[arch-general] i3wm (randomly?) freezes; SIGCONT seems to fix it

[Guillaume ALAUX]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Bennett Piater <bennett at piater.name> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I've had a very elusive and frustrating problem this week and don't know
> where to look anymore.
> Maybe one of you has an idea? :)
>
> Since 2016-09-04, i3wm freezes every once and a while; often after
> waking the screen (even if it wasn't locked), a few times also directly
> or a few minutes after logging in.
> I have not yet found a conclusive pattern.
>
> The freeze is complete; no reaction to mouse or keyboard activity, not
> even in the debug logs. However, I can interact with the focused window
> just fine (I obviously cannot change focus).
> i3 also doesn't react to IPC calls (tried with i3-msg).
>
> Up to now, I had sent SIGTERM to important programs that had been
> running and KILLed i3 (it doesn't react to SIGTERM, either).
> Today, in my frustration, I tried sending SIGCONT instead.
> To my surprise, i3 immediately sprung back to life.
>
> What I do not understand is that i3 hasn't been updated in a while, let
> alone since Sunday.
> FWIW, I am running the fork i3-gaps instead of i3, but that is very
> close to upstream and has been stable forever.
>
> I posted /var/log/pacman.log from the day when it started on my server [0].
>
> Does anyone have any clue what could be causing this?
>
> Thanks,
> Bennett
>
> [0]: https://vps1.piater.name/commie/#dvm1K6lg
>
> --
> GPG fingerprint: 871F 1047 7DB3 DDED 5FC4 47B2 26C7 E577 EF96 7808
>

I have had two "i3 complete freezes" recently (I think I managed to
trace them back to Sept 1st and Sept 5th). None were after an
hibernation wake-up nor anything. Just using Chromium as usual then
suddenly mouse slows down and everything freezes with no control on
it. At the time I thought Chromium was the culprit. Had to reboot the
machine throught the power switch. I did not try to investigate
further.

After a quick look at my journalctl, I can't really see anything suspicious.

FYI, I am using vanilla i3 from community with i3pystatus.