18.04.1 still freezes

[electrosteam]

A 2002 build Dell laptop with 2 GB RAM and Lubuntu running and providing all the tools and features I need.
I have run 17.10.1 for the last few months with the occasional freeze that leaves no trace in the logs.
The problem seems to occur when the machine is busy, no obvious relationship with any particular process.
The Lubuntu experience has been good and I waited for 18.04.1 as I have no interest in the 'bleeding edge' and a LTS installation seemed the best approach for me.

But, a few hours after a totally clean install of 18.04.1 with all the defaults, a typical freeze.
Had htop running in a terminal and Firefox playing a YouTube video.
I was interested in the apparent low 'busyness' of this latest installation of Firefox.

If the rate of freezes is no worse than before, I will persevere as I can get my work done and the Linux experience is enjoyable.

But, it would be nice if the cause of the freezes could be identified, at least I might then be able to avoid the risk situations.
Previous threads by me on the same subject produced no explanation, and numerous other threads hold no hope.

Any hope of an explanation ?
John.

[Yellow Pasque]

Are you monitoring temps? Have you run memtest? If it's not too much trouble, give more info like:

lspci
lscpu
sensors
sudo dmidecode -t bios

[kc1di]

my dell runs hot when watching videos and that may be the cause of the problem.
if you can install (if it's not already there inxi) and run this command and post the output here.

inxi -Fxz

[electrosteam]

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions.
As noted in my first post, I had htop in view because the machine fan was very quiet while Firefox was running.

My previous experience with an earlier version of Firefox on 17.10.1 was high fan noise, slow web browsing and extreme 'busyness' on htop.
When I swapped to Flashpeak Slimjet, everything went quiet, browsing was normal and htop looked Ok.

john@Bluebox:~$ sensors
dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
Processor Fan: 2714 RPM
CPU:            +45.0°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +45.5°C  (crit = +78.0°C)

No temperature values recorded for the PCI adapter.

john@Bluebox:~$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: Bluebox Kernel: 4.15.0-30-generic i686 bits: 32 gcc: 7.3.0 Desktop: LXDE (Openbox 3.6.1)
           Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Machine:   Device: portable System: Dell product: Inspiron 5150 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Dell model: 0W0940 serial: N/A BIOS: Dell v: A33 date: 03/08/2004
Battery    BAT0: charge: 95.5 Wh 103.2% condition: 92.5/95.5 Wh (97%) model: Sony DELL 0000U status: Full
CPU:       Single core Mobile Intel Pentium 4 (-MT-) arch: Netburst Willamette rev.9 cache: 512 KB
           flags: (pae sse sse2) bmips: 6112
           clock speeds: max: 3066 MHz 1: 3066 MHz 2: 3066 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200 64M] bus-ID: 01:00.0
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1280x1024@60.02hz, 1400x1050@60.02hz
           OpenGL: renderer: NV34 version: 1.5 Mesa 18.0.5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller
           driver: snd_intel8x0 ports: b800 bc40 bus-ID: 00:1f.5
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-30-generic
Network:   Card: Broadcom Limited BCM4401 100Base-T driver: b44 v: 2.0 bus-ID: 02:01.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 40.0GB (21.7% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: FUJITSU_MHT2040A size: 40.0GB temp: 41C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 37G used: 8.1G (24%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0C mobo: N/A gpu: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 138 Uptime: 1:10 Memory: 538.0/2012.2MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: N/A
           Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191) inxi: 2.3.56

I did a memtest, single cycle, some months ago.
My next step will be memtest multiple cycles.

John

[electrosteam]

Additional data:

john@Bluebox:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200 64M] (rev a1)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4510 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
02:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI4510 IEEE-1394 Controller
john@Bluebox:~$ lscpu
Architecture:        i686
CPU op-mode(s):      32-bit
Byte Order:          Little Endian
CPU(s):              2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core:  2
Core(s) per socket:  1
Socket(s):           1
Vendor ID:           GenuineIntel
CPU family:          15
Model:               2
Model name:          Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4     CPU 3.06GHz
Stepping:            9
CPU MHz:             3066.590
CPU max MHz:         3066.5901
CPU min MHz:         1599.9600
BogoMIPS:            6112.54
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe pebs bts cpuid cid xtpr

john@Bluebox:~$ sudo dmidecode -t bios
# dmidecode 3.1
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: Dell Computer Corporation
    Version: A33
    Release Date: 03/08/2004
    Address: 0xF0000
    Runtime Size: 64 kB
    ROM Size: 576 kB
    Characteristics:
        ISA is supported
        PCI is supported
        PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
        PNP is supported
        APM is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        AGP is supported
        Smart battery is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Function key-initiated network boot is supported

Handle 0x0D00, DMI type 13, 22 bytes
BIOS Language Information
    Language Description Format: Long
    Installable Languages: 1
        en|US|iso8859-1
    Currently Installed Language: en|US|iso8859-1

John

[Claus7]

Hello,

I suspect that the freezes you are experiencing might be due to low memory. Indeed Lubuntu should consume no more that 300MB of memory, yet firefox can go really high depending on the number of the tabs you have open.

Does this happen when you have a browser open, or is totally random? If there are some specific processes that cause that issue, then you might be able to narrow it down and identify the suspect.

I would advice you to do the following: install chromium and falkon. Open exactly the same tabs using these browsers and then compare them with firefox. Pick up the browser that consumes the lowest memory. Work with it and then check anew if you experience the freezes you are mentioning. Just an idea so as to eliminate browsing.

Regards!

[electrosteam]

Claus,
I have had freezes with just LibreOffice and LibreCad running, albeit with multiple drawings and documents open.
I switched to SlimJet to avoid the 'busyness' of Firefox, yet still got the occasional freeze.

But, running out of memory is a new line of investigation that I will follow, after the multiple cycles of memtest.
While writing this, htop reports memory at 551M/1.96G, swap at 0k/1.72G and cpus at about 20%.

John.

Edit:
Added GKrellM to the desktop so that I might see the status of the machine at the freeze.
If I can remember to keep it on top of all the windows !

[Claus7]

Hello,

it might not be memory the issue. I'm just informing you about this, since, having similar memory in one of my boxes, I had a freeze once (lubuntu), when I had many tabs open using chromium (maybe even 15 or so) and maybe other open programs as well. Firefox was prohibitive issue, since it required much more memory at that time (a month or so ago). Multiple tabs increase enormously the amount of memory consumption, so you could easily check that.
The amount of memory you are reporting is normal. An easy check as well, since you remember more or less the programs in use while you noticed the freezing issue, is to open them again in multiple instances: usually cad programs require a lot of memory, so open them again and see how much memory is required per instance. Lubuntu, idle, requires extremely small amount of memory, yet with many programs open, things can change.

Good luck,
Regards!

[electrosteam]

Recently had a freeze with one tab of the Slimjet browser open and scrolling in a simple page.

The frozen display of GKrellM was cpus at 25%, memory at 25% and swap very low.
The Krell configuration is 10 updates per second, so the display could be way too late to see the problem.

I have since changed the Swappiness from 60 to 10.

Ran Memtest86+ for 5 passes over 9.75 hrs without any fault reported.
The test window showed test being applied to memory block 1024 to 2048 on my 2GB machine.
I now propose to swap the two internal memory sticks and re-run the test.

I don't run many applications, but none of them ever seem to suffer their own crash.
So the problem could very well be confined to the OS or video drivers.

John.

[mörgæs]

Your BIOS is A33 but an A38 has been released. Have you considered updating?