fresh install on "old" desktop freeze randomly

[ngandriau]

Hi.
I have upgraded 3 of my computers successfully with kubuntu 13.10.
But I have an old one resisting, which freezes randomly, even during the boot sequence.

I have seen this post which look similar, and is solved, http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...A-Block-Of-Ice but setting open-gl 2.1 + raster did not solve it.

So I am a bit lost.
I have made a copy of my screen after one of the freeze, with top:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1...90495373487663

I really would appreciate some help to try to figure out what is happening.
Here are the spec of the desktop that I assembled in 2006:

• CPU : AMD X2 4200
• RAM: 4Gb DDR2 667Mhz
• Mother board: ASUS M2N-E
• Video card: ASUS EN7950GT

Default Install of kubuntu 13.10 64bit

• nouveau driver for opengl
• use open GL 2.1 and Raster
• Desktop effect deactivated, else I have weird artifacts on the screen.
• Disabled Nepomuk Semantic Desktop

Last detail, the desktop is a dual boot with an old windows 7 and it is stable when under windows.

Thanks in advance

Nicolas

[ngandriau]

I have reinstalled kubuntu 13.04 64 bits on this old desktop.
No freeze during the whole night.
I am using it to write this post.

If someone want to help me, I'll reinstall 13.10 on a different partition.

Cheers

Nicolas

[dmeyer]

I have reinstalled kubuntu 13.04 64 bits on this old desktop.
No freeze during the whole night.
I am using it to write this post.

If someone want to help me, I'll reinstall 13.10 on a different partition.

Cheers

Nicolas

The reason you are having issues is most likely the GPU. I would recommend moving away from Noveau and using the Nvidia binary driver. You may have to use the legacy driver to support such an incredibly old GPU.

Alternatively, if you don't expect to do any 3D you could always use VESA.

[ngandriau]

Hello @dmeyer and thank you for your help.
I also think it can be a GPU issue, but I don't understand why it also freeze during the boot under grub.
Do you know if grub use the nouveau driver? Are there any options I could use?

[dmeyer]

Hello @dmeyer and thank you for your help.
I also think it can be a GPU issue, but I don't understand why it also freeze during the boot under grub.
Do you know if grub use the nouveau driver? Are there any options I could use?

If you freeze at the GRUB screen then I don't think it's the GPU. If after you select the GRUB entry and it then freezes then it can most definitely be the GPU.

[ngandriau]

What I have witnessed is the grub screen with the boot options (kubuntu, windows...) frozen.
This is not the most frequent case. Most of the time, the freeze happen when I am login KDE and using any tool.
I have not identified specific pattern.

[dmeyer]

I would recommend you run memtest86+. GRUB does not use any drivers or the kernel etc. If GRUB is freezing it could be bad ram but let's look at other options first.

I would say you can reinstall your bootloader (much easier than it sounds) but it's unlikely to be an issue if you sometimes get past the GRUB screen. Does Windows present any random freezes etc? I know you say it is stable but I have yet to meet a truly stable Windows 7 install that's older than a year.

Now this is the order of the things I would do:
1. Have a successful boot and login.
2. Open a terminal and run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

3. Run

sudo lspci | grep VGA

and paste the output here.
4. Run

lsmod | grep video

and paste the output here.
5. Run

dmesg | grep nouveau

and paste the output here.

If you can't get it to boot successfully then I would try using the "video=vesa" kernel boot option and then performing the steps I outlined above. These are really just diagnostic commands to check what's going on. The apt-get commands are just to make sure your system is fully installed and up to date. Please run them.

[ngandriau]

Thanks for the info
I am going to reinstall 13.10 on a separate drive and make all this command and post the results here.
This will take some time, but I should have it tonight or tomorrow.

I don't know what you mean by "I have yet to meet a truly stable Windows 7 install" ;-)

[dmeyer]

Thanks for the info
I am going to reinstall 13.10 on a separate drive and make all this command and post the results here.
This will take some time, but I should have it tonight or tomorrow.

I don't know what you mean by "I have yet to meet a truly stable Windows 7 install" ;-)

Well Windows 7 is actually a pretty fantastic OS. It's fairly stable, relatively secure, quite quick OS with great 3rd party support and still uses the traditional desktop paradigm. It is definitely worse than a good Linux distro but it is by no means a bad OS like Vista/XP/8/8.1. The problem with Windows 7 is that like all Windows systems, it does have a habit of degrading over time. I actually have Windows 7 in a VM that is very bare and I make frequent back-ups to protect against system degradation. All that VM does is run my chess software of which Linux is incredibly lacking. Windows 7 under daily use as a main OS does become fairly slow, and crashy.

[ngandriau]

It was not really a question, but I agree with most of your points ;-)

[ngandriau]

It is done, I have re-installed 13.10 on a different partition.
I had some issue to do it, as the installer had its issues:
- some weird graphical artifacts. especially the dropbox, with the choices not displayed correctly making it difficult to select
- and some freeze.

In the end, I installed 13.04 and made a version upgrade.
The update is successful, but the desktop has then the weird artifacts. I am trying to take screen shots
- The display become correct when I deactivate the desktop effects: Alt+shift+F12

But then the desktop freeze in the 5 first minutes.

Here are the results of the various commands you gave me:

I don't know a lot about it, but could it be an issue with the temperature of the gpu?

sudo lspci | grep VGA 
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G71 [GeForce 7950 GT] (rev a1)



lsmod | grep  video
video                  19318  1 nouveau



dmesg | grep nouveau
[    1.057564] nouveau  [  DEVICE][0000:07:00.0] BOOT0  : 0x049500a2
[    1.057568] nouveau  [  DEVICE][0000:07:00.0] Chipset: G71 (NV49)
[    1.057570] nouveau  [  DEVICE][0000:07:00.0] Family : NV40
[    1.058320] nouveau  [   VBIOS][0000:07:00.0] checking PRAMIN for image...
[    1.096874] nouveau  [   VBIOS][0000:07:00.0] ... appears to be valid
[    1.096877] nouveau  [   VBIOS][0000:07:00.0] using image from PRAMIN
[    1.097061] nouveau  [   VBIOS][0000:07:00.0] BIT signature found
[    1.097065] nouveau  [   VBIOS][0000:07:00.0] version 05.71.22.42.06
[    1.097267] nouveau  [     PFB][0000:07:00.0] RAM type: GDDR3
[    1.097270] nouveau  [     PFB][0000:07:00.0] RAM size: 512 MiB
[    1.097272] nouveau  [     PFB][0000:07:00.0]    ZCOMP: 294912 tags
[    1.121817] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] FAN control: PWM
[    1.121829] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] fan management: disabled
[    1.121832] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] internal sensor: yes
[    1.141678] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] temperature (91 C) hit the 'fanboost' threshold
[    1.141683] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] fan management: automatic
[    1.141849] nouveau  [     DRM] VRAM: 505 MiB
[    1.141850] nouveau  [     DRM] GART: 512 MiB
[    1.141855] nouveau  [     DRM] TMDS table version 1.1
[    1.141857] nouveau W[     DRM] TMDS table script pointers not stubbed
[    1.141860] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB version 3.0
[    1.141863] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB outp 00: 01000300 00000028
[    1.141866] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB outp 01: 03000302 00000000
[    1.141868] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB outp 02: 04011310 00000028
[    1.141870] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB outp 03: 0c011312 00000000
[    1.141873] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB outp 04: 020223f1 00c0c080
[    1.141875] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB conn 00: 1030
[    1.141878] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB conn 01: 2130
[    1.141880] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB conn 02: 0210
[    1.141883] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB conn 03: 0211
[    1.141884] nouveau  [     DRM] DCB conn 04: 0213
[    1.143677] nouveau  [     DRM] 0xC5B5: Parsing digital output script table
[    1.193290] nouveau  [     DRM] 0xC605: Parsing digital output script table
[    1.243300] nouveau  [     DRM] 2 available performance level(s)
[    1.243306] nouveau  [     DRM] 0: core 570MHz shader 550MHz memory 700MHz voltage 1350mV fanspeed 20%
[    1.243309] nouveau  [     DRM] 1: core 570MHz shader 550MHz memory 700MHz voltage 1350mV fanspeed 30%
[    1.243313] nouveau  [     DRM] c: core 550MHz shader 550MHz memory 702MHz voltage 1350mV fanspeed 97%
[    1.244550] nouveau  [     DRM] MM: using M2MF for buffer copies
[    1.244559] nouveau  [     DRM] Setting dpms mode 3 on TV encoder (output 4)
[    1.328481] nouveau  [     DRM] allocated 1920x1080 fb: 0x9000, bo ffff880114433800
[    1.328557] fbcon: nouveaufb (fb0) is primary device
[    1.348751] nouveau  [     DRM] 0xC5B5: Parsing digital output script table
[    1.399387] nouveau 0000:07:00.0: fb0: nouveaufb frame buffer device
[    1.399389] nouveau 0000:07:00.0: registered panic notifier
[    1.399394] [drm] Initialized nouveau 1.1.1 20120801 for 0000:07:00.0 on minor 0
[   31.736418] nouveau  [  PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] temperature (87 C) went below the 'fanboost' threshold

[ngandriau]

here is a picture of what I call "weird graphical artifacts":
https://plus.google.com/photos/10429...90495373487663

I made a quick search on this kind of message: [ 31.736418] nouveau [ PTHERM][0000:07:00.0] temperature (87 C) went below the 'fanboost' threshold
And it looks like this issue already happened in the past: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=163236

But I have not found a solution yet

[Snowhog]

You said you turned off Desktop Effects, but your first picture shows that Blur is active. Make sure that 'all' desktop effects are disabled "as a start".

[ngandriau]

I took the picture before deactivating the effects.

[ngandriau]

The temp widget shows high results: