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I have HP ZBook Firefly laptop with Ubuntu 20.04.2 on it. And about once a week it freezes. I'm going to describe the last freezing that I had recently:

  1. My laptop didn't respond to mouse (the cursor was stuck) and keyboard
  2. Ctrl + Alt + FN hotkey didn't work
  3. Alt + SysRq + REISUB hotkey didn't work
  4. When the freezing happened, I was working with a Git repository and after I restarted my laptop the repository was broken. Any git command said: fatal: loose object <hash> (stored in .git/objects/<hash>/<hash>) is corrupt
  5. /var/log/syslog didn't have any useful information. But the /var/log/syslog file had some non-printable characters in it (some random bytes). I guess when the freezing happened the file got corrupted.

The laptop has no visible physical damage, it doesn't overheat (as far as I can tell). Also, I don't see any consistency in these freezes. It happens without any relation with software that is running at the moment of the freeze (as far as I can tell).

I see two possible explanations:

  1. Kernel freeze. For example, some driver can cause a kernel freeze. But my physical components (cpu, ram, drive, etc) are pretty common and from popular vendors. Also, I think even user space software can theoretically cause a kernel freeze. But the kernel is very stable, so it's unlikely.
  2. Physical component issue. For example, RAM is corrupted and causes Ubuntu freezes from time to time.

So, why is my laptop freezing? And how can I fix it?

AEM
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Mike
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  • Random freezes, sounds like RAM or power issues. IIRC the magic sysreq sequence was disabled some time ago and has to be actively reenabled. Run memtest, check SMART info, try a live USB session with the HDD disconnected ... – pbhj May 24 '21 at 15:57
  • Edit your question and show me free -h and swapon -s and sudo lshw -C memory. Start comments to me with @heynnema or I'll miss them. – heynnema May 24 '21 at 16:08
  • @pbhj You're totally shooting in the dark. Suggest that you ask some questions to better determine where the problem might be, and what a better comment/resolution you can provide. – heynnema May 24 '21 at 16:11
  • Fair enough, I gave them two actionable things - check reisub is enabled, assuming they know about it then troubleshooting info may come from enabling it. AFAIK that's a brand new laptop, IME random freezes are most likely to be RAM/power and if there's not an established period of use with no problems then I'd run memtest first. Not less speculative than 'what memory do you have'; they have 32G. I'd enable SSH on it and see if you can log in on another device when it freezes. Check dmesg log too. – pbhj May 24 '21 at 16:29
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    @pbhj I'm not aware that REISUB has a "disable" switch. Please provide more detail about this. How do you know they have 32G RAM? You haven't told the user where to get memtest and/or how to run it. You haven't told the user how to check dmesg and what to look for. Etc. Start comments to me with "@heynnema" or I'll certainly miss them. – heynnema May 24 '21 at 16:40
  • memtest, enabling magic sysrq. I assumed OP could use site search, if they/you can't use tools then searching or asking a question is the route to go. Are you trolling me on purpose? If you don't like my comments downvote and feel free to add your own substantive comments/answers that help with the question. – pbhj May 28 '21 at 18:39
  • am dealing with the same, memtest is successful every time i try it – Dave Ankin Jun 20 '22 at 05:15

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