System freezes Please don't respond. I gave up.

[snorkelface]

Been trying to solve this problem for 4 months now.

Been running Kubuntu 18.04 since released.

Installed Kubuntu 22.04 on a new ssd about 4 months ago. Since then, my system has been freezing about once per day. Total freeze. No mouse or keyboard. Can't ssh in.

The only thing I can do is shutdown and boot again.

No error in any log, even while watching logs.

Happens at random times during the day. Can't duplicate anything that causes freezing for certain. However, it happens more often when I've been downloading lots of photo such as wallpapers then open dolphin and click on a video and vlc or Celuloid opens. System freezes. One time, I left computer with no programs running for a few minutes, came back and it was frozen.

I have my old drive in my computer with Kubuntu 18.04 and can't get it to freeze when I boot and use that drive. Sort of points to something in 22.04.

I tried cloning the Kubuntu 22.04 from a ssd to a hd, to eliminate the disk.
I tried using Celuloid instead of vlc to eliminate the video player.
I tried 3 different kiernels to eliminate the kernel.
I tried not visiting any website all day.
Tested system and video ram (VRAM) for 24 hours.
Checked swap space.
Checked RAM usage.
Loaded system with over 1,500 processes.
Ran a couple of video testing apps.
Checked temperature.
Checked power supply.
Removed, cleaned all connectors on motherboard.
Removed, cleaned memory stick. Only have one.

None of these have helped.

Have not been able determine why this is happening with 22.04 and not 18.04 in this computer.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be grateful.

System specs:

AMD A8-5600K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
8GB RAM
Base Board Information
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: F2A75M-D3H

[Snowhog]

Well, it could be the SSD itself. What brand/manufacturer?

[snorkelface]

As I mentioned, I switched out the ssd with a hd that was cloned form the ssd.

"I tried cloning the Kubuntu 22.04 from a ssd to a hd, to eliminate the disk."

[TinyTim]

Out of curiosity..... Could 22.04 be conflicting with AMD A8-5600K APU Radeon driver version? Are you using generic, low latency, proprietary, Nouveau graphic drivers?

[snorkelface]

TinyTim,

Thanks for the suggestion. Using Nouveau driver. There has to be something that's not compatible.

The only thing I can try is to start replacing everything one at a time, both hardware and software (drivers?). There's no way to troubleshoot this since there are no clues. I really don't have the time or money to do that.

At this point, after 4 months of this problem without a solution, I'm building another computer and will be installing 24.04. I'm still open for suggestions but will be retiring my current computer.

[Schwarzer Kater]

[…] Using Nouveau driver. […]

Are you sure? Nouveau is the open source driver for Nvidia GPUs - your did not list an Nvidia GPU in your OP but an in chip AMD GPU…

[snorkelface]

Not sure why I thought that. I was wrong.

$ lspci -n -n -k | grep -A 2 -e VGA -e 3D
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Trinity [Radeon HD 7560D] [1002:9904]
Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Trinity [Radeon HD 7560D] [1002:9904]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
$ glxinfo | grep -e OpenGL.vendor -e OpenGL.renderer
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa
OpenGL renderer string: AMD ARUBA (DRM 2.50.0 / 6.5.0-35-generic, LLVM 15.0.7)

[Schwarzer Kater]

If it was not for the perfectly running 18.04 LTS I would say it is faulty hardware… The only difference is the SSD in comparison to 18.04, isn't it? Both are being connected to SATA, right?

[…]
No error in any log, even while watching logs.
[…]

And in the logs should be something to be found if it is a software issue, shouldn't it?
What were the last entries before the freezes occured?

What make and model is the SSD? Is there a firmware update from the vendor for it?
Is it connected to the exact same internal port and cable as the storage device for 18.04 was? Is AHCI enabled for SATA in UEFI (and are any RAID options disabled there)?
You could also post your /etc/fstab to check if there are entries that could cause the freezes (unlikely, but who knows…).

[Schwarzer Kater]

Out of curiosity..... Could 22.04 be conflicting with AMD A8-5600K APU Radeon driver version? Are you using generic, low latency, proprietary, Nouveau graphic drivers?

This APU runs perfectly fine with Kubuntu 22.04 LTS and the radeon driver. And one doesn't need any additional drivers for AMD GPUs (except for very special use cases).

[snorkelface]

I'll try to answer all your questions.

There were 2 changes made.
1. I installed a ssd as my boot/root drive. I disconnected one of my DVD drives, moved my original boot/root hd to that port and plugged the ssd into the original sata port (0).
2. I installed 22.04.

Other than those, everything remained the same.

The ssd was my first thought. I cloned the ssd to a hd and replace the ssd with the hard drive. It still froze sometime during the day.

/etc/fstab has all the proper UUIDs listed, properly.

Remember, the computer runs perfectly almost 18 hours normally. It even ran for 24 hours during a memtest without freezing.

Being an electronic engineer with a computer science masters degrees, I haven't eliminated hardware because I know how hardware can act up. System is on a high end APC UPS with active filtering, so no electrical spikes are causing this. System was put together in 2012 and has worked flawlessly since.

No log shows anything out of the ordinary even when I set log levels to very high. The freeze happens before any event gets logged.

As soon as I get my new system up and running. I plan to boot this system on the old 18.04 hd and play with it for at least 2 weeks. Previously, when I switched from my 22.04 to my 18.04 disk, I used it for 3 days without incident and proclaiming it didn't freeze. My thinking was that it ran with that setup for many years without freezing.

Since I have no more clues to act on, I'm going to close this post. The admin may remove it if they like.