Hi all, i’m fairly new to linux and brand new to Manjaro. A friend was getting rid of a Dell Latitude 7480 which won’t support Windows 11, so i figured i’d try to get Manjaro up and running on it.
Overall, the install seems to have worked, but i have an issue: random freezes. It has happened 5-6 times today over several hours of use. The first few times were soon after boot, with only Firefox running. Then it happened several times while using the “Add/Remove Software” tool (once while downloading/building a package, another time while just searching). It also happened from the lock/login screen.
During the install, a message appeared saying something about the sytem not meeting minimum requirements for Manjaro, but i pushed through it because, as far as i can tell, the hardware meets the system recommendations listed in the Manjaro documentation.
When frozen, the system will not accept any keyboard input (including REISUB) and the only thing i’ve found to do is a full system reboot by holding down the power button. Mostly the pointer has disappeared but on the last one, it remained visible and moveable although clicking was not responsive.
I have seen several similar threads on here but it seems like each has a different solution (downgrade the bios, stop memory bleed by deleting/modifying certain files, etc.)
Again, being fairly new to linux, does anyone have any recommendations for how to proceed with figuring out what’s going on and debugging?
It sounds very much like your BIOS (firmware) is not cooperating with Linux’s aggressive power saving settings. This means that Linux switches to a high C-state to save power, but this is too low to keep the processor/gpu alive and it freezes.
I would recommend adding:
# Create the directory:
sudo mkdir /etc/default/grub.d/
# Create the file:
echo "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT+=\" intel_idle.max_cstate=1 \"" | sudo tee -a /etc/default/grub.d/00-overwrite.cfg
# Update grub:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Now reboot. The config restricts the CPU to use only C0 - C1. If that helps, then you can try to go higher and see when it happens again.
However, I would strongly recommend updating the BIOS/UEFI if possible.
Please provide system information as described (below).
Regards.
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@megavolt, thanks for your quick reply! I just tried the commands that you suggested to limit the CPU cores used. It froze within 2 min of reboot (Firefox, again).
I then added the i915.enable statements and it seems ok so far, but need to keep playing with it to be sure.
@soundofthunder hte inxi output is very large, do you need all of it? Here is what seems likely to be relevant to me, but i’m not sure!
Please provide the full inxi -zv8 output, as requested by @soundofthunder
The edited output you provided is lacking some vital information (2 of the first 3 things I usually look at when a system is randomly crashing).
Also, I see that you are still using Plasma with X11. Does switching to Plasma on Wayland make any difference?
You can change your Plasma session from X11 to Wayland by selecting the session type at the login screen (Wayland is now KDE’s default for Plasma).
If you have set up autologin to skip the password screen, you can change to a Wayland session by opening System Settings → Colors & Themes → Login Screen (SDDM) → Behavior.