Linux freezes without any logic

[GoldSkula]

So when I play cs go competitive online the game freezes and I can't do anything with the keyboard or mouse. The sound also starts to loop the last second until I force my computer to turn off. I once played a whole match of over 20 rounds with only one crash but now if I try to play it crashes almost every round. The thing that I don't get is that I tried to run a 5 min cpu and gpu (gtkstresstesting and basemark gpu) benchmark where the cpu is doing like 90 celsius. The pc didn't freeze so it can't be due to power or thermal limitations. I also did 5 runs of a fps benchmark workshop map on cs go and the game didn't crash. The game also has crashes this way once or twice when I had spotify, firefox and 2-3 clients of runelite open. I'm confused what could be the cause of these random crashes.

Specs:
PopOS 20.10 64bit
I7-4790K(not overclocked)
Asus GTX 1650 Super
8GB of ram (2x2gb + 1x4gb running in dual channel mode)

[🐧 thohal]

Hi LinuxFellow,

sounds like esync... Could you set / add

DefaultLimitNOFILE=524288

into

/etc/systemd/system.conf
/etc/systemd/user.conf

and set

* hard nofile 524288

in

/etc/security/limits.conf

.

Please do a reboot, take a testride with those settings and let us know how it worked :)

[Penoltinum]

Try and install xanmod kernel. Maybe that will fix your issue.

[🐧 thohal]

Originally posted by Penoltinum:

Try and install xanmod kernel. Maybe that will fix your issue.

xanmod is awesome, but wont fix those issues....

[phillippi2]

Have you tried verifying your game files? Go to the 'local files' tab and click 'verify integrity of game files'. This will make it scan for and replace broken game files. This may fix your issue.

[🐧 thohal]

he's just running out of FDs and needs to bump values as shown above...

[Penoltinum]

Originally posted by 🐧 thohal:

Originally posted by Penoltinum:

Try and install xanmod kernel. Maybe that will fix your issue.

xanmod is awesome, but wont fix those issues....

What if he had hardware issues? I remember my old pc having these kind of issues when i used to play cs 1.6 back in the days. (Yes i was running windows but regardless..)

[Marlock]

another thing that might freeze everything is RAM+Swap being completely filled up...

but there are a couple telltale signs which usually differ...

with filled RAM+Swap, at first mouse slows into a crawl, not an instant freeze, and sound loop isn't usual, but not impossible

also, if you are patient, linux usually kills one or another process to free up RAM and then things get back to performing normally (except of course killed processes)

[drmaemo]

A while ago, I had unexplainable freezing (i.e., a sudden black screen and unresponsive input by keyboard/mouse) when playing games. It turned out my graphics card was overheating due to its age and the thermal paste between the GPU and heatsink was not working well any more. Once I realized it was a heating issue, replacing the old thermal paste with fresh thermal paste magically fixed the unexplainable freezing.

[Marlock]

ah, yes... sometimes overclocking might get the system unstable even without overheating...

i also had an issue with new memory sticks where setting their frequency and CAS latency to their certified max made them unstable, whereas setting some of them slightly lower made them work perfectly... to later realize I had an aged PSU which was delivering slightly undervolted 12V rails so several parts where showing sporadic issues

[GoldSkula]

I've been a bit busy so I haven't had the chance to work on this problem but I finally got around to it.

Originally posted by 🐧 thohal:

Hi LinuxFellow,

sounds like esync... Could you set / add

DefaultLimitNOFILE=524288

into

/etc/systemd/system.conf
/etc/systemd/user.conf

and set

* hard nofile 524288

in

/etc/security/limits.conf

.

Please do a reboot, take a testride with those settings and let us know how it worked :)

I did this but the linux still froze while I was playing OSRS and watching netflix.

Originally posted by Marlock:

another thing that might freeze everything is RAM+Swap being completely filled up...

but there are a couple telltale signs which usually differ...

with filled RAM+Swap, at first mouse slows into a crawl, not an instant freeze, and sound loop isn't usual, but not impossible

also, if you are patient, linux usually kills one or another process to free up RAM and then things get back to performing normally (except of course killed processes)

Last time it crashed I just let it be and it rebooted itself after around 1 minute.

Originally posted by phillippi2:

Have you tried verifying your game files? Go to the 'local files' tab and click 'verify integrity of game files'. This will make it scan for and replace broken game files. This may fix your issue.

I have and I have also installed the games several times, but because this also happens when I'm playing Old School Runescape which isn't a steam game I don't think that's the problem.

Originally posted by drmaemo:

A while ago, I had unexplainable freezing (i.e., a sudden black screen and unresponsive input by keyboard/mouse) when playing games. It turned out my graphics card was overheating due to its age and the thermal paste between the GPU and heatsink was not working well any more. Once I realized it was a heating issue, replacing the old thermal paste with fresh thermal paste magically fixed the unexplainable freezing.

My computer has freezed while playing Old School Runescape but I have been able play GTA V for an hour without a crash so I don't think overheating is an issue.

Originally posted by MadTuX32:

Is your pc overclocked?

No all of my components are running baseclock

[GoldSkula]

I think the issue might be a driver problem because they are a bit funky at the moment. Pop!_shop shows that there is a update for "nvidia-driver-455" but there isn't an option to update.

sudo apt update

doesn't show any updates either. I uninstalled "nvidia-driver-455" and checked that it was uninstalled for sure and installed it again but it's still showing the same thing.

[RedBatman]

Maybe you should downgrade to POP OS 20.04 see if that helps.

[GoldSkula]

Originally posted by RedBatman:

Maybe you should downgrade to POP OS 20.04 see if that helps.

I went back to 20.04 but while downloading steam games and playing Old School Runescape the computer froze. There is most likely just something very weird f'ed up with my hardware

Thank you all for your help

[Marlock]

try lower ram clocks...

eg: for DDR3, set it to 1333MHz instead of 1600 or set it to 1600 instead of 1899, etc etc


try swapping ram from one pair of slots into another... and the [2x2gb + 1x4gb] is very assymetric, so try it with just 1x4gb OR 2x2GB and see if it gets any better results (despite halved available RAM)


try some non-ubuntu-based linux, like Solus or Manjaro and see if any of them behave better...

[GoldSkula]

Originally posted by Marlock:

try lower ram clocks...

eg: for DDR3, set it to 1333MHz instead of 1600 or set it to 1600 instead of 1899, etc etc


try swapping ram from one pair of slots into another... and the [2x2gb + 1x4gb] is very assymetric, so try it with just 1x4gb OR 2x2GB and see if it gets any better results (despite halved available RAM)


try some non-ubuntu-based linux, like Solus or Manjaro and see if any of them behave better...

Thanks for the idea. The ram seems like a possible cause for these kind of issues. I'll try that on the weekend when I have time to troubleshoot.