[arch-general] Gnome Shell freezes

[Max]

I logged vmstat 2 output [1]. Here are the last 300 lines that show the
situation before and after the crash till I rebooted. I can't really
read much out of it, but maybe someone else?

For some reason this time it took a while for the problem to show up
again (several days). I wonder if that has anything to do with me
setting up a swap that I didn't use before. My main memory is more than
sufficient though.

@Tuxce: Killing the gnome-shell process restarts the gnome shell but
will result in an immediate freeze again. The only solution is
restarting the system.


Thanks,
Max


[1] http://pastebin.com/CZiMj347



On 04.11.2011 22:10, Tuxce wrote:
> Le 4 nov. 2011 à 20:51, Magnus Therning a écrit :
> 
>> On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 12:08:31PM +0200, Max wrote:
>>> Dear arch users and developers,
>>>
>>> I have posted this issue also in the archlinux forum [1]. I didn't get
>>> much feedback there. So I'm hoping some people here might have an idea
>>> of how to resolve the problem.
>>>
>>> Problem:
>>> gnome shell freezes from time to time (actually daily).
>>>
>>> Freezing:
>>> "Freezing" means, the screen becomes unresponsive but everything seems
>>> to continue working (sound and videos continue playing; even the mouse
>>> pointer can still be moved). Most of the time I'm able to switch to a
>>> virtual console although sometimes it takes 10-20 seconds after
>>> CTRL+ALT+F1 to show up. Then, however, everything is running smoothly.
>>> It's not possible to restart X since it will freeze again at the gdm
>>> login screen, or even without using gdm when loading the desktop.
>>>
>>> What triggers the problem:
>>> Usually it happens while scrolling on websites or pdfs. I feel like it
>>> happens more often if there are large images.
>>>
>>> Hardware:
>>> IBM T60
>>> ATI X1400
>>>
>>> I think it's an issue with the open source radeon drivers. However, this
>>> problem doesn't occur using other desktop environments. I tried to look
>>> into some log files but I couldn't find noticeable error messages.
>>
>> This happens to me fairly rarely, but still often enough to be
>> irritating.
>>
>> For me it has only ever happened when I use the logo key to jump into
>> the Activities Overview and start typing to search for an application.
>> The only way out of it seems to be to jump out to a console and kill
>> gnome-session or restart gdm.
>>
> Send SIGHUP to gnome-shell will save you from losing your session.
> pkill -HUP gnome-shell
> 
>> /M
>>
>> -- 
>> Magnus Therning                      OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 
>> email: magnus at therning.org   jabber: magnus at therning.org
>> twitter: magthe               http://therning.org/magnus
>>
>> Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with
>> millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural
>> integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
>>     -- Alan Kay
>