It started freezing maybe a month or two ago. It happens anytime between a few seconds after the OS loads, to hours or days later. I do not recall downloading anything around when this issue began that could be suspect.
I’ve put off fixing this because I have no idea how to even begin troubleshooting it. Internet searches for “Linux freezes” returns practically countless potential problems.
What are some recommendations? I have my root directory on a 30 GB partition separate from my home directory, which I think makes reinstalling my base image (Debian) easy without losing personal data, so that’s an option. Maybe there’s a system log file that would provide some insight?
I’m Linux dumb so please teach me how to fish!
I’ll add that my Windows install (on a separate drive) doesn’t freeze, and my Linux install is on a new Samsung drive that didn’t report issues, so the problems unlikely hardware related.
02:05 18OCT: Thanks for all the quick responses, a lot of helpful suggestions so far. I should clarify that “my computer freezes” means it is 100% unresponsive until it is rebooted. Ctrl+alt+del spam or changing terminal sessions when its frozen does not get a response. The last few entries in my most recent journalctl boot outputs are different from one another, and the I did not see any errors. For now, I’ll boot a live USB and let it sit for while, see if it crashes again.
the
/var/log/folder would be the best place to start.-
When a random freeze occurs note the time. Try to be as accurate and close to the time it happened as you can, including day, hour, and minute.
A. If possible, do this for multiple instances of this happening -
Check various log files starting with
syslogand look at the times noted above. Look for any relevant errors being thrown by the system at these times.
-
If it’s freezing regularly, you could try booting a live usb of any Linux distro and see if it does the same thing. That will tell you relatively quickly if it’s a hardware problem or a software problem.
It happens anytime between a few seconds after the OS loads, to hours or days later.
That will tell you relatively quickly if it’s a hardware problem or a software problem.
I mean, potentially not that quickly if they have to wait days for it to happen. Good low-investment-of-personal-time-and-effort suggestion though.
Yeah, I would give it a few hours to most of the day to test and then move on with something else. I really recommend journalctl though. Of course it depends on how long it stays on and how fast you can read the logs.
Do you have a Ryzen CPU by any chance? I had an issue like this for ages and it turns out it was a faulty Ryzen power state that was disabled by default on Windows, but not on Linux. If this happens to be your issue, there are ways you can disable the power state in software: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Ryzen#Soft_lock_freezing
Hold the power button till the display goes dark. Then start up the computer.
Do you have another machine(or even a phone with an ssh tool like connectbot) you can use to try remoting into the machine while it is “frozen”? If you can still ssh in, that would indicate it is a DE issue, and you can poke around from there, try forcing a restart of the DE
Which distro are you on?
Was there a kernel update recently by chance? Have you tried falling back to an earlier version? Got any timeshift backups?
Debian 12. When the freezing first started, I lied to myself saying it’ll self-correct with time. I’ve since lost track of which timeshift backup to use. I am a silly fool.
And there was no kernel update afaik.
I suppose the logging from the Os there is the same as journalctl. I’m new to Linux, but I’ve done Hackintosh quite a bit, so a lot of similar commandlines and debugging. I digress.
Have you tried making a new user, booting from a live usb or booting into a different desktop environment? I feel those are the lowest hanging fruits where you can check if it hangs universally or just on your main user account. Would help narrow it down a little if you haven’t been able to spot anything in logs.
If you’re not getting logs, try to use this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboard_shortcuts#Kernel_(SysRq)
Try a sync to disk (or some of the “kill all” commands) when it’s frozen. This is closer in function to ctrl alt del in windows.
You’ve mentioned in the thread you’ve on Debian 12 - have you installed mesa from backports?
The version of mesa on 12 is is 22.3.6 which is before the release of the 7900GRE and only very early RDNA3 support.
bookworm-backports has 25.0.7
If you read through https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/ you can enable the backports repo then just reinstall mesa (or dist-upgrade)
One thing that I did when distro hopping was to have /home be separate like you have, but I would back it up elsewhere and let it be a clean start which I could bring over what I wanted from the backup.
It was easier than hunting down which dotfile the new distro didn’t like.
- Would be good to know the hardware you’re working, especially if it’s a laptop and the model.
- What kind of freeze is this? Black screen, frozen graphics, mouse frozen…etc. Also whether is time-bssed, and how long it takes to freeze.
- As a test, boot, and play music continuously until it freezes. Does the sound stop as well?
In all practical reality, Linux takes A LOT to topple over like this. It certainly would fair better than Windows with wonky hardware, but if it’s a laptop for example, maybe your fans aren’t working and therefore it’s a heat. Just try and define what kind of freeze it is first.
I’m running a desktop with relatively new hardware. Amd 5900x CPU, AMD 7900 GRE GPU, 32 GB ram, plenty of space and good airflow for stable thermals.
The freeze is definitely at least frozen desktop and mouse/keyboard. I also tried changing terminal sessions after a freeze tonight and this had no effect, so it’s probably the whole system?
Good idea with playing sound, I will try this on my next boot.
You could try to ping your machine from another device and see if it responds. I had issues with older nvidia card on a old system where it would lock up keyboard/mouse and video but the underlying system was still running and I could ssh into the machine and debug the problem that way. Another computer is obviously preferred but in a pinch a cellphone is better than nothing.
dmesg/journalctl, then udev (
udevadm monitor) and lsusb/lspci might be helpful too. Places to look at (only if you fiddled with them):/etc/fstabfor mount options and do you maybe have a weird rule in/etc/udev,/etc/modprobe.dor/etc/sysctl?Had the same issue and it was my mouse causing the USB ports to stop working I realized that the clock was still working and it would go into hibernate. Just wouldn’t respond to mouse or kb.
Whole system freezes unfortunately. The only silver lining is that I know exactly what time the crash occurred, since my clock freezes too!
I have some bad experiences with btrfs and timeshift schedules. I have laptops seen freeze for minutes when creating a btrfs snapshot. I have not specifically looked if you are using this combination but it is something to check.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics#Baytrail_complete_freeze
Go to 6.15, there is your solution. I had the same very problem and with this it got solved.
this is important, and will help you find solutions much more specific than just “system freeze”
- Right after a crash, once you reboot, run
journalctl -b -1and scroll to the bottom. Look for any big red text, all of that will be very helpful to diagnose this issue
Otherwise,
- Does it freeze permanently, requiring a reboot, or for a few seconds?
- If it’s just for a few seconds, and you’re on an AMD system, it would sound like an fTPM stutter. A BIOS update would likely fix that, it was a widespread issue.
- Are you using an AMD or NVIDIA GPU?
- Do you play any games or use any software that uses OpenGL? (Blender and minecraft are some I’ve had problems in before)
No red text from journalctl unfortunately. My last few sessions each end with different messages too. One is a KDE Connect warning, a few others echoing some commands I sent in the terminal, etc. No red errors.
The system freezes permanently, requiring a reboot.
I have an AMD GPU, and likely have OpenGL installed.
- Right after a crash, once you reboot, run
