Xorg locks up - but mouse still responding
 

Slackware current 64 bit
Intel HD 3000 graphics
Flash disabled
Java disabled

The problem happens when the system is in high load, then suddenly the system locks up, doesn't respond to click or keyboard actions. Example, pressing CAPSLOCK or NUMLOCK would not respond.

However, mouse still responding to mouse movement but not click. I managed to get Xorg.0.log and put it here.

http://pastebin.com/F43pYNht

Any ideas?

TIA

It may be this bug:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47535

On my Intel DQ67SW, running current64 multilib, I
had this issue, and solved it as suggested in the above link.

I just put the command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

# Set the Stencil Cache eviction policy to non-LRA mode
/usr/bin/intel_reg_write 0x2120 '0x1206800'

I have gotten the EQ overflow error with an nvidia card ... I wonder if this will work for it. Someone in the bug report said they were using an nvidia card.

Don't think so.

This is for the Intel i965 driver for some of the gpu's using it.

Also the tool mentioned is from the package intel-gpu-tools.

Hi ml4711,

I have not restarted yet, but I run the command on my rc.local.

I got the following error.

Haven't tried restarting yet today. I will restart when it locks up again :P

Anyway, I will stress test my machine tomorrow.

Thanks for all the help.

Hi

The Error Message is OK - but to prevent it, just put the following line into /etc/fstab

The output from the command indicate, that the register already had the right value!
So maybe it doesn't change anything, but who knows :o

I have tried putting those on fstab. We'll see. I'll try this our for few days if this doesn't lock up anymore.

Thanks

Unfortunately, I'm still experiencing random lock ups especially on disk intensive operations. For example, I browse via dolphin or I extract a tarball or I restore some mysql dumps. When I restarted using another slack install (triple boot), I see the same error messages on Xorg.0.log.

I can't be sure if this is a hard disk problem since I never experience the issue on Windows 7 (same machine) given that the windows box is more heavily used than linux.

For now, I just don't give too much load to this machine (example limit the number of simultaneous actions I perform) to avoid more trouble like disk failure do to too many hard resets.

Same Here, Nvidia chipset
 

Yes, mine does this too sometimes. Locks solid, no keyboard, no response. The mouse moves and that is all. Seems to happen when watching movies via mplayer or vlc and then try to do something else too. Open new file manager, raise/lower a couple of windows rapidly. Kinda seems like you shock the system and it's game over.

Incidentally my cpu is an AMD and my on board graphics chip is nvidia. I run Slack 13.37 and have been kind of putting up with this until Slack 14 and see if that resolves anything.

Here is my Xorg.log.0

BashTin.

One more thing to add to this issue is that it happens with both the nvidia drivers and nouveau. It may be an Xorg bug ?

And another thing to add, sometimes when scrolling Firefox or even chrome, there are some graphical artifacts (black with dotted brown, whatever) on the screen drawn horizontally. Every time I saw this, it reminds me to slow down my work, or else, it will hard lock again :D

If it's any use: this has happened to me a couple of times in Kde but not in Xfce.

Slackware 64-bit 14 RC1
Using nouveau

I get random locks when my machine is left. I come back to it and its unresponsive. Using nouveau and Xfce.

I am getting random lockups too but only in KDE4.8.5 as well as in KDE4.9.1
Not in XFCE however.

FWIW I have the impression it does not lockup completely initialy and only KDE native apps wont startup or respond. Later on only the mouse cursor moves but nothing else works anymore.

I am able to leave X with ctrl-alt-backspace.

I am on Slackware64_14RC4 and nvidia proprierty driver.

Did it again today while I was out, came home to a frozen screensaver, nothing would respond. Eventually I pressed the power button and slackware did an elegant shutdown, so I think the rest of the system is ok. Unfortunately I cannot even get to tty1 without a working keyboard.

Xorg.0.log before I started X after reboot

Not sure if this is related, but sometimes I see some graphical artifacts on the screen. Please see attached.

I think Xorg may be the cause.

I recently found a 'Video Memory Stress Test' on the UBCD. You may want to try it in case it is a hardware issue. See the link in my sig.

Here are some more reports of EQ overflow:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/567696
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465884
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15473

EDIT:
I have an idea, try adding this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I have done it and will see if it fixes it.

Have added it to my xorg.conf. This is still doing this in 14RC4 for me. Surely this should be fixed before 14 is released? It will be a major show stopper for many!

I have the xfce Compositor running, maybe thats why I am having problems with Xfce when others are not. Reading the bug reports you linked to having a compositor makes this issue more prominent. I will leave it turned on for now, with the xorg.conf fix you mentioned above and see if the situation improves.

Fingers crossed :)

Another thing I just did as suggested in the xorg bug report was to increase QUEUE_SIZE in mieq.c to 4096 and recompile Xorg using the slackbuild. Just a note that Xorg must be suid root. So, 'chmod u+s /usr/bin/Xorg' after installing if needed.

Hopefully one of these fixes will work.

Although since the xorg.conf fix (touch wood) I haven't had any problems. Could this be relevent in todays changelog.

Yes, I saw it too, but I'm running 3.4.x right now, and current is running 3.2.x. I'm not sure if this is causing it. It also happened with earlier 3.x kernels.

Ahh yes, didn't read it properly did I. I am running 3.2.28. Duh!

Damm, it was going so well up till now. Going to turn my window manager compositer off and see how things go.

Just upgraded to latest current. Experienced frequent lockups in the middle of light web development work. Just switched to XFCE for now (from KDE).

Today, I enabled effects/animations on KDE and do some stress test on my machine. Opening several js heavy sites on firefox and google chrome while downloading the latest update/patch on 14.0, playing youtube, etc. My machine survives. Before, it couldn't survive this kind of load.

Probably a KDE problem.

I'm enjoying the animations anyway.

Same problem On Fedora
 

For what it's worth, I have experienced the same lockup with Xorg on Fedora Core 14:
[1470056.288] [mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.
etc...
However, every time I do experience it, I have been able to ssh into my FC14 machine from another machine and kill the instance of Xorg, though it seems that only SIGKILL works. I was hoping to find another way that won't kill the desktop but so far I haven't found any