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this is my first Ubuntu forum question. I hope I am asking the right place.

Summary of the issue: I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on a brand new computer. The computer freezes when doing video conferencing. The effect is interestingly different depending on the video conferencing tool.

Computer specs are:

$ lspci | grep VGA
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208B [GeForce GT 710] (rev a1)

$ dmidecode -t 2


dmidecode 3.2


Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.1.1 present.


Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
Base Board Information
    Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
    Product Name: PRIME A320M-K
    Version: Rev X.0x
    Serial Number: 191161559404641
    Asset Tag: Default string


$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Ryzen | head -1
model name  : AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor

I am using dual screen (VGA + DVI).

Problematic behaviour details:

  • when using the latest Zoom (5.1.422789.07.05) client, the freeze is complete: keyboard & mouse have no more effect. A hard reboot (power button) is required. I can still talk and hear others but the computer is not responsive anymore.

  • when using Google meet from a chrome browser (version 83.0.4103.116), the image freezes in the browser, the rest of the system is still usable. I can still hear the others talking and they can still here me, just the video seems broken. If I leave the meeting and rejoin, all is fine.

The issue seems more frequent in Zoom than in Meet. As a common point to both software, the issue does not occur when opening the conferencing tool but after some usage (it can be after a few seconds or after minutes, or hours).

Research: I looked at the journalctl around a crash time with Zoom, and got the following text (in which you can see me rebooting after the full freeze):

jui 11 17:37:00 daniel-z5 gnome-shell[2193]: Window manager warning: Overwriting existing 
 binding of keysym 37 with keysym 37 (keycode 10).
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: gr: TRAP ch 3 [003fb6d000 Xorg[1958]]
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: gr: GPC0/TPC0/TEX: 80000009
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: fifo: fault 01 [WRITE] at 000000000a7c0000 engine 00 [GR] client 0f [GPC0/PROP_0] reason 00 [PDE] on channel 3 [003fb6d000 Xorg[1958]]
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: fifo: channel 3: killed
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: fifo: runlist 0: scheduled for recovery
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: fifo: engine 0: scheduled for recovery
jui 11 17:37:13 daniel-z5 kernel: nouveau 0000:07:00.0: Xorg[1958]: channel 3 killed!
jui 11 17:38:23 daniel-z5 systemd-logind[1015]: Power key pressed.
-- Reboot --

Question

I absolutely need to resolve this issue, but I am not sure where to start from. Can you advise on the steps ?

dan
  • 63

1 Answers1

5

From the logs you've presented, you are using the "nouveau" graphics driver, which will be setup by default if you are using Nvidia graphics cards.

I am using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, they work better than the nouveau drivers, especially when it comes to performance. So go into "Activities" and search for "Software & Updates"

enter image description here

More infos here

A Thread on reddit confirms, that your card should work the nvidia drivers.

Also make sure that you are using the "Ubuntu" Session and not the "Ubuntu Wayland" Session. You can set that up before logging in:

enter image description here

kanehekili
  • 6,402
  • I followed your steps, I will work this week and will use different video conferencing systems: hopefully this will allow me to verify if it fixed it (as issue is random I never know when it creeps in). So I will update this post after. Thanks. – dan Jul 12 '20 at 21:25
  • Good luck, I am eager to hear how it worked out. – kanehekili Jul 12 '20 at 21:49
  • Hi, following up on this issue. This week went much better than before the suggested fix. I did 2 zooms, perhaps 8-10 google meet, one Janeapp, and one jitsi meeting. Out of all this I got 2 issues (frozen video but audio+computer responsive) and both were with google meet. I therefore suspect that there is another issue related only to meet. Thus being said it seems stable enough for now. Thanks a lot @kanehekili for the clear steps. – dan Jul 18 '20 at 01:32
  • Worked like a charm – Pere BG Aug 31 '22 at 13:58