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Sometimes my GNOME shell (or even more than that?) stops responding, and the only option is a hard reboot with a button on my computer's casing. Neither any keyboard shortcuts, nor the mouse are working. The clock stops, which actually helps to notice the crash (if I was afk when it happens - which is quite often the case) and note down the time of it.

The logs stop writing by the time of the total freeze. For instance, today the clock stopped at 11:14. The last logs before the reboot were written at 11:10:

11:10:06 systemd: systemd-timedated.service: Deactivated successfully.
11:09:36 dbus-daemon: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.timedate1'
11:09:36 systemd: Starting Time & Date Service...
11:09:36 dbus-daemon: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.timedate1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.timedate1.service' requested by ':1.27' (uid=0 pid=803 comm="/usr/lib/snapd/snapd " label="unconfined")
11:09:35 systemd: Finished Download data for packages that failed at package install time.
11:06:49 snapd: storehelpers.go:923: cannot refresh: snap has no updates available: "bare", "core", "core18", "core20", "core22", "cups", "firefox", "gnome-3-28-1804", "gnome-3-34-1804", "gnome-42-2204", "gtk-common-themes", "icon-theme-papirus", "node", "shotcut", "snap-store", "snapd", "snapd-desktop-integration", "terminal-parrot"
11:06:48 packagekitd: refresh-cache transaction /7952_eaaeecbe from uid 1000 finished with success after 2974ms
11:06:48 systemd: Finished Update the local ESM caches.

A few mins before that, I rebooted the system after the update. The occurrences of those freezes might correlate with the events related to updates, such as the system starts searching for them, downloading, or like now, it happens right after the installation. But it was never the case that some update made my system unusable: I reboot after this freeze and everything is back to normal.

The kernel logs were last written 10 minutes before the freeze:

$ sudo less /var/log/kern.log output Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   17.987679] kauditd_printk_skb: 84 callbacks suppressed
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   17.987683] audit: type=1326 audit(1723367086.220:129): auid=1000 uid=1000 gid=1000 ses=2 s>
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.013893] audit: type=1107 audit(1723367086.248:130): pid=781 uid=102 auid=4294967295 ses>
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.013893]  exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=102 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.026178] audit: type=1107 audit(1723367086.260:131): pid=781 uid=102 auid=4294967295 ses>
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.026178]  exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=102 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.031376] audit: type=1107 audit(1723367086.264:132): pid=781 uid=102 auid=4294967295 ses>
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.031376]  exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=102 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.032441] audit: type=1107 audit(1723367086.268:133): pid=781 uid=102 auid=4294967295 ses>
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.032441]  exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=102 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Aug 11 11:04:46 desktop kernel: [   18.676142] audit: type=1400 audit(1723367086.912:134): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" >
Aug 11 11:27:14 desktop kernel: [    0.000000] Linux version 6.5.0-10043 (root@runner-47n-egjk-project-32919825-concurr>
Aug 11 11:27:14 desktop kernel: [    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.5.0-10043 root=UUID=ebca1ca0-49>

Some youtuber mentioned that those freezes are a thing for GNOME 42 (on my system) and 46-47 (on the new Ubuntu), also on other distros (i.e. Fedora). So I know, this is not just my setup.

The freezes are luckily not very frequent and I can live with them, but of course one day I may loose some unsaved work...

My extension suite:

'user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com', 
'appindicatorsupport@rgcjonas.gmail.com', 
'arcmenu@arcmenu.com', 
'dash-to-panel@jderose9.github.com',
'weatherornot@somepaulo.github.io', 
'rounded-window-corners@yilozt', 
'shell-configurator@adeswanta', 
'Rounded_Corners@lennart-k', 
'status-area-horizontal-spacing@mathematical.coffee.gmail.com',
'gsconnect@andyholmes.github.io', 
'blur-my-shell@aunetx', 
'ding@rastersoft.com', 
'tiling-assistant@leleat-on-github', 
'logomenu@aryan_k', 
'openweather-extension@jenslody.de', 
'workspace-indicator@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com', 
'auto-move-windows@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com'

What's your experience with this? Are there any fixes or particularly problematic services or extensions?

FedKad
  • 13,420

1 Answers1

1

Edit: I'm Currently on kernel version 6.11 zabbly and the issue came back. It might actually have come back in 6.10 already. I solved it by downgrading to the official 5.15 kernel as suggested by HenrikB. 5.15 was no longer installed so I installed it with:

sudo apt install linux-image-generic

I then configured Grub to remember the last manual selection. Finally, I selected 5.15 at boot. I think that every time there is a kernel update, the order is reset, so I need to manually select 5.15 again.

I'm quite surprised that this bug is lasting so long, I think the X1C is quite popular among Linux users. It would be great if someone could report if the issue exists on Ubuntu 24.04 too.


I had the same issue on my Lenovo Thinkpad X1C Gen 9, very annoying. I think the issue started after an update, probably around mid-August 2024. I don't know what the source of the issue was, but I upgraded the kernel to 6.10 and since then I haven't experienced any freeze.

To update the kernel I used Zabbly's repos -- see instruction in the readme of the repo. The repo should be trusted (the maintainer has worked at Canonical until recently, see here) and the procedure is straightforward, but I did have to disable Secure Boot, which is not great. As soon as I have a moment I'll just upgrade to 24.04 with the official kernel, which I hope is not affected.

See also a related question here: Frequent semi-hard system freezes 22.04 LTS

korg91
  • 146