I have been running slackware 13.37 for four years and it was rock solid. I rebooted it about once every three months, otherwise it was up 24/7.

On the exact same hardware, I just installed 14.2 and it completely freezes several times per day.

By complete freeze, I mean ctrl-alt-backspace, ctrl-alt-f2, caps lock on keyboard, pinging the machine don't work.

There is nothing at all at the time it freezes in /var/log/syslog, messages, Xorg.0.log.

I can let it run for hours on end without freezing in console mode (runlevel 3), all freezes happen in KDE with chrome 52 and kconsole open (I open those as soon as I start KDE). Even if chrome was responsible, I should be able to kill it inside KDE, or at worst ctrl-alt-backspace and kill KDE with it, not crash the whole computer.

I have tried both slackware64-huge 4.4.14 and slackware64-generic 4.4.14, there doesn't seem to be any difference in the frequency of the freezes.

I have tried top, free -m from time to time but everything seems normal. Freezes can happen half an hour after rebooting or 26 hours after rebooting (most of the 26 hours in runlevel 3)

An obvious solution would be to go back to 13.37, but I really like the newer versions of everything and I would like to avoid it if possible.

Could anyone tell me how to investigate it ?

Thanks in advance.

Same hardware laptop or desktop? I had an old thinkpad a22m that did the same thing, I blew it out, replaced fan, power supply, even in command line it would do like yours boot up and shutdown, boot up and run for hours and just shutdown, logs didn't provide any clue, it served me well for years, I eventually retired it.

With the pattern you see I would personally suspect that it is the video-driver to act up. Can you give details on what laptop this is? Is it an Intel based video-card?

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Desktop:
processor intel core i7-2600s
motherboard asus p8z68-v pro (with integrated intel hd 3000 graphics)
memory 8 gb
harddisk ibm ssd 250 gb

I didn't list the hardware in my first post, because for four years, it worked flawlessly in slackware 13.37 (no freezes). A week ago, I installed slackware 14.2, and the freezing began.

Worry not!

I do not seen yet a Linux freezing random on random stages of boot or while working on desktop.

No offense, but even Windows XP was more stable. To be honest, Slackware 14.2 remind me about Windows Millennium...

Come on! Having to hard reset the system ten times for a successful boot? That do not give a feel of Linux anymore...

PS. Dear Pat, please introduce some BSOD, is better than random freezing.

So indeed an intel-based graphics system as I expected. This is a driver that has seen a lot of recent changes in the kernel and is still in flux looking at the kernel changelogs. Unfortunately the laptop I had trouble with is not at home, but I found that after configuring a config-file for xorg it was stable. You might have to do the same here. Worth looking at the arch-page for some background reading, under freezes/crashes.

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics

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It is also expected on AMD hardware?

I have seen that on my desktop which has an AMD-graphics card as well in the current development cycle, but not on the kernel (4.4.6) I'm currently running with an uptime of 126 days. These problems are extremely hard to debug without a clear trigger and no logs.

btw) I would suggest to be constructive and respect the hard work people put in; you would find the same problem in other distros. Try running opensuse for example.

Interesting, I found out in chrome settings "use hardware acceleration when available", so that definitely could be my problem.

I have created the following /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf:
This is pretty crude, but if it works, then I will be able to try subtler things. I will post back here if it freezes again. I'll come back to change the thread to SOLVED if it doesn't freeze in a week.

There was a related thread back in April/May suggesting this might have been kernel-related.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...es-4175578571/

Have you tried running a different kernel, either a 4.1.x or 4.5+ ?

Where were you during the development process? Plenty of people had -current installed during 14.2's development process and who knows how many have installed 14.2 stable and didn't see these issues, so it is likely something local that is causing your problems. The first time (that I can remember) that someone posts about a freezing issue, you come in and attack Slackware stating that it's basically completely unusable for you. Sounds like you might have the occasional issue with freezing (seriously, if it takes 10 reboots to even get the system up and even then, it would freeze on you occasionally, why would you still be running it?) and decided to grossly exaggerate the issue when someone else posts something.

And BSOD is Windows. If you want a BSOD, just install your favorite Windows flavor.

And if it requires 10 resets to get your system to boot, it is very likely NOT software related, as nothing on your harddrive would change between those 10 reboots. It is most likely a hardware issue that you're seeing, and no amount of tinkering from Pat will fix a hardware issue.

14.2 has been rock solid on my htpc, VM on the htpc (slowly using that to compile my 14.1 programs used on the desktop so I can easily copy those packages over once I install 14.2 on my desktop), and my laptop. It has also obviously been solid for all the dev team, as well as the majority of people running it.

I really should just ignore your posts, as you seem to think that nothing is your fault and everybody owes you everything...

This is indeed very crude as it disables hardware-acceleration completely, but a sensible sanity check. Keep us posted on how that works out!

Darth doesn't bother showing anyone respect. If something doesn't go the way (s)he wants it, the world is coming to an end and (s)he demands attention in the most rude ways possible.

My DE of choice is XFCE. I've switched over to KDE for a bit on Slackware64 14.2. KDE uses a bit more RAM than XFCE, but, I'm finding it to be responsive, and it is working well. No freeze-ups yet for me on Slackware64 14.2.

This thread tickled me to install 14.2 on another partition of my laptop to see how it works on my intel hd 4000 gpu. So far I haven't noticed any freeze or crash with Xfce. Just some heating problem which I will talk about in due time.