[SOLVED] In desperate need of help solving frequent Fedora 25 freezes on Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th Gen.

ziphem · 12-27-2016, 12:00 AM

Hi, I am having the worst time of any Linux installations on my Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th Gen. The problems:

The screensaver screen freezes (unresponsive). This occurs every other day

The active screen freezes (unresponsive). This occurs every week or two

The computer fails to wake from sleep. This happens every third time or so.

The messages log intermittently logs. Ctrl-Alt F1/F2 hardly works, and no other escape key works. I can't think of anything that I am doing to set this off. I really appreciate any help troubleshooting this. It is making my system virtually unusable, and I am losing so much information each freeze. By way of background:

Code:

[user@localhost log]$ lspci | grep VGA ; lsmod | grep "kms\|drm" ; find /dev -group video ; \
> cat /proc/cmdline ; find /etc/modprobe.d/; cat /etc/modprobe.d/*kms* ; \
> ls /etc/X11/xorg.conf ; glxinfo | grep -i "vendor\|rendering" ; \
> grep LoadModule /var/log/Xorg.0.log
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 520 (rev 07)
00:13.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corporation Device 9d35 (rev 21)
drm_kms_helper        151552  1 i915
drm                   344064  6 i915,drm_kms_helper
/dev/video0
/dev/fb0
/dev/dri/card0
/dev/dri/renderD128
/dev/dri/controlD64
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.8.15-300.fc25.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/fedora-root ro rd.lvm.lv=fedora/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora/swap rhgb quiet LANG=en_US.UTF-8
/etc/modprobe.d/
/etc/modprobe.d/lockd.conf
/etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf
cat: '/etc/modprobe.d/*kms*': No such file or directory
ls: cannot access '/etc/X11/xorg.conf': No such file or directory
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
    Vendor: Intel Open Source Technology Center (0x8086)
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
[     7.561] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[     7.572] (II) LoadModule: "intel"
[     7.574] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting"
[     7.575] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
[     7.575] (II) LoadModule: "vesa"
[     7.693] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
[     7.696] (II) LoadModule: "glamoregl"
[     7.766] (II) LoadModule: "fb"
[     8.043] (II) LoadModule: "libinput"

Linux localhost.localdomain 4.8.15-300.fc25.x86_64

I am also considering following some of the configurations in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics , but don't want to create any issues.

Please, I immensely appreciate any help on this. It's making my computer virtually unusable, since I lose so much information each time I have one of these freezes.

Thank you so much.

sag47 · 12-27-2016, 12:13 AM

Sounds like a hardware issue. Have you ran a memory test? i.e. memfree86? Most likely you have bad memory and simply need to replace it.

AwesomeMachine · 12-27-2016, 02:19 AM

I second sag47's opinion. Sometimes a lot of dust can build up in the fan. Memory is always a good candidate for random hardware failures. Sometimes just reseating the memory works wonders. You can try running mprime. If it fails it will fail quickly. Failure indicates bad hardware.

snowday · 12-27-2016, 06:57 AM

Sadly, this is a known issue with your computer model. (Google "Lenovo X1 Carbon freezes" to see that you are not the only user having this exact issue.)

Lenovo is attempting to assist the affected users with BIOS updates, so try visiting support.lenovo.com and make sure you have the latest. Good luck!

suicidaleggroll · 12-28-2016, 02:51 PM

Have you verified Fedora is controlling the CPU fan properly? I would install/check a system health monitor and see what the temperatures look like.

ziphem · 12-30-2016, 12:23 PM

Hey guys, thank you so much for looking at this and giving me your thoughts, I really appreciate it. I did check and saw some X1s had some similarly described issues. I thought that what I'll do is approach this part by part. First, a memory, CPU, and board test showed everything looked ok. Today I have taken the second step, updating the BIOS. I will wait and see what impact this has over the next days, if any. My CPU temp changes and I get thermal warnings in my logs, but this doesn't always happen around the time of a freeze.

The last 2 computers I swore I'd never buy a Lenovo again, so I don't know what this says about me...

I'll followup in the next days with an update. Again, thanks for the quick responses and willingness to help!

suicidaleggroll · 12-30-2016, 12:41 PM

If it helps, I have a 3rd gen X1 carbon that's been running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed since I got it about 18 months ago. It's on 24/7 except for brief moments when traveling or similar, and it never has issues. I also have a T420S and T440 that both run Linux without any major issues. They all have little hiccups, for example my X1 had an issue where electrical activity in the screen would trigger taps/movement on the trackpad when the lid was closed, I had to make an ACPI rule to shut off the trackpad when the lid is shut to fix it. The T420S had an issue with the fan speed controller, OpenSUSE would never ramp the fan speed up enough, and under heavy load it would overheat and lock up. I had to make my own fan speed controller daemon which fixed the problem.

I've found Lenovo's professional line to be very solid, and the X1 Carbon is the best laptop I've ever had, hands down.

ziphem · 01-05-2017, 12:53 AM

I wanted to provide a brief update. I did the first step of updating the bios. I've had the computer on since I believe Dec. 30th, and have put it to sleep about 5 times or more. So far, I have had no crashes or freezes. I'm cautiously optimistic that this has solved the problem! I will followup again in another week and close out as resolved if still does not freeze the system.

Thanks a ton again everyone for your feedback and opinions, I truly appreciate it.

ziphem · 01-08-2017, 05:16 PM

Ok, no freezes, no video related crashes, I think the BIOS update fixed the problem. Of course, you know once I mark this as solved I'll have a problem....

But in all seriousness, I think this is now solved. Thank you all so much for your feedback and advice, I truly appreciate. I now have a fully-functioning computer!