Sytem Freeze on Resume from Suspend/Standby/Sleep

[Altay_H]

Occasionally, on resume from Suspend, my system will completely freeze. The usual screen is displayed asking for my password, but it doesn't respond to anything. My [built-in] keyboard doesn't work at all; not even the lights turn on when I press Caps Lock or Num Lock. My [built-in touchpad] mouse also fails to respond to anything. It has an on/off button with an LED, and even that doesn't respond while frozen. The screen, however, looks exactly as it should. The cursor flashes properly and the mouse pointer is displayed, it just doesn't react to any input. I'm forced to use the power switch to turn if off. Oddly though, I can't reproduce this problem consistently. It tends to occur on the second or third time I suspend since my last reboot. I don't think it has ever occurred on the first resume since the last reboot. It's consistent enough to be a significant inconvenience though. I'd say about 40% of the time I resume from Suspend it just freezes as previously described. The other 60% of the time it works without problems. Any suggestions, ideas, or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[mssever]

Occasionally, on resume from Suspend, my system will completely freeze. The usual screen is displayed asking for my password, but it doesn't respond to anything. My [built-in] keyboard doesn't work at all; not even the lights turn on when I press Caps Lock or Num Lock. My [built-in touchpad] mouse also fails to respond to anything. It has an on/off button with an LED, and even that doesn't respond while frozen. The screen, however, looks exactly as it should. The cursor flashes properly and the mouse pointer is displayed, it just doesn't react to any input. I'm forced to use the power switch to turn if off. Oddly though, I can't reproduce this problem consistently. It tends to occur on the second or third time I suspend since my last reboot. I don't think it has ever occurred on the first resume since the last reboot. It's consistent enough to be a significant inconvenience though. I'd say about 40% of the time I resume from Suspend it just freezes as previously described. The other 60% of the time it works without problems. Any suggestions, ideas, or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Suspending sometimes causes parts of the system to crash. Can you SSH in?

[Altay_H]

I'm not familiar with SSH. I'm assuming you mean accessing the frozen computer via some sort of networked computer. I wouldn't know how to do it, but if there's some sort of guide I'll give it a try.

[mssever]

See Wikipedia for an explanation of SSH. To SSH into your box, you first need an SSH server on that machine:

sudo aptitude install openssh-server

Then you can access your machine from somewhere else on the network:

ssh youruser@your.hostname.or.ip.address

If you've done everything right, you should get a shell connection to the other machine, where you can do pretty much anything that you could do from a terminal on the host machine.

For the purposes of this thread, the most important fact is whether you can establish an SSH connection in the first place. Secondarily, you can use a process monitor such as htop to deduce what might have crashed.

[Altay_H]

I'm working on getting ssh to work. It's a bit more difficult for me using ssh on Vista on one computer.

Anyway, I wanted to point out a new observation I had recently. I disabled the password requirement for resuming from standby, and I noticed that all the programs resumed correctly. Even nm-applet displayed itself re-establishing a connection with my wireless network. All the processes resumed perfectly, but my keyboard and mouse would not respond to anything. Only the power button does anything. The odd thing is, it brings up the interactive shutdown menu correctly when pressed once. Of course, I had little choice but to hold it down and force the power off, but it means that the problem lies with the system recognizing my keyboard and mouse after resuming from standby.

Oh, and here's my lspci in case it's of any use:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 IDE Controller
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc SB400 AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
03:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
03:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
03:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
03:04.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
03:04.4 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller
03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

I'm using 32-bit Hardy Herron.

[mssever]

If you've got openssh-server set up on your Linux box, then you should be able to SSH in, provided you know the box's IP address. For a Windows SSH client, I recommend PuTTY.

Another option is VNC. You can configure your Linux box to accept VNC connections (System > Preferences > Remote Desktop), then install a VNC viewer on your Windows box and connect. TightVNC is the Windows VNC client I know, but there are others.

Either option should allow you to at the minimum reboot cleanly. Using SSH, you could also try restarting various system services (listed in /etc/init.d) and see if that cures things. On my machine, dbus sometimes needs to be restarted after resuming from suspend.

Aside from those suggestions, I really don't know how to troubleshoot your problem.

[Altay_H]

Alright. I managed to ssh in successfully. This time when I resumed from standby I just lost all sound. I don't know what to do from my other computer though. You suggested restarting program in /etc/init.d. There are a bunch there. I suspect cron might have something to do with it, because it was freezing consistently (well, twice in a row) when a cron task was scheduled to execute while the computer was on standby. If killing cron doesn't do it though, what can I do? Is there any way to figure out which process is causing the problem? Which one do the keyboard and mouse rely one?

[mssever]

The keyboard and mouse MIGHT be controlled in this case by X, in which case doing /etc/init.d/gdm restart would cure the problem (note that restarting gdm will kill any GUI program that may be running). But that's only a guess, because I really don't know what the real problem is. Likewise for the sound, you can try restarting pulseaudio, which might or might not work. Other possible culprits include hal and dbus, but that list is by no means exhaustive.

I really can't suggest a way to find out what the problem is other than trying stuff. Oh, I do know one thing: Look in your logs (/var/log), especially syslog and daemon.log and see if there are messages about some program that's crashing.

Even if you don't get the program sorted out and you're forced to reboot, you can do that in the proper way from SSH:

sudo reboot

[xreaper]

hey, just something random you might want to try.
set your screensaver to one of the 'GL' pre-installed ones, and then untick the "lock screen when computer is idle". then, after the screensaver is on for a couple of seconds, move the mouse. can you please let me know if the screen freezes?

If it does freeze on the screensaver, it usually means you have a problem with the drivers for your graphics card. more common in ATI graphics cards than NVIDIA.

[Altay_H]

doing /etc/init.d/gdm restart would cure the problem (note that restarting gdm will kill any GUI program that may be running). But that's only a guess, because I really don't know what the real problem is.

How exactly would you suggest I restart it?
These commands?

killall gdm

/etc/init.d/gdm

Is there a way to restart it other than killing it then starting it back up?

I really can't suggest a way to find out what the problem is other than trying stuff. Oh, I do know one thing: Look in your logs (/var/log), especially syslog and daemon.log and see if there are messages about some program that's crashing.

I'll take a look at those logs and post them here next time it freezes. Lately it's been resuming correctly consistently. Hopefully I can reproduce the problem, or perhaps it's resolved itself.

hey, just something random you might want to try.
set your screensaver to one of the 'GL' pre-installed ones, and then untick the "lock screen when computer is idle". then, after the screensaver is on for a couple of seconds, move the mouse. can you please let me know if the screen freezes?

I tried it out with a bunch of different GL screensavers. GLMatrix worked without issues. GLKnots messed up a bit, but then corrected itself. GLSnake and GLText worked without issues. GLSlideshow actually froze up, but when I moved the mouse everything resumed correctly. None of them actually froze up my system in any way.

If it does freeze on the screensaver, it usually means you have a problem with the drivers for your graphics card. more common in ATI graphics cards than NVIDIA.

I am using an ATI graphics card which required me to enable its drivers to get it working. I haven't had any noticeable issues with the card yet though.