Ubuntu Freeze – Fix Random Freezes on Dell Precision M4500 with Ubuntu 14.04

14.04freezegraphics

I know this has been asked several times, but many of them are tagged as duplicates and sent back to what should I do if the computer freezes. I don't want the computer to freeze and only want those methods as a last resort, not something I have to do every time I boot up!

I am dual booting and Windows works fine. I was wondering if perhaps it was trying to do something with the nVidia driver on the comp? (It's a Dell Precision M4500 laptop). It just happens to randomly freeze sometimes, no idea what causes it. It just froze when reading an article online (not taxing the system at all). It also froze once when I shut the lid to the laptop and only the mouse was working.

It has frozen several other times as well. Is there perhaps a driver I should install (I have no idea where I would get that) or something else? I would really like to fix this without having to disable the graphics card and "knowing" how to restart it when it freezes. As I said before I know their are several other posts similar to this, but I didnt see any that really helped me all that much.

Edit: After installing the "current nVidia driver" from the Ubuntu Software Center it has been running very smoothly and I have not had any freezing issues. If anybody is having the same problem you should definitely try this. Thanks for the help guys 🙂

Best Answer

I use Ubuntu 14.04 and at first I had this problem. I installed nVIDIA driver on My Ubuntu and it has never freeze since I install nVIDIA driver on it. nVIDIA driver is available in Ubuntu Software Center. Hope it helps.

Diagnosis:

By looking into the Xorg logs, there appears some issues ( crashes ) related in particular to libinput:

(**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Applying InputClass "libinput keyboard catchall"   
(II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
(**) SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad: Applying InputClass "libinput touchpad catchall" 
(II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 
(**) TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint: Applying InputClass "libinput pointer catchall" 
(II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' 
(**) ThinkPad Extra Buttons: Applying InputClass "libinput keyboard catchall" 
(II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'ThinkPad Extra Buttons'

By looking into the output of apt policy xserver-xorg-input-*, it turns out that both xserver-xorg-input-all and xserver-xorg-input-libinput are not installed where they should be:

xserver-xorg-input-all:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1:7.7+19ubuntu7.1
  Version table:
     1:7.7+19ubuntu7.1 500
        500 http://mx.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 Packages
     1:7.7+19ubuntu7 500
        500 http://mx.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages

xserver-xorg-input-libinput:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.27.1-1
  Version table:
     0.27.1-1 500
        500 http://mx.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages

By looking into the output of tail -n 400 /var/log/dpkg.log | grep "status installed". Some VGA related packages / drivers appear to might have been affected during the last update.
By looking into the output of lspci | grep ' VGA ' and sudo lshw -C display it shows you have an NVIDIA Corporation GT218M graphics card with the nouveau driver in use.

Solution:

Install xserver-xorg-input-all like so:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-all

Install xserver-xorg-input-libinput like so:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

Purge the NVIDIA video drivers like so:

sudo apt purge nvidia-*

Install the correct video drivers using the ubuntu-drivers tool like so:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Reboot your machine and cross your fingers : ).

Best of luck

Installer Freezes Randomly on Ubuntu: Mouse Stops Moving

Okay, I managed to know the cause of the problem and fixed it too. This all was happening because of the Nvidia card that I have, and to fix it, I simply added nomodeset parameter before install. More info here: https://medium.com/@peterpang_84917/personal-experience-of-installing-ubuntu-18-04-lts-on-xps-15-9570-3e53b6cfeefe

Adding nomodeset parameter: 1. Boot with your USB 2. Now you will see 3-4 options with *Ubuntu option as the first option 3. Now highlight *Ubuntu and click e, and add nomodeset after the words quiet splash 4. Press F10 and install Ubuntu as you would do it.

You can install Nvidia drivers as you boot into the system and open the Software & Updates app.

Once this is done follow 2nd step again and now instead of nomodeset add nouveau.modeset=0 And finally when you boot into the system: 1. Open the terminal and type sudo gedit /etc/default/grub 2. Change the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nouveau.modeset=0". 3. Press save and close the window 4. Finally run sudo update-grub2 5. Profit!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Fixing Random Freezes in Ubuntu Bionic Beaver

Diagnosis:

Solution:

Installer Freezes Randomly on Ubuntu: Mouse Stops Moving

Related Question