Flash hard crashes machine, 10.04

[newfuturevintage]

Hi-
First post here.

I've built an Ubuntu Lucid Lynx box out of some spare parts and am really enjoying it, save for Flash seems to hard crash the system (full shut down, no video, nothing, just black). Either in Chromium or Firefox. This is a new install to a freshly formatted HDD, and I've swapped out mobos/ processors/ power supplies/ memory sticks.

The system appears completely stable if I do not have Flash installed.

In the order done:
I tried installing Flash from the ubuntu software center initially. After getting a few crashes, I reinstalled the OS freshly.
I tried reinstalling from the software center. Still crashing. Removed via software center, system stable.
I tried using Carlee's Adobe Tools (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1414595), which did not successfully install Flash, in spite of reporting having done so.
and
Lovinglinux's Flash-Aid, which did successfully install Flash, but I'm back to the same system instability.

All permutations tried have the same issue: I can view Flash files for an indeterminate amount of time: sometimes a couple hours, sometimes a few minutes, but the system eventually hard crashes. Seems to happen faster if Yahoo mail is open, and/or if youtube is involved, but they need not be involved for the crash to occur.

Any suggestions would be welcome!

[lovinglinux]

All permutations tried have the same issue: I can view Flash files for an indeterminate amount of time: sometimes a couple hours, sometimes a few minutes, but the system eventually hard crashes. Seems to happen faster if Yahoo mail is open, and/or if youtube is involved, but they need not be involved for the crash to occur.

It could be a CPU temperature issue. Flash uses too much CPU, so after a while, if your CPU is not properly ventilated, it could cause video performance degradation and even crashes.

[newfuturevintage]

It could be a CPU temperature issue. Flash uses too much CPU, so after a while, if your CPU is not properly ventilated, it could cause video performance degradation and even crashes.

That's certainly a possibility, and it is a total system crash, not just a single application dying.

I did blast the CPU heatsink with air, and confirm CPU, case, and power supply fans all are operational. In this same hardware config, I had no issues under XP with anything to do with overheating.

do you have a recommendation for a CPU temp monitor? Would love to see if there's a correlation.

Thanks!

[kerry_s]

i was just getting crashes to, it was pulse causing it.
what i did was uninstall "gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio"
then
i went in to "gstreamer-properties"(multimedia system selector, if you have it tuned on in the menu) an changed them to alsa.

no more crashes.

i also removed & reinstalled flash just to be sure.

[newfuturevintage]

i was just getting crashes to, it was pulse causing it.
what i did was uninstall "gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio"
then
i went in to "gstreamer-properties"(multimedia system selector, if you have it tuned on in the menu) an changed them to alsa.

no more crashes.

i also removed & reinstalled flash just to be sure.

I think this may well be the issue. I removed gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio. and switched to alsa. Which immediately crashed the system. Upon rebooting, I reinstalled gstreamer0.10-puleaudio so I could mark it for a complete removal, removed it, and then changed to alsa as per your screenshot.
I then reinstalled flash, and attempted to crash the machine by launching a lot of applications and a lot of tabs in firefox, making sure to keep youtube videos playing. It was appearing stable for a couple hours.

I eventually did crash the machine, however.

As the machine spat out its last dying gasp, there was a brief bit of text on screen, and the word pulseaudio was in it. Unfortunately it wasn't up long enough to read before the crash was complete.

any further ideas I can try?

Thanks!

[newfuturevintage]

a bit of digging in the log viewer under kern.log yields from the time of the crash:

Sep 9 11:56:04 sara-desktop kernel: [ 305.060019] [drm:i915_hangcheck_elapsed] *ERROR* Hangcheck timer elapsed... GPU hung
Sep 9 11:56:04 sara-desktop kernel: [ 305.060032] render error detected, EIR: 0x00000000
Sep 9 11:56:04 sara-desktop kernel: [ 305.061076] [drm:i915_do_wait_request] *ERROR* i915_do_wait_request returns -5 (awaiting 28955 at 28952)
Sep 9 11:56:06 sara-desktop kernel: [ 306.976017] [drm:i915_gem_idle] *ERROR* hardware wedged
Sep 9 11:56:08 sara-desktop kernel: [ 308.819342] [drm:i915_gem_entervt_ioctl] *ERROR* Reenabling wedged hardware, good luck

this is repeated a few times until I rebooted the machine

[kerry_s]

do you got compiz turned on? if so switch to none.
compiz don't play nice with intel. use the metacity composite if you need for docks.

i just did a fresh install 30min, looks like just removing the gstreamer pulseaudio is enough on mine.

[newfuturevintage]

do you got compiz turned on? if so switch to none.
compiz don't play nice with intel. use the metacity composite if you need for docks.

i just did a fresh install 30min, looks like just removing the gstreamer pulseaudio is enough on mine.

Compiz was not enabled. Metacity I have not enabled.

I ended up doing a fresh install (messed up grub chasing down the intel i915 issue, and couldn't get it back to working order).

Next question: is it the opinion of the hive mind that this issue is a gstreamer.pulseaudio issue, or an intel i915 issue? I'm beginning to suspect that flash might not be the root issue, but rather just the straw that breaks the camel's back.

[lovinglinux]

Compiz was not enabled. Metacity I have not enabled.

I ended up doing a fresh install (messed up grub chasing down the intel i915 issue, and couldn't get it back to working order).

Next question: is it the opinion of the hive mind that this issue is a gstreamer.pulseaudio issue, or an intel i915 issue? I'm beginning to suspect that flash might not be the root issue, but rather just the straw that breaks the camel's back.

If you remove pulseaudio and don't install any other sound server, then flash uses a lot less CPU. Obviously that in this case, there is no sound. I have noticed that when trying to replace pulseaudio, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to configure another sound server properly.

[newfuturevintage]

Thanks.

I'm beginning to suspect this issue is the i915 issue more than anything else. I've applied the fix suggested here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...el/+bug/541511
and have my fingers crossed.