Is system freeze related to these xsession errors?

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

My system freezes occasionally, with no option but to do a hard reboot. I’m trying to locate the source of this problem, and I’ve noticed these repeating log records in .xsession-errors:

actually writing state to /home/martibs/Ardour/Jamming 2/Jamming 2.tmp
renaming state to /home/martibs/Ardour/Jamming 2/Jamming 2.pending

There are several of them in the X session, running up until the system freezes. What are these messages, and could they be related to the X crash? Are they related to the fact that I put my system in suspend mode?

My system:
Debian Buster
XFCE 4.12
Ardour 5.12.0-1kxstudio2v

#2

This means that Ardour makes periodic backup saves. Usually every 2mins Ardour writes a .pending file when the session was not manually saved.

It’s highly unlikely that this is related to system freezes.

Can you still switch to a consoles (Ctrl + Alt + F1) when this happens, or perhaps log in via the network (ssh)?

How much memory does the system have? Could it be that the system excessively swapping?

#3

I see, thanks.

The system is completely frozen, SSH is unavailable. The system has 8 GB of RAM and is constantly running at 50-80% capasity. There is lots of swap available, but I too have suspected memory management as a source of the problem. However, stress testing the system, forcing memory swappig using the stress application, I’m not able to replicate the crash.

#4

It may be hardware related. Intel had a bad run of Atom processors, that locked up from time to time. I own a laptop that has one of these. What is your processor ?

I stopped buying Intel because the hardware is buggy beyond belief.

#5

@martibs

Hi, I’m pretty sure I’ve also answered your post about this at Linuxmusicians… but it might be good to get some more feedback about this from other users… I assume you are talking about and still using AV Linux?

I tend to agree with @mhartzel, I have a Dell Optiplex with an Intel i5 Quad processor in my studio and it always runs RT Kernels and I’ve never had it freeze once, on the other hand my home/development computer is a new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX 24-Core with 64GB of RAM and with RT kernels I get freezes about 1 in every 6 boots, switching to lowlatency kernels has made freezes occur much less but they still happen, hardware seems to be a variable (although in my particular case AMD is flakier than Intel).

Additionally Virtualbox 6 and earlier would build and run on an RT Kernel and VM’s running in it would also run RT Kernels although there were occasional freezes, Virtualbox 6.1 will neither build on a system with an RT Kernel nor will a VM run an RT Kernel within it now.

My theory is that kernels are getting a bit more picky about their hardware and a little more temperamental and on top of that the RT patch which was always somewhat like running a high performance engine in your car seems to be taking this to another level of flakedom…

In AV Linux you can try our own lowlatency alternate kernel, most people see little to no performance degradation between the RT and the LL, or you can also try a Liquorix kernel, their repository is also included… If this problem resolves you will know it’s a kernel issue if it doesn’t you can suspect your hardware…

#6

Threadripper is very picky when it comes to Ram modules. One should buy only the modules that are recommended. I have a Threadripper 2950X and the recommended modules were more expensive, but I bought them and I’ve had zero problems with my machine (using both Manjaro 5.4.x Low Latency and Realtime kernels).

#7

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