As stated, when playing avi video files with vlc video player (no matter - fullscreen or windowed) after some time (10 to 30 minutes, seems to be somehow tied to screen dim):
- picture on screen freezes
- keyboard hangs
- cant turn off numlock
- ctrl+alt+whatever not working
- sometimes I can move mouse, but it cannot interact with ubuntu top panel.
- pressing power button has no effect
- audio remains playing as normal (till the end of movie)
So that's not a kernel hang, and not an app hang... but UI + USB input freeze! THE Only way to continue look movie is to press reset button.
Browsing works well, no Chrome crashes, in-browser youtube could show videos for hours. There is enough memory, less than 20% used. none of 2GB swap used. Movie files are always in RAM (/mnt/tmp/somefile.mkv, on tmpfs), RAM was checked several times, memtest ok, Chrome tabs has NOT crashed even once!
H/W:
- CPU: i7 920
- RAM: 48 gigs ram
- GPU: ATI R9 270 2Gb
- monitor: 2k 75hz IPS panel, attached via DP1.2
- usb 2.0 generic keyboard and mouse
S/W:
uname -a
Linux apc 4.18.0-22-generic #23~18.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 6 08:37:25 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release: 18.04
Codename: bionic
vlc --version
VLC media player 3.0.7 Vetinari (revision 3.0.7-0-g86cee31)
VLC version 3.0.7 Vetinari (3.0.7-0-g86cee31)
Compiled by jenkins on e672859d050d (Jun 7 2019 10:27:35)
Compiler: gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.10)
lshw -c video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Curacao XT / Trinidad XT [Radeon R7 370 / R9 270X/370X]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=amdgpu latency=0
resources: irq:31 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fbd80000-fbdbffff ioport:d000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff
modinfo amdgpu | grep version
version: 5.0.19.20.7
Steps taken, to reproduce hang:
- dowload Ubuntu 18.04.2 from ubuntu.com
- Erase and Clean install (one partiton, minimal install + upgrades + 3rdparty)
- amdgpu-pro (I need opencl) drivers 19.20 downloaded from their page
- Installed with
./amdgpu-pro-install -y --opencl=pal,legacy - Reboot
sudo snap install VLC- Open avi file (xvid codec)
- 20 minute = screen freeze, UI dead, only sound will remain playing till the end of movie.
Questions
- What could be wrong?
- How to investigate?
- Has someone else encountered same problems with 18.04+vlc+amdgpu ?
Search effort taken
Temporary solution
sudo apt install mplayer mplayer-gui
This works great..
After a day of testing: Nope, it also could hang. Removing the VLC tag. Problem is somewhere in Ubuntu/Xorg/OpenGL/video drivers
Conclusions
I've found it much more convenient to use linux console for software building process, but its wet/unstable UX just've disappointed me, in its everyday/recreational use.
I just wanted to watch a movie! For a couple of days using it (I mean X.Org and ALSA) I alredy had to:
- reinstall OS/gpu drivers couple of times
- encounter dropouts/silence problems with "sound via display port"
- numerous freezes and crashes of popular software
These two technologies, that are barebones of user interaction - are real beta-versions of something, that may be ever human-usable! Random freezes, screen-flashes, sound dropouts... 2019-th? Most user-friendly desktop distro? LOL.. that wood is too raw wet, to become a good easy-to-set fire yet, guys!
