Window manager keeps crashing (problems with thumbnail cache

[Brazen-Bear]

I use Debian Stable. Stretch, with Cinnamon Desktop. From here: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... so-hybrid/ Nothing else special. I keep it updated. Use newer AMD64 MoBo, 3.8GHz, 8 core, with newer nVidia card.

Sometimes the "workspace 1" applet in the lower right of the screen just shows itself, and won't go away. Its a list with as many programs as I have open on that workspace. It's stuck open, and it's a tall list, always in the way of what I'm doing.

My Debian PC usually starts having problems with the desktop, after I open a lot of applications involving moving files in the desktop environment. Especially when I use NEMO a lot.

I went over to my HOME folder to look at stuff. I inspected ~/.thumbnails and ~/.cache/thumbnails to look for issues, nothing. I installed and used Bleachbit to clean thinks up, see if it might make a difference, nope.

When this Linux PCs workspace crashes, it will tell me the thumbnail cache is having problems that it needs administrative permission to fix. (or i have the option to dismiss; this warning always appears on the top of a NEMO window, with the two buttons/choices) When this happens, I know I'm about to crash my desktop. Then the contents of the desktop disappears, except for the windows of the program I have open. (Firefox, Gedit, Terminal) All of the launchers and files on my desktop disappear, until I completely reboot. There is no way to rotate around workspaces that I see that could bring it all back somehow.

Why is my desktop crashing like this?

[debiman]

we don't know; that's an interesting story but you haven't provided any real information. we always need the actual messages, no paraphrasing.

is this debian stable (stretch)?
i think your problem might be with hardware that is too new? how new is it exactly? if it's newer than 2years old, it might not work so well on debian stable.
this might result in a general performance problem with graphical applications.

please troubleshoot:
open a terminal, enter 'top' or 'htop'.
figure out what this does & leave it open at all times.
what is eating your resources?

also in a terminal, please enter

Code: Select all

lspci -k | grep -iEA5 'vga|display|3d'

and post the output here.
please use code tags for posting code.

[Brazen-Bear]

Hi there,
Thanks for your time and attention here. I did look at it last night and it sounds like you are probably right, it is a hardware issue. Here is the output from Terminal:

account@ip98-168-1xx-xx:~$ lspci -k | grep -iEA5 'vga|display|3d'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] (rev a2)
Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. GT218 [GeForce 210]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Kernel modules: nouveau
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. High Definition Audio Controller
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
06:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller
Kernel driver in use: ahci

account@ip98-168-1xx-xx:~$ top

top - 12:42:39 up 10:15, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.07
Tasks: 198 total, 1 running, 197 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.4 us, 0.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.4 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 8074968 total, 5418904 free, 1890028 used, 766036 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 8282108 total, 8282108 free, 0 used. 5774248 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
933 account 20 0 1923236 316788 72652 S 2.3 3.9 1:13.09 cinnamon
600 root 20 0 480140 131480 95516 S 1.3 1.6 0:54.69 Xorg
939 account 20 0 1203152 60056 33452 S 1.0 0.7 0:15.58 nemo
2429 account 20 0 490060 39336 29356 S 0.7 0.5 0:03.35 gnome-term+
2436 account 20 0 45048 3740 3084 R 0.7 0.0 0:04.16 top
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:03.54 rcu_sched
189 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.32 kworker/3:2
804 account 20 0 1245392 45656 37692 S 0.3 0.6 0:01.80 cinnamon-s+
1099 account 20 0 1924380 271016 140988 S 0.3 3.4 0:16.36 Web Content
1382 account 20 0 2760952 450216 133608 S 0.3 5.6 1:35.88 firefox
1 root 20 0 204540 6948 5300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.80 systemd

I introduced more airflow into the case for the video card, and it seems to have done the trick. It took A LOT more airflow. I'm just glad there was a solution. Thank you!