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Buster crashes fixed.... finally

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NFT5
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Buster crashes fixed.... finally

#1 Post by NFT5 »

I made the transition to Buster about 12 months ago and ever since have been plagued by inexplicable desktop crashes. I was using MATE and the problem appeared to be related to the panel but manifested usually with the panel(s) disappearing and cursor getting stuck on one monitor, generally followed by the whole desktop becoming unresponsive and a hard reboot necessary. Nothing clear seemed to show up in any logs and Google indicated a problem in MATE, but nothing I could pin down for sure.

Sick of the crashes, sometimes only a few minutes apart and other times days apart, I moved to KDE/Plasma on a fresh installation. Initially seemed to fix the problem but then it came back. Not exactly the same symptoms, but similar and usually resulting in the whole desktop freezing.

So, I thought must be hardware, given that logs just stopped whenever the problem arose. Changed graphics card - no improvement. Changed motherboard - initially seemed to work but then problems recurred. Obviously did all the usual things like removing and reseating anything that was plugged in.

Then, one day while Googling I got a hint that there had been a few issues with the Buster kernel. I do run a fairly stock installation. Added Backports to my sources list and installed the 5.10 kernel on yet another fresh installation.

As you can see from the inxi output below, uptime currently nearly 8 days and no crashes at all, just a couple of occasions when the system seemed to take a few seconds to catch up.

Code: Select all

chris@MDD10KDE2:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: MDD10KDE2 Kernel: 5.10.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.14.5 
           Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: N/A v: N/A serial: <root required> 
           Mobo: Gigabyte model: 970A-D3P v: x.x serial: <root required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: FB date: 10/28/2014 
CPU:       Topology: 8-Core model: AMD FX-8350 bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
           Speed: 1405 MHz min/max: 1400/4000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1406 2: 1429 3: 1401 4: 1404 5: 1405 6: 1403 7: 1406 
           8: 1400 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 710B] driver: nvidia v: 390.141 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz, 1920x1200~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 710/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.141 
Audio:     Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 
           IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: fc:aa:14:c1:43:1c 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 2.95 TiB used: 907.32 GiB (30.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Transcend model: TS240GSSD220S size: 223.57 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 1TB size: 931.51 GiB 
           ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM003-1ER162 size: 931.51 GiB 
           ID-4: /dev/sdd vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM003-1ER162 size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 19.56 GiB used: 18.29 GiB (93.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6 
           ID-2: /home size: 39.12 GiB used: 2.51 GiB (6.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 17.00 GiB used: 1.18 GiB (7.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda8 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 15.8 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 62 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 52% 
Info:      Processes: 293 Uptime: 7d 20h 54m Memory: 11.66 GiB used: 2.51 GiB (21.5%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32
Looks like I've got it licked. :D

Now to working out why my network speed is only 100Mbps, why I'm missing 4GB RAM and why I can't get sensible temperature and fan readings. :roll:

Debian. It's a work in progress.

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Re: Buster crashes fixed.... finally

#2 Post by sunrat »

NFT5 wrote:Debian. It's a work in progress.
Life is a work in progress. :mrgreen:

Personally I found Buster to be the most reliable system I've ever run. Recently installed Bullseye and so far looks to be just as good.
There is a lot of hardware with a lot of issues out there but also a lot with few or no issues. Depending on your hardware, reliability experience can vary considerably.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

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Re: Buster crashes fixed.... finally

#3 Post by NFT5 »

sunrat wrote:Depending on your hardware, reliability experience can vary considerably.
Agree. On other systems Buster is rock solid - just doesn't seem to like this CPU/mobo/graphics combination with the standard kernel. Don't know exactly where the regression happened but Stretch, Jessie and Wheezy worked like a charm on this machine. That said, it did seem to get worse when I changed the CPU from FX6300 to FX8350. It's not like they're unsupported bleeding edge Ryzens though, they've been around for some years.

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Re: Buster crashes fixed.... finally

#4 Post by eor2004 »

Hi FYI I did experience some of the issues the op is talking about and I was using mate I was experiencing freezes and the system was a little sluggish sometimes, then I reinstalled Buster with gnome it was more sluggish than usual I experienced a couple of freezes too then I reformatted again and reinstalled Buster with xfce and it seems for the time being working a little better I do experience with xfce some freezes from time to time for a couple of seconds but the system feels more responsive than Mate or Gnome, I only been using xfce on my main system/PC for a couple of days now maybe I will let you know if I continue to see this issues we talking about in this post.

Updates May-10-2021: Ok, my system been working good with xfce, I did experience a little sluggishness and a system freeze for like 30-40 seconds when transfering data from an external hdd usb3 enclosure to my system hdd, I think it was a data bottleneck maybe? But after that, after finishing transfering the data the system worked fine again!

Updates July-23-21: After sometime flirting with XFCE, I changed a week ago the 3 TB hard drive (Bad sectors detected) for a 4TB one, then I reinstalled my true love MATE DE, have been working fine except like I said before, system gets a little slow when transfering files between PC and external hard drives, not a show stopper!
Debian 12 Gnome on a MSI H61M-P25 (B3) PC & on a Dell Latitude E6410 & HP EliteBook 8540p Laptops.
LMDE 6 on a Panasonic ToughBook CF-C1 Laptop.
Bodhi Linux 7 on a HP Compaq DC5750 Small Form Factor PC.
Windows 11 on a Intel DH55TC PC.

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