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- cross-posted to:
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Randomly on my laptop screen this appears and debian just freezes. Sometimes these vertical lines don’t appear and system freezes anyway. Its just random. How do i identify if this is hardware or software issue? and then how to identify exact piece of hardware or software causing this problem.
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This looks like a hardware issue to me.
RAM or Video card issue. Are you SURE the entire machine actually locks up, or just the display? Try ssh’ing into the machine when this happens to see if it’s actually staying alive, though the display stops working.
yeah, entire machine locks up. Yeah have tried ssh’ing from mobile and it was stuck one time when i did that during a freeze. have replugged RAM let’s see if system freezes again,
May just be bad RAM as well on a 12 year old machine. Should be cheapish to replace. Try running a memtest
Idk how useful this is but that looks like when i had bad RAM, or like when RAM becomes unseated. You could try reseating your RAM, YMMV.
yeah probably this can be an issue.
It’s not happening when you try to initiate sleep mode, is it? I have a computer that only ever does something like this when I try to use sleep. I’ve basically just stopped using that feature because nothing I tried ever fixed it. Works completely fine otherwise.
sleep works fine.
That kind of looks like how a machine would look if the RAM is loose in the socket or otherwise have a bad contact. And since you mention that it’s random and sometimes there are no vertical lines, that’d be my guess rather than anything to do with graphical software. Is the RAM on your machine soldered on or is it detachable? If it’s the latter, I recommend taking the RAM out and reseating it to see if things improve (try this a couple of times, just to be sure the RAM is properly seated). If the RAM is soldered on then it might have something to do with out of memory. Does the system slow down a couple of seconds before freezing entirely? If it does then it’s likely it’s a OOM thing.
Oh, and for good measure, can you get to the tty (ctrl + alt + f2) when the system freezes? If you can then it’s probably a graphical thing and you can try restarting those processes. If the system is in a complete freeze then I’d say that’s another point for the OOM hypothesis.
yeah, i think you might be right about RAM. Because one day i was holding my latop in my one hand and i saw this screen flickering thing. that was the first time this issue happened. And yeah i can not login to tty when the freeze happens this mean system is completely blocked and is not a graphical problem. I dont think its OOM issue as i have enough RAM and no system doesnt slow down a couple of seconds before freezing entirely. The freeze is random and instant and it happens sometimes when i slide laptop so i think its due to RAM loose connection. Not sure if the RAM is soldered one or is detachable. I will try to replug it and see if it fixes the problem. btw the machine in question is macbook pro 2012 and thanks for replying kind stranger!
Edit: the ram is detachable.
Could be hardware (chips desoldering themselves, data cable shorting out when heating up, broken RAM), could be software (driver issue, IOMMU configuration, etc).
I would start with testing the memory chips. If those pass, I’d try a much newer/older kernel to see if that makes the problem disappear. If that doesn’t, maybe try running the OS that came with the laptop and verify that it’s a hardware issue. If it doesn’t happen on another OS, it’s probably some form. Of software issue; in that case you’d need to catch the crash somehow, like by plugging a USB-to-serial converter into a USB port, dumping the kernel output to that, and having a second machine monitor the kernel output while you try to trigger the crash.
If all operating systems have the issue, reseating RAM and perhaps any important cables may also help.
yeah, I have just reseated the RAM lets see if it fixed the problem,
What GPU and driver are you using? Looks gpu driver related to me.
| What GPU and driver are you using? Looks gpu driver related to me.
Subsystem: Apple Inc. 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [106b:00fa] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46 Memory at a0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M] Memory at 90000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] I/O ports at 2000 [size=64] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) (prog-if 30 [XHCI]) Subsystem: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:7270]```That seems VERY important to note. Is that an Apple m3?
nope this is macbook pro 2012
Ok. Please add these infos, also the ones you added in comments, to your main post.
Otherwise you need to understand that not many people can help you
Oh that makes sense. Thanks!
What GPU and driver are you using? Looks gpu driver related to me.
for context, i have been using debian 12 for last 6 months perfectly fine. Its just from last week my laptop is randomly freezing and then I have to hard reset it everytime this happens, (pressing power off button for few seconds to force shutdown).
You really should include the hardware you’re using in the main post. It’s common courtesy when requesting help from people.
Oh yeah i totally agree!
I have a similar issue specific to my Intel graphics, debian 12, and kde. It’s fixed in the newer kernel in debian Trixie. In my case I was able to set up a keybind to ctrl-alt-backspace which kills the graphics server. I have to catch it quick or it’ll lock up completely, but it’s something to try. I’m on 15 days uptime now I’ve probably had to do that about 5 times.
Oh, thats very helpful. Thanks
Np. Trying to find the exact page but I just checked the last logs in journalctl after each crash to determine that’s what it was. If you search Wayland + kwin + Intel GPU crash you get lots of hits. It can be fixed but now that I know it’s very specific to my setup and already fixed in future versions I’m not so worried.
yeah with what other people have said it’s most likely bad or unseated RAM
have just replugged RAM and lets see if system gets frozen again.
that’s good then! i had this same issue (randomly freezing after turning it om for some time) though new RAM ended up fixing it
Hmmm. I have also installed linux mint xfce from scratch. So far so good. It stuck only one time since this install. And its been 5 days or so i guess.
