I want to preface this saying I’m an absolute beginner with Linux and still working my way around it. While using my computer regularly (could just be browsing the internet while in discord vc or playing not very demanding games), the system will just freeze, and if there is some type of audio playing it will loop the last second of audio. I can’t move my mouse and I can’t open the terminal with Ctrl - Alt - Fx; the only way to fix this issue is by shutting down my computer and starting it again. Using journalctl in both regular and sudo mode doesn’t show any issue when it freezes. I’ve also tried running the command with the -f flag and that seems to stop it. It hasn’t crashed with that open, but since it happens randomly it’s probably luck.
I’ve also noticed that sometimes when booting up an error message saying RDSEED32 is broken. Disabling the corresponding CPUID bit will show; and that some people had similar freezes when having that error. I have added the clearcpuid=rdseed to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in the grub.cfg file and the crash is still happening (I also checked the grub config when booting and the flag was there).
For reference, I’m dual booting Fedora with Windows 11 on my main drive and “testing the waters” in an older SSD that I had lying around. My specs are:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Motherboard: TUF GAMING B650-PLUS
GPU: GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER (running proprietary drivers, I’m 99% sure the nouveau drivers are not in use)
Fedora KDE 43
Linux Kernel version: 6.17.12-300.fc43.x86_64
Everything seems up to date and every check I’ve done for possible updates shows that none are needed
If I’m missing something please let me know as I’m still learning.
@Iñigo: [quote=“P G, post:2, topic:177536, username:pg-tips”]
Have you applied the recent BIOS update for this board?
[/quote]
It is generally best to update both system and vendor firmware when reporting problems – it easier for others with similar hardware to replicate your configuration without lengthy bask-and-forth exchanges.
Random freezes without journal entries are often symptoms of hardware failures. I would run memtest86+ overnight for several nights, and also check the S.M.A.R.T status of the drives.
It is generally best to update both system and vendor firmware when reporting problems – it easier for others with similar hardware to replicate your configuration without lengthy bask-and-forth exchanges.
Yeah I thought about it but since the ASUS BIOS update came only with an exe and a post somewhere said something along the lines of “Don’t update if it doesn’t say anything about Linux” I thought I didn’t need to update. Nevertheless, I booted up windows and updated the BIOS to the last available version; then updated whatever discover said to update and rebooted and the freeze happened almost immediately.
I tried running smartctl with both a short and a long test and none of them showed any errors. I’ll try running memtest tonight and report tomorrow but I’ll only be able to do a single test.
So I left memtest running for around 9h and after 10 tests it reported 0 errors. Yesterday I also noticed that it didn’t crash again even after putting it under heavy CPU load. If it happens again I’ll try to ssh through my phone and report again
So I know I haven’t said anything in almost a month (the holidays and some other health stuff), but the issue is still present in a weird way,. After doing the memtest run, I used my computer for two days and everything seemed fine. Then after returning home from the holidays I used it for about 4 days and it didn’t crash. I couldn’t really use my PC for a week except for running a jellyfin server which worked perfectly. However, yesterday when I sat down and had some time to just use the computer it crashed again. I pressed the caps lock key and the light in my keyboard didn’t turn on and I couldn’t ssh through my phone. The only thing I’ve done these past few days is update my system through discover so I’m guessing there might be some compatibility issue?
When reporting issues like this you should provide enough detail to allow others with similar hardware to reproduce the issue. I did see crashes on one Dell laptop while it was left idle. This started with early 6.18 kernels, but now on 6.18.5 and haven’t had a problem recently. Do your crashes occur while actively using the system with keyboard or pointer input or after minutes of no user input?
It has happened both active and idle. Recently it happened right after opening a game (Vintage Story which runs natively on Linux), and also just chatting with some friends on discord. However it also happened once when I left my PC to cook dinner and when I came back it was frozen. I checked and I’m also using the kernel version 6.18.5. The problem is that the crashes seem random, I could be browsing the web and it will freeze or I could be under heavy load playing games and run into no issues (also it happened while writing this post lol)
Random crashes are often hardware issues. While RAM and mass storage are always suspects, connectors and capacitors are also common failure points. If you live in an area with high humidity and exposure to salty ocean air, connectors should be checked for green scum. Due to the number of computers in modern cars, auto parts stores now sell “contact enhancer” for use in wiring harness connectors. Checking for bad capacitors may need test equipment but starts with visual inspection.
It could be a hardware problem but seeing as it doesn’t happen on Windows I think it has to be some compatibility issue. Yesterday I used my computer for about 2 hours without it freezing. This morning I updated the system and in the span of an hour got three crashes. Could it be that system updates are messing with some config file or not installing properly?
I can also confirm i’ve been having similar freezing problems since updating to the 6.18.x kernel. It’s mostly freezing when I leave my pc idle for a decent period of time but I have had it freeze a couple of times during use. It’s definitely not a hardware problem because if I rollback the kernel to 6.17.13 I don’t have any freezing problems and hadn’t had any prior to the kernel update. I also tested the other version of 6.18 like .3 , .4, and .5 and they have the same freezing problem. I can’t provide any errors since the entire pc locks up and i’m forced to hard power off the machine to get it working again and there is no warning messages whatsoever on the frozen screen or when logging in again after the restart.
These are my system specs (currently updated to the latest kernel from Fedora and still freezing)
Operating System: Fedora Linux 43
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.5-200.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor
Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (61.9 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
Manufacturer: ASUS
This is being reported often enough that I’m not buying the “this is probably a hardware issue” route. While I agree that truly random crashes are likely a hardware issue… in my experience these happen much less frequently than software bugs. When a user reports a crash as “random” it just means that they can’t figure out what triggers it. Yet… when it happens to me, and I look at the crash report/backtraces, it’s usually crashing in the same spot every time. So while an end-user thinks it’s random… it’s not actually random.
Just to give closure to the thread, following @gabrbedd advice I rechecked journalctl and the only suspicious thing I saw was a Bluetooth warning, which I also noticed in previous logs; so I disconnected my bluetooth adapter and my computer hasn’t crashed since. However, I was so fed up with my PC freezing (it froze three times in the span of 20 minutes) that I decided to change distribution just to eliminate that variable. It didn’t help since it froze again, so it seems that the bluetooth adapter was the culprit