I run Debian Bullseye (testing) on an Asus TP201SA (full output of inxi -Fx here). I've been having trouble with strange, apparently random and nearly impossible to diagnose X-session freezes. I run XFCE 4.14. The freezes are just of X, because I can change to a login terminal and kill the session there. The mouse is responsive during these freezes, and I can execute commands via Alt+F2+command, and they run, but the screen is frozen and unchanging.
I followed the instructions here (which are for Ubuntu, but mutatis mutandis) and I got the output of dmesg, the Xorg.0.log file and the output of cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_error_state5; I cannot seem to find any hint of X/xfdesktop/xfwm/xfce error in those files. I have noticed, however -several times-, the following sort of errors on `.xsession-errors`: `xfwm4: Fatal IO error 4 (Interrupted system call) on X server :0.0.` A search on that error got me to this question on SE], but it remains unanswered; other results suggest that it is an issue of drivers missing; whenever I upgrade that laptop I get many warnings of missing firmwaare after the initramfs building stage:
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W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/icl_dmc_ver1_09.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/tgl_dmc_ver2_04.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/skl_huc_2.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/bxt_huc_2.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_huc_4.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/glk_huc_4.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_huc_4.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/cml_huc_4.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/cml_guc_33.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/icl_huc_9.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/ehl_huc_9.0.0.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/ehl_guc_33.0.4.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/tgl_huc_7.0.3.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/tgl_guc_35.2.0.bin for module i915
I've noticed that these crashes usually happen under two non-exclusive conditions:
- 1. Running a settings window (`xfce4-appearance-settings`, `xfwm4-settings`, the Settings dialog of TeXstudio (which is Qt, not gtk), etc.).
2. Running Firefox and load a "heavy" page, such as Facebook.
I almost always have the following running: a terminal window with 3 tabs and an instance of qpdfview with at least 3 PDF files open. As I said at the beginning, I can switch to a login terminal and sometimes killing the running instances of `xfwm4` or `xfdesktop` unfreeze the screen, but not always; I usually have to reboot. If I don't do any of the 2 things in the list above, I can work without these annoying freezes, but sometimes it is unavoidable to do at least one (opening a link or reconfiguring TeXstudio, for instance).
I'd really appreciate any ideas on how to properly diagnose what causes these freezes, because I'm lost at trying to figure them out. Thanks!