Issue with freezing (graphically) of programs/applications.
 

First off: The program is not frozen. I do not need to know how to 'ps -A | grep name' and 'sudo kill PID' becase the program is still fully responsive and running as normal.

The X-window of a program is freezing up and no longer updating without me doing something to update another part of the screen. I get this problem with any program, not just games or any one specific application. It most frequently happens to Firefox (when I use flash or youtube) and Games (such as the one featured in the video link below). However, I've had it occur in konsole, Amarok, Kate, my desktop, my taskbar/plasmabar, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Viewer, Oracle VirtualBox, and more. I can't figure out how to web search this issue because if I use "freeze" or any word to describe what's going on, it gives me endless results of "application frozen" which is not my issue at all.

I do have nVidia drivers installed. If that's relevant at all.

Youtube of me recording my issue from my phone.

Long shot here but how much RAM do you have? could this be a swapping issue?

Like I said, that's a long shot.


Less of a long shot: have you looked at /var/log/Xorg.0.log ?

24GB of RAM, however I do not have a SWAP partition setup, because I don't come near using 24GB of RAM at any time. Would that be the problem? And if you think it may be the cause, what would you reccomend to use for the most minimal size of SWAP? I have 24GB for it to be used instead of having to use SWAP. So far, while running my Win7 VM, I've only hit 14GB of RAM at the highest, and that's while I was working on source code with Kate (which is a bit of a memory hog when you load 80 files into it).


Doing a tail on /var/log/Xorg.0.log to watch if anything comes up when it happens again. Will post if anything looks odd, but so far it's nothing but spam of:
[486562.761] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Display (HP 2310 (DFP-2)) does not support NVIDIA 3D Vision
[486562.761] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): stereo.
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): Using HorizSync/VertRefresh ranges from the EDID for display
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): device HP 2310 (DFP-2) (Using EDID frequencies has been
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): enabled on all display devices.)

--

It occured again, and nothing new posted in the Xorg log.

No, I doubt swap is the issue if you have 24gb RAM. I have 16 and also have no issue. Wasn't sure about your box's specs.

Those don't look like the worst errors in the world to me. Are you running the latest/greatest nvidia driver available?

Probably not.. let me check my current, the latest avaliable (via repository), and latest avaliable (from nVidia).

I'll add in an edit once I find how to check my current one.

Currently on 319. That's highest avaliable via default repositories.
334 is highest from nVidia.

It would be worth a shot to upgrade the driver, unless someone else here has experienced the same issue and knows a better idea. It sounds quite unique to me.

as with every single time, using the nvidia driver installer broke the desktop, I've only got terminal access now.

Making a new thread on fixing this.

Well, that issue is fixed now. It may take a day or two for me to get back on this. Usually after a reboot, it doesn't have any problems for a day or two.

Issue is still occuring.

Will try updating driver from x-updates

So.. nevermind updating the drivers, flat out, that isn't an option. I cannot get X to start on anything over the highest of 319.

Still fighting this issue. My taskbar is currently freezing up the most out of everything, I can only make use of it about 20-30% of the time and have adapted to not relying on it for anything at all. Though I think it's actually freezing, not just graphically non-responsive.
However, I am still getting programs that visually freeze and I have to restart them so I can see things again.
I really can't figure out any way to fix these problems, and they're not going away either.

video card hardware failure? I don't know how to test that, but its almost like whatever buffer that provides the display isn't sending screen updates to the screen, if I understand your issue correctly.

What kernel are you running? I used to have complete (unrecoverable) Xorg freezes and could only make them go away by running a kernel >=3.8.

Would be interesting to try if the issue reproduces in a live system. And if it does, to check if using another live distro with more recent kernel fixes the issue...

Try running memtest86, and then try running:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cudagpumemtest/

That should eliminate bad RAM as the cause, and makes it less likely that GPU RAM failure is to blame.

Also, do you hear any high-pitched noises coming from the computer ?

24 gig ram, so unless the ram is bad ..... that is not a problem
Kbuntu so am i right in guessing you are using the 319 deb nvidia driver ?
or is it still using the default Nouveau driver

or did you try replacing it with the "NVIDIA.run"

you mentioned you kept messing up the system trying to install the .run driver
have you reinstalled the os ?


The Nouveau driver can get in the way
unless you remove or blacklist it and rebuild the boot image



so

what is your nvidia card ?
the ram is 24 gig

@dolphin_oracle: I don't think so, but I don't have means of testing that I'm aware of. I do plan to buy a newer card soon, something with more memory on it, aiming towards 3-4GB instead of this 1GB card.

@joe_2000: 3.11.0-15-generic (kubuntu distro)

@metaschima: It's not the RAM & I really don't have the time to test other distros extensively enough to try to replicate them there, I need my desktop usable without having to reconfigure and reinstall software for every time I try to test it, as well as recreating my typical environment I work with.

@John VV: I attempted to use the run file from nvidia's website, but it failed so horribly, I gave up and removed all the scripts it tried to install. I completely removed the Nouveau driver (which I strongly wish was not installed by default, it felt like trying to remove Symantec off Windows). After having no graphical drivers, I finally installed the 319deb drivers off apt. I made more attempts to upgrade after, because the issue was occuring, however they didn't work out, because I couldn't get X to start, so gave up on trying to update the driver since I can't find any sollutions from others with the same problem (actually, I can't find others with the same updating problem that have any sollution provided).



The hardware is:
Motherboard: Intel dx58so
RAID controller: Intel rs2bl080
Memory: 24GB (6x 4GB)Crucial BLT3KIT4G3D1608DT2TXRG
Video Card: PNY nVidia 470GTX XLR8
Processor: Intel i7 960 @ 3.85GHz, quad core (+HT)
Display: 3840x1080 (2x 1920x1080)

I don't think the rest of the perephials really matter, though I can list them if requested.

Well.. I'm at a complete and total loss of ideas now and I really need to have this issue resolved so I'm not forced to go back to Winblows. I'm going to try reinstalling my OS. Hopefully the issue will go away with that, but I have no idea if that's where the source of the problem is, or if it's a hardware conflict somewhere.. perhaps just a lack of memory on the video card, though I find it hard to believe that 1280MB of RAM on a video card isn't enough, but the issue triggers most frequently when running very much stuff that's graphically demanding.

If you're not using swap you should change the default swappiness value. If you plan on suspending or hybernating you'll want to use swap.

$ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

A value of 60 is normally the default. A value of zero would be what one uses when you have no swap. Each with certain risks. I tend towards 20 on mine to keep my HDD usage on the back burner, but available. You don't need a partition for swap, you can use a swap file that you create with dd and format with mkswap and mount with swapon.

Using nice or renice on your apps can help improve the responsiveness of things. But default userland things default to 0, which is the same priority of the X environment on many systems. Bloated apps like most web browsers should launch with a priority larger than 0 but <=20 to keep your X environment responsive.

$ nice -n 18 padsp iceweasel

You seem to have an X or a video driver issue. You might try removing / renaming the xorg.conf file and letting the system default. Video driver issues can be tricky to resolve if you boot to a gui login. I tend towards booting to the CLI and launching X with startx. But my hardware is old enough that I don't have video drivers issues most of the time.

... then you may want to try a live distro with the latest kernel. Aptosid is typically quite cutting edge...

Why change distro? I can simply compile a new kernel, however that can merely make finding problems to be harder. Besides, a distro based on SID sounds very far from an ideal sollution to an issue. Attempting to solve one issue by introducing a potential to many more with an experimental/test source based distro. No thanks, I'll stick with stable, bleeding edge and all problems assosciated isn't my flavour.

I did not suggest to change the distro. I only suggested to try a live system with a more recent kernel to see if that addresses the issue. If it does you can still think about compiling the kernel for your distro of choice... In my mind this is a more stable approach than installing a self-compiled kernel into your main os without even knowing if that's going to help

SID is pretty stable. There's an experimental branch now that's even more bleeding edge. Stable is a relative term, there are a lot of updates in sid, so it's probably not ideal to have a lot of things installed if you're on a slow internet. Or if you need things to always work, with no tollerance of transitional packaging. If you need performance out of relatively low spec'd machines there's not many better choices than SID imo.

Well.. update on this. I cannot get a fresh installation of Kubuntu 13.10 amd64 to work at-all. Either grub can't find the UUID of the drive, or it just goes to a blank screen of endless nothing right after GRUB (if I install & and GRUB not on my RAID.)

So I'm thinking that Kubuntu 13.10 is flat out incompatible to run on my system. (If you want to know what my system is, look toward the bottom of the first page for hardware specs.)

Primary intent is for gaming, so I wanted to go with kubuntu since unity is... well... unity, and many game devs who compile to linux target ubuntu. I'll give 12.10 a shot, see if that's functional for me or not. If not, I'll try out the 14.10(?) or whatever version of 14. Just posting an update on this issue is all.

14.04 is out now. One other though on your hang under heavy use, is that maybe the system is getting too hot. Also if you're on an intel system you probably want to avoid the amd flavor, use the ia64 version if there is one. They're both x86_64, but they are not completely compatible with each other.

My desktop is very well cooled, it's not overheating. Graphics card cannot pass 52C, Processor doesn't get over 84C, and the board sensors I've never seen beyond 35C.
My processor is a desktop variant, not Itanium. It cannot do ia64. ia64 is NOT the same as x86_64, ia64 isn't capable of x86 instruction sets at all. It's for the Itanium intel processor, totally different arcitecture. A typical desktop CPU is not going to be able to handle ia64.

Follow up on issue:

Not resolved.
Amarok just graphically froze up. I had to hide (to tray) and unhide it to be able to load new music.

So, looks like the issue is probably somewhere related to hardware. So, it's time to upgrade the video card I suppose, see if that's the source of the issue.

All my gear is amd, so it seems odd that you'd use an amd64 labelled distro for an intel cpu. I stand corrected I guess, but it's odd that intel would run on amd64 since even at the consumer level, there are differences in opcodes / instruction sets. I guess it really depends on if the compiler(s) play it safe.

84C for the CPU seems hot to me. My old laptop used to run 50C-80C at 82C it would power off. Whenever my systems get unstable, it's normally power, heat, or faulty RAM. In the old days, bad video drivers and versions of X would also do the quirks you've described. But nothing like that for me in the past couple of years. And normally when that happened, you lost keyboard and mouse at the same time, but could ssh into the box if you were configured that way, so not techically locked up.

Yeah, it's just selective applications that stop graphically updating for me. It took days for it to do that again.

84C is hot, but that's only hit at peak 100% load on everything after about 20 min. It's a first gen i7 CPU though, so it's a bit of a heat monster, especially for being undervolted as low as I could get stable.

I really do hope the fault lies on the video card here. I don't want to have to rebuild the entire system when these issues weren't existing when I used Windows. I understand the differences of the two OS's and know this issue cannot be compared, however I didn't have any compatability/hardware issues till I started back on using linux. I can't even boot my system normally. I don't know if it's a matter of 1280M of video RAM not being enough for what I do, or where the problem lies at. I really wish I knew how to figure out what's going on. I just don't know all too much beyond some newbie basic info, how to do rather basic shell scripting, how to compile, how to edit configs/settings, and how to search for info on things I don't know, such as settings for a config file where default only gives basic options/examples and not all.

So.. since this issue still is plagueing me, does anyone have an idea of whether it's possible or not to 'restart' an application's window (or the X window) so things will work as normal again?
With some of the games I play, if I change a setting that respawns the game to apply a graphic setting, it solves the freezing issue.
Is there a way to sort of force doing this without having it close the application or is my question sort of confusing? I'd trying my best to word it understandably.

Hmm, as far as I know you cannot restart Xorg completely without killing the running applications. I know that some window managers (such as e.g. fluxbox) can restart without killing apps, not sure if KDE supports something similar.
Another thing you may want to take a look at is xpra. It's originally intended to attach to and disconnect from x-sessions on remote hosts, but maybe you can misuse it for your problem...