VDPAU_NVIDIA_NO_OVERLAY=1 in /etc/profile, so the whole X sees it). When Fx is not crashing, Flash works well. * Mouse cursor jumping to the top, left or top-left corner. Clicking on any button fixes the problem, but it keeps recurring very quickly. * X crashes. Usually when Firefox starts crashing, the problem with mouse occures and X crashes, leaving me with KDM. Fx and mouse problems return quickly even if I restart X (the kdm daemon), so it might be a problem with kernel rather than X. My desktop environment is KDE 4.7.3. What I tried until now: * Two graphics cards: integrated Intel and Nvidia NVM 4200M, with and without acceleration, with and without compositing). Couldn't test Nouveau, as it says that my chipset is not supported. * Disabling touchpad in BIOS. * Updating to 3.1.2 kernel yesterday. * Slowing down all cores to 800Mhz (like it was thermal problem). Neither of the above helped for any of the problems. Since Ciprian was using i3wm, which is very different from KDE, I wouldn't blame DE for these problems. I have Windows 7 on this notebook, too, and everything works fine there. I didn't test custom built kernel, but I'm going to do this now. std::best_regards(); -- Michał Gawron
On 25.11.2011 20:02, Michał Piotr Gawron wrote:
I have identical symptoms after my recent upgrade, so I thought that I add my observations.
I bought Lenovo T520 (90% intel based devices) and was migrating everything from old R61. [ snip a list of problems ]
Did you try upgrading the BIOS first? With new computers I always find necessary to upgrade the bios, since bugs are found after they are on the market, and laptops sitting in warehouses wont be upgraded. After that try running memtest86 for a while… it might as well be faulty RAM. -- дамјан
On 26.11.2011 03:03, Damjan wrote:
On 25.11.2011 20:02, Michał Piotr Gawron wrote:
I have identical symptoms after my recent upgrade, so I thought that I add my observations.
I bought Lenovo T520 (90% intel based devices) and was migrating everything from old R61. [ snip a list of problems ]
Did you try upgrading the BIOS first? With new computers I always find necessary to upgrade the bios, since bugs are found after they are on the market, and laptops sitting in warehouses wont be upgraded.
After that try running memtest86 for a while… it might as well be faulty RAM.
I was running memtest for 10h, no errors found. But I found out that when mouse starts jumping reloading the iwlagn module helps. Of course networkmanager restarts my connections, but it keeps Firefox running and I no longer see Firefox crashes. I'm now running without iwlagn module and on external Linksys USB wifi card. System seems stable. As for BIOS, in fact it is pretty old (1.31 vs newest 1.34). I'll upgrade it later and post results. Thanks for the hints. std::best_regards(); -- Michał Gawron
2011/11/26 Michał Piotr Gawron <michal@gawron.name>:
On 26.11.2011 03:03, Damjan wrote:
On 25.11.2011 20:02, Michał Piotr Gawron wrote:
I have identical symptoms after my recent upgrade, so I thought that I add my observations.
I bought Lenovo T520 (90% intel based devices) and was migrating everything from old R61. [ snip a list of problems ]
Did you try upgrading the BIOS first? With new computers I always find necessary to upgrade the bios, since bugs are found after they are on the market, and laptops sitting in warehouses wont be upgraded.
After that try running memtest86 for a while… it might as well be faulty RAM.
I was running memtest for 10h, no errors found.
But I found out that when mouse starts jumping reloading the iwlagn module helps. Of course networkmanager restarts my connections, but it keeps Firefox running and I no longer see Firefox crashes.
I'm now running without iwlagn module and on external Linksys USB wifi card. System seems stable.
As for BIOS, in fact it is pretty old (1.31 vs newest 1.34). I'll upgrade it later and post results.
Thanks for the hints.
std::best_regards(); -- Michał Gawron
I have had the mouse jumping problem myself on various laptops and in every case it was caused by not having installed xf86-input-synaptics. Just thought it was worth a mention. Clive -- Infinity: A concept for those who cannot comprehend the big picture. () Arch Linux - For movers and shakers. ()
On 26.11.2011 16:12, Clive Cooper wrote: […]
I have had the mouse jumping problem myself on various laptops and in every case it was caused by not having installed xf86-input-synaptics. Just thought it was worth a mention.
I do have xf86-input-synaptics, but I disabled the touchpad it in BIOS. :-) But now I'm pretty sure that it was iwlagn module that was causing me all this trouble. I upgraded my BIOS and EC to the latest versions, but only when I'm running on external USB Wifi my system is stable. Module iwlagn must be unloaded. No crashes, no jumping mouse. std::best_regards(); -- Michał Gawron
2011/11/26 Michał Piotr Gawron <michal@gawron.name>:
On 26.11.2011 16:12, Clive Cooper wrote: […]
I have had the mouse jumping problem myself on various laptops and in every case it was caused by not having installed xf86-input-synaptics. Just thought it was worth a mention.
I do have xf86-input-synaptics, but I disabled the touchpad it in BIOS. :-)
But now I'm pretty sure that it was iwlagn module that was causing me all this trouble. I upgraded my BIOS and EC to the latest versions, but only when I'm running on external USB Wifi my system is stable. Module iwlagn must be unloaded. No crashes, no jumping mouse.
std::best_regards(); -- Michał Gawron
I notice that iwlagn can be run in debug mode. May be of no use at all but you could try... sudo modprobe iwlagn debug=0x1000 ... and see what kind of output you get from it. Outside of that I am out of my depth here. Clive -- Infinity: A concept for those who cannot comprehend the big picture. () Arch Linux - For movers and shakers. ()
participants (5)
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Ciprian Dorin Craciun
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Clive Cooper
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Damjan
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David C. Rankin
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Michał Piotr Gawron