But then we solved it. L_V and p.H helped me realize that it was a hardware issue. A big thank you to them. Their help was priceless.
And a big thank you to: Head_on_a_Stick, sickpig, GarryRicketson, golinux, debiman and Wheelerof4te for all of their help and support too.
Thank you!
- Soul Singin'
--------------------
ORIGINAL POST:
I recently upgraded from Wheezy to Stretch (making a very brief visit to Jessie along the way). After the upgrade, I began experiencing black screens of death at seemingly random times. The crashes would render the keyboard and mouse useless. And I could not login through SSH either. Lacking an alternative, I had to cycle the power.
I searched through the log files (many times), but I could never find any trace of the error that cause that catastrophic crash. (Perhaps I was not looking in the right location??)
The only clue to diagnosis was that the crashes would occur more often after editing my GTK configurations with LXAppearance (and on one occasion while editing them with LXAppearance). Removing the ".gtkrc" files stopped the crashing, so I did what any good Debian user would do: I created them with LXAppearance one more time ... and got a black screen of death.
In frustration, I finally did what any sane human being would do. I ran:
Code: Select all
rm -rf ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ ~/.config/lx* ~/.config/libfm/ ~/.config/pcmanfm/
And for good measure, I also ran:
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apt-get purge --autoremove $(dpkg -l lx* | grep ^ii | awk '{print $2}')
Since then, I have not experienced any black screens of death.
Nonetheless, I would be curious to know what GTK configuration was causing those crashes. And I wonder if the inability to login via SSH provides a clue: The GTK crash would cause the Network Manager applet to crash, which would prevent me from connecting over the network.
Below are two of the ".gtkrc" files that LXAppearance generated. The crashes occurred regardless of which theme, icons or cursors was selected.
~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
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[Settings]
gtk-font-name=Sans 10
gtk-theme-name=Clearlooks-Phenix
gtk-icon-theme-name=default.kde4
gtk-fallback-icon-theme=Tango
gtk-toolbar-style=GTK_TOOLBAR_BOTH_HORIZ
gtk-menu-images=1
gtk-button-images=1
gtk-cursor-theme-size=18
gtk-toolbar-icon-size=GTK_ICON_SIZE_LARGE_TOOLBAR
gtk-enable-event-sounds=1
gtk-enable-input-feedback-sounds=1
gtk-xft-antialias=1
gtk-xft-hinting=1
gtk-xft-hintstyle=hintslight
gtk-xft-rgba=rgb
gtk-cursor-theme-name=oxy-obsidian
Code: Select all
# DO NOT EDIT! This file will be overwritten by LXAppearance.
# Any customization should be done in ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine instead.
include "/home/soul/.gtkrc-2.0.mine"
gtk-theme-name="Clearlooks-Phenix"
gtk-icon-theme-name="default.kde4"
gtk-font-name="Sans 10"
gtk-cursor-theme-name="oxy-obsidian"
gtk-cursor-theme-size=18
gtk-toolbar-style=GTK_TOOLBAR_BOTH_HORIZ
gtk-toolbar-icon-size=GTK_ICON_SIZE_LARGE_TOOLBAR
gtk-button-images=1
gtk-menu-images=1
gtk-enable-event-sounds=1
gtk-enable-input-feedback-sounds=1
gtk-xft-antialias=1
gtk-xft-hinting=1
gtk-xft-hintstyle="hintslight"
gtk-xft-rgba="rgb"
Thanks in advance,
- Soul Singin'
.