Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Random Freeze / Hang-up

**PerfectReign** · May 23rd, 2010

Originally Posted by Dave J

Hello folks -
I'm a noob here but have been reading threads and following advice since 8.10 - thanks for all your help! and time to give back (I hope).

I've been investigating hangs (i.e, sudden mouse freeze, mostly whille moving between windows, with nothing to do but shut down or Alt-SysRq USREIB to restart) in a clean install of 10.04 on a Gateway NV79u15. I had been using 9.10 on a Lenovo T61 - no problems. I reverted back to 9.10 on the Gateway, but the problem remained. That told me it was machine-related.

I read another thread about compiz being the cause, so I stopped using compiz by doing the following:
System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects > None. (Normal had been active).

I then opened a blizzard of programs in as many windows, moved around among them across three desktops. It would have already hung up before, but all is fine as of now.

I hope this simple fix works for others - it seems others have been correct in that compiz is not Arrandale-ready.

Excellent suggestion, Dave.

I've never had Compiz enabled, though. I always have had it turned off.

**PerfectReign** · May 23rd, 2010

Okay, I give up. I'm downgrading to 9.1 right now. Just what I don't want to do. Move all my mail off, re-backup my documents and pictures....

As I was just finishing my last reply, I got a freeze on my system. I'd been on for only eight minutes!

As you can see, x.org is at 100% again.

As it was, I noticed a bunch of pixilazation on my screen just before it happened. Here's a photo I took with my blackberry...

I highlighted the pixilazation in red.

My programmer brain is wondering why this isn't seemingly more obvious. You just look at what in X changed between 9.1 and 10.04.

**thecityofgold2006** · May 23rd, 2010

More random freezes for me over the weekend. Turning off acpi, diasbling power management, nothing seems to work.

Lucid is a very poor release. I've tried installing it on three systems, one with Nvidia graphics, one with ATI, one with Intel, and am still to see anything like a correct boot-up sequence. On two of those systems (Intel 915 EEE and an ATI 3000) the system has been so unstable that it is unusable.

I am very surprised that the change to Plymouth (which I blame for all of this, it's never worked properly and has led to panicked changes close to release imho) happened for an LTS release. I was one of the people advocating Plymouth last summer before 9.10. If implemented at that stage there would have been time to fix it.

As it is, Lucid goes down as the worst Ubuntu release in my 5 year experience of Linux. The fact that a major and unwanted change to button layout was foisted onto us in spite of the mess being made of the core distro just compounds the problem!

I love Ubuntu and will stick with it to a degree, but I need a stable system to work on. You'd think an LTS would deliver it, but no. It's temporary (possibly) Fedora for me.

**lancest** · May 23rd, 2010

Originally Posted by rueben

I haven't had a freeze since my last post. I've been running multiple apps (running multiple windows of firefox while watching a HD movie and transfering huge files to my portable HD) and so far so good. I can even resume from suspend now

.I've tried to force a freeze and in my case I've pinpointed my problems to torrent clients (doesn't matter which one.they all cause my system to freeze).

This is what I'm suspecting caused my (2-3) freezes in the last week. Transmission torrents. Desktop just becomes unresponsive.

**IIVQ** · May 24th, 2010

Hi all. I had the freezes as well (see my earlier posts) but I don't have them anymore for 3 days (knock on wood)

There are 2 things I changed from my previous configuration:

I meddled a little trough the appearance and desktop settings - unfortunatly I don't know exactly what I did. How can I see whether I have compiz enabled (on kubuntu 10.04)? - I now hear from chat that kubuntu doesn't have compiz, but anyway, I have "System settings -> desktop effects -> desktop effects -> enable desktop effects" set to Disabled
I got myself an xorg.conf, so I didn't need to set the display settings as they reset every time. This solved the "set display settings each time after reboot" problem and introduced a host of other, but lesser problems for me. However, I want to present you my xorg.conf:
http://pastebin.com/HMCyWTtY

Originally Posted by PerfectReign

As it was, I noticed a bunch of pixilazation on my screen just before it happened. Here's a photo I took with my blackberry...

I highlighted the pixilazation in red.

My programmer brain is wondering why this isn't seemingly more obvious. You just look at what in X changed between 9.1 and 10.04.

I did notice the same kind of pixelation (even when the system was still live), though not in scroll bars but in the icons in the "task bar" (both of active windows and of the system notification area - mostly the kbluetooth icon which I've since disabled - this box had no bluetooth - oh and I did get freezes after disabling kbluetooth). It's over now, but I don't know since when.

Knock on wood,

Tijmen Stam

**goforthepod** · May 24th, 2010

I BELIEVE it has to do with the kernel, since my 9.10 ubuntu had the same issue after I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.32. I did the upgrade to use the wireless driver.

That I didn't experience freezes in 2.6.31 might be random, but it is worth noting.

**wojnicki** · May 24th, 2010

I've got Compaq Presario r3065us, P4 mobile, ATI 9200. I haven't installed Lucid yet, because of the issue discussed here, I also experience while booting the live cd (from a USB stick).

The funny thing is that if I boot the system in the single mode ('init S' kernel option), drop to the root shell and start XOrg by calling startx, there are no hung ups.

If I boot the system in multi mode - it hangs in approx. 1 minute.

So, I'd guess that it's not the XOrgs fault, but the kernel. I wonder if anyone can try the karmic kernel, and see if it works or not.

I also wonder how is StuartN's solution - to use the mainline kernel - is it confirmed to work?

**dnguyen1963** · May 24th, 2010

Originally Posted by edantes

Goodbye Yellow Brick Ubuntu ...

This went on for long enough. This system is barely usable with the frequent freezes. What distro do you guys think I should try next?

I have been trough Red Hat and Fedora before, always using Gnome as primary desktop. Ubuntu was nice from the support point of view. Wide selection of applications ready to install, fast repositories and great community help on the net.

Alright, over the weekend I tried the following distros on my old Dell Inspiron 2400 computer...OpenSuse (installed fine, no freezes, hung up during power down repeatedly)... Mint-8 (troubled running live CD, could not get to the installation screen)...Puppy Linux (worked great if installed as the only OS, Dual boot with XP did not work...spent hours looking for Grub)...ZorinOS (did not work at all)...Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 (same freeze problem as 10.04)...PCLinuxOS/Xfce (worked fine, no crashes, but could not install any printer).

So...now I have PuppyLinux on one hard disk and PCLinuxOS/XP on another HD. The computer has been left on with Firefox running all weekend with no crashes. I'll figure the printing problem out later.

**thecityofgold2006** · May 24th, 2010

I've been through Puppy and Fedora over the past week only to return to Ubuntu, freezes and all. I am too used to getting everything I need working on Ubuntu to switch. Now if someone would just fix the freeze problem I'd be perfectly happy..