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Random Freeze

Good morning,

I just installed Artix from the 2020 Cinnamon Openrc iso. It freezes randomly. Note that I had Manjaro installed for a few weeks and it froze randomly as well.  It seems to freeze more often with Artix. How would I determine the cause of this and find a way to fix it?

Thank you.

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #1
Sounds like a hardware problem. To rule it out, you might want to try a more conservative (i.e. much older kernel) distro from a live USB stick. Once your rule this out, if this is a laptop, your most likely culprit is the graphics card or the cooling system. For desktops, a failing PSU, swollen motherboard capacitors or overzealous RAM timings might cause the freezes. Begin by running memtest86 to check your RAM modules (most live ISOs, including Artix) provide it as an option.

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #2
Thank you Nous. I ran memtest with no issue. I think the problem may be with the nouveau driver. I had audio playing during one of those freeze and the audio still played. If it was really frozen I would expect the audio would stop. Perhaps I need to figure out how to use the Intel driver instead since the device has both. I am not sure how to do so.

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #3
It should be as simple as uninstalling the nouveau driver and installing the intel one. Of course, change your monitor inputs/outputs if needed.

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #4
Thank you Dudemanguy. I removed the nouveau driver and only kept the intel drive and it still froze. The audio still plays but cannot interact with the  keyboard or the mouse.  I do not understand what is doing this. The only thing that seems to be always running when that happens is Chromium.  That could be a coincidence since it is almost always running. Would anyone have any idea on the cause?

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #5
How much ram do you have?
Chris Cromer

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #6
You could search for "error" and "warning" in syslog and xorg log, although there are often unrelated ones in there normally, especially for"warning." If Chromium is always running, perhaps temporarily install an additional browser and test with that to see if it's related? Sometimes if you get a desktop freeze it's still possible to switch to another tty and kill or restart things from there, then switch back and continue in the desktop.

Re: Random Freeze

Reply #7
The computer has 8gb of ram and only a small part of it is used.


You could search for "error" and "warning" in syslog and xorg log, although there are often unrelated ones in there normally, especially for"warning." If Chromium is always running, perhaps temporarily install an additional browser and test with that to see if it's related? Sometimes if you get a desktop freeze it's still possible to switch to another tty and kill or restart things from there, then switch back and continue in the desktop.

I installed Firefox and I tried that before but It does not usually work except once but then I got stuck in the other tty unable to press any button or do anything. I'll see if I can run firefox for a little bit. I do not see anythingt that can help in the logs but I'll check again next time it freezes.

Thank you so very much to everyone trying to help me.