System freezes for a moment with kernel 3.10
 

I use slackware current for a long time, and never had such problem before. The mouse, keyboard, video playback locks up usually for a moment, after that it works ok for some time and it happens again. This started to happen after the kernel was updated to 3.10 in current.
If I turn on the CPU scaling, install a compositing manager such as compiz or compton, it makes the things worse. The system becomes almost unusable, no matter which desktop environment I use. Tried with both nouveau and the NVidia driver but there are no differences.
(BTW nouveau sometimes makes the kernel panic on system startup but that's another story.)

If I go back to the kernel 3.9, everything works fine.

Today I've decided to reinstall the system and try with a clean Slack 14.1 RC2, with only KDE and NVidia driver 325.15 installed. It happend for a first time when I was opening gimp. During the whole loading process I could barely use the mouse. After that it didn't happen again for more than 10 minutes.

My CPU is Phenom II 955, and the GPU is NVidia GTX460.

Any idea what can I do?
Thanks.

What if you switch off dynamic ticks and use periodic timer in the kernel config?

freezing
 

Yes, I can confirm there are locks/freezings from time to time.
It happenes (be of frequent occurence) after upgrade to current i.e. slackware rc.2 (kernel 3.10.17). My machine HP 8710W.

Just a wild guess, but a few years ago I experienced random freezes, as described here. I never discovered the true root cause although my remedy did resolve the problem.

You could try re-building the 3.10.17 kernel with CONFIG_LOCKUP_DETECTOR=y and provide us with backtraces.

Note, with this option, the kernel will lock-up permanently after detecting your soft lockup and printing the trace.
So, have a way to record the trace (digital camera, smartphone, etc.) in case it isn't written to disk. Also, have a
non-live way to upgradepkg back to stock kernels afterwards (install CD/DVD) or set up a multi-kernel lilo.

The OP mentions it happened during gimp loading...I wonder if it's fs related. Or it could be Serbia-specific.

--mancha

Hi. I doubt it can be location specific. Localization might cause the problems with the apps that don't support the locale, but that doesn't make the software freeze. Either it starts with the fallback locale, either it doesn't start at all (for example: some pygtk programs). Anyways, there is no indication they are using Serbian locale at all. Some people are used to and prefere english interface.

Location itself should not be important. I use rc2 in the virtual machine and haven't had any problems.

Btw, one thing they have in common is the GPU manufacturer. Both have Nvidias. Might be related to that.

It was a joke. I found it interesting both reporters were from Serbia.

--mancha

bobzilla : Btw, one thing they have in common is the GPU manufacturer

Reinstalling nVidia driver has fixed freezings.
Thanks, bobzilla.

It looks like switching to periodic timer ticks in kernel solves the problem for me. Now after few days I still can't reproduce the issue.