freezing in Ubuntu 16.04

trentfox · 07-13-2016, 02:57 PM

Ever since upgrading from Ubuntu 15.10 to 16.04, I have experienced a lot freezes. These are freezes I could not recover from with ctrl-alt-F1; I had to hard reboot. The freezes occur almost daily, typically 1-3 times. My computer is a 2013 iMac i5 with 8 gb RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GT 640M (GK107M); run with a second monitor plugged into my thunderbolt/minidisplay port. I use the Nvidia (361.42) driver on my system.

The crashes seem to occur with different programs running, although I have recently noted that they often occur when I'm running LibreOffice Write in combination with something else. Two of the attached logs (kernlog and syslog from two crashes today) make reference to LibreOffice being out of memory. All of the four attached logs make reference to "nouveau", which puzzles me since I'm not using a nouveau driver.

Note that I never experienced a freeze before when running Ubuntu 15.10. Aside from a newer kernel, what's different that could result in these freezes?

ardvark71 · 07-14-2016, 05:31 AM

Hi...

If you upgraded via the operating system (15.10) and if you don't receive any other response, one way to possibly resolve this is to burn a copy of 16.04, then check the integrity of the burn (GtkHash is a very handy GUI utility for this, available in Synaptic,) back up everything you want to save and then install 16.04 from scratch.

Regards...

Habitual · 07-14-2016, 05:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trentfox

I use the Nvidia (361.42) driver on my system.

How was that driver introduced to the system?
How did that driver get installed, exactly?
How was the upgrade done, exactly?

Thank you.

trentfox · 07-14-2016, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardvark71

Hi...

If you upgraded via the operating system (15.10) and if you don't receive any other response, one way to possibly resolve this is to burn a copy of 16.04, then check the integrity of the burn (GtkHash is a very hand GUI utility for this, available in Synaptic,) back up everything you want to save and then install 16.04 from scratch.

Thanks, ardvark71. I already tried that. When I first started getting the freezes I blow away the upgraded partition and reinstalled everything completely from scratch. Since then I have tried changing the video driver (different versions of Nvidia driver) and even deleting that and starting over with just Nouveau. Freezes have continued. I'm about ready to try installing a new 14.04 partition to see what happens then. Unfortunately, even if it works, I would lose some nice updates (LibreOffice for example) and new/improved apps that come with the updated version of gnome-shell.

trentfox · 07-14-2016, 06:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Habitual

How was that driver introduced to the system?
How did that driver get installed, exactly?
How was the upgrade done, exactly?

The drivers were introduced through the "additional drivers" setting. The upgrade was done through the "software and updates" setting, but as noted in my previous posting, I ended up reinstalling 16.04 from scratch (from a usb flashdrive) after I started getting the freezes. Nothing was saved from the upgraded 15.10 partition; everything in my home folder was reinstalled from scratch. That's what's so frustrating about this; it took me half a day to reinstall and it didn't solve the problem. And I have several other computers running 16.04 (all upgraded from 14.04 or 15.10) - two mac minis, a Dell desktop and two PC laptops. None of these are experiencing freezes, but none except that laptop have an attached display and none are running with a second monitor.