Unresponsive mate session
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It sometimes suddently happens that I can move the pointer with the mouse normally but clicking does nothing, the Mate session seems completely unresponsive. I can switch to a terminal and do:
mate-session-save --display=:0 --force-logout
After a while, the session closes and I have a login screen again. However, when I log in again, I have a number of problems with Gnome Evolution and from the error messages it looks like problems with dbus. The only solution I found it to restore a fully functional state is reboot. Last time, I rebooted after the 2nd forced log out in less than 30 minutes, then I did not have the problem again.
I have the impression that the problem more often occurred when I am playing some video with VLC but it isn't easy to reproduce the problem. Last time, I looked at kernel.log and syslog, the latest things before the problem is a number of times the following sequence:
Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972150] 0000:01:00.0: Missing Free firmware (non-Free firmware loading is disabled) Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972169] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load failed with error -1066033853 Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972171] 0000:01:00.0: Missing Free firmware (non-Free firmware loading is disabled) Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972179] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load failed with error -1066033853 Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972180] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: msvld: unable to load firmware data Aug 26 18:38:29 albert kernel: [550988.972183] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: msvld: init failed, -19
There are many such patterns and the time interval between them varies between 36s from 1 minute and 40s. I can't remember exactly what I did but on that day, there are two periods of time with such messages separated by 5h, and in my recollection, there was no functional problem in the first period.
So I wonder about two things:
- why are these messages occuring?
- is it something that could cause the problematic behaviours I have sometimes?
> why are these messages occuring?
They seem to tell that the nouveau video driver tried to load some firmware which happened to be a proprietary blob, and thus failed to load (for freedom reasons). Maybe VLC is trying to use some extra nvidia features that are not available through the libre nouveau driver.
> is it something that could cause the problematic behaviours I have sometimes?
Probably not, but drinking fermented beverages is well known to sometimes cause problematic behaviors.
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>They seem to tell that the nouveau video driver tried to load some firmware which happened to be a proprietary blob, and thus failed to load (for freedom reasons)
Is nouveau able to handle the failure to load firmware without creating trouble? If some video cannot be decoded or is slow to decode, this is of course unfortunate but not a major issue. I don't know where to look for such kind of information.
>drinking fermented beverages is well known to sometimes cause problematic behaviors
If I don't take notes, I tend to forget what I did on a computer even though I did not dring any such beverage.
Dring what?
Hi, What nvidia graphics card do you have? The new one don't work well with "nouveau" and free distros. The screen freeze after a while. I had this problem and switched to intel. It was the easiest.
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This is what lshw says
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GK208B [GeForce GT 710]
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
resources: irq:39 memory:f8000000-f8ffffff memory:e8000000-efffffff memory:f0000000-f1ffffff ioport:1000(size=128) memory:c0000-dffff
This card is the one I had with my D8 from Vikings. I thought it was supposed to be working ok.
There is some graphic output on the main board but it is VGA output only, I suspect I can't have 4K resolution with that, unlike with the HDMI output on the current Nvidia card.
What kind of Intel graphic card would work with 4K resolution? I really know nothing about graphic cards.
Not really sure but any last intel cpu whith integred graphics should work in 4k with the latest linux-libre kernel. I didn't know you had a D8 workstation. My post is really bad about freedom issues and if you change your motherboard you lose libreboot. I think that the "gt710" is the last one who "works", after that nvidia is not "libre" friendly.
https://ark.intel.com is the website where to search the specifications of any Intel processor. They include the "Max Resolution" of the "Processor Graphics".
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I understand that nouveau is now part of the Linux kernel. I am now using the default kernel from Trisquel 9. I wonder whether there is any chance to have something working better with linux-libre-lts or linux-libre. That said, my mate session problem may not be related to this.
If you can, upgrade to a newer kernel to try: https://jxself.org/linux-libre/
Hi Avron, did you solve the problem finally?
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No but I did not try. No new freeze though (but I don't play any video). This machine is a server and I will be away from home for two weeks very soon so I'd rather not try anything that might break it while I have no time to fix it before leaving. I'll report after I do something.
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I think I had tried linux-libre-lte and linux-libre earlier but that it was similar or worse.
I installed linux-libre-lts again. Within 2 days, without doing anything special (no video, mostly abrowser with technical information), I had a general protection fault, the stack information saying that it is in nouveau. The mouse pointer was still moving, the computer still answering to ping but impossible to switch terminal or ssh.
It is perhaps another problem but actually worse. I'll try linux-libre again and see. I may end up removing the video card and using the mainboard output, probably lower resolution unfortunately.
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The freezes with kernels 5.10 and 5.14 might be a different problem.
Searching with DuckDuckGo for something that look like what I see in my logs, I found https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=259022. I see exactly the same stack in syslog. Yet, according to the post, the problem occured when transferring a file with a mobile phone. Now I remember that I had my S3 with Replicant connected and using the internet connection from the desktop. So there is some similarity.
Perhaps I will give a try to kernels 5.10 and 5.14 again without connecting my phone (not really essential).
nouveau is not really cool. I tried 2 nvidia video cards with it and that didn't work. I had the same issue.
I've switched to "intel" and forget definitively about nouveau. If you use the last intel cpu don't forget to use the latest kernels. Switching to intel is the easiest but you have to replace your motherboard and forget about libreboot. Honestly I have switched to a refurbished thinkpad and it's wonderful. I buy a new keyboard, added more ram, upgraded the screen, add an ssd and I can connect a 4k monitor to it. But yeah the dilemma is your motherboard and the graphic card. Maybe an old old nvidia but you need 2gb of memory if you want to use 4k resolution.
I don't know if you have this card but I found this
"Nvidia GTX 780 cards are what Libreboot recommends; it has excellent support in Nouveau (free Linux kernel / mesa driver for Nvidia cards) and generally works well; however, the performance won’t be as high in Nouveau, compared to the non-free Nvidia driver because the Nouveau driver can’t increase the GPU clock (it doesn’t know how, as of 18 March 2021)."
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With linux-libre (5.14), the problem was even much faster to occur, less than 2h. So I reverted back to Trisquel default kernel.
Thanks for the info. I have GTX 710 or 720 (contradicting info). I can try to get the GTX 780.
I don't really understand the comments on the native GPU of the mainboard, I was planning to try using that.
Just want to tell that I have the same issue with freezing desktop and working mouse cursor. Sometimes the desktop gets responsive again after a while. I have a geforce 8400 GS. Intel is no option for my 27“ display.
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For my desktop, I switched to Debian 11 and I don't have this problem anymore. The freeze were mostly associated with failures in the Xorg process and Debian 11 is using Wayland instead of Xorg, this could be the reason why there is no problem with Debian 11.
I don't know whether there would be a way to use Wayland with Trisquel. Perhaps thanks to Guix?