which magic sysreq keys to gather info on a total system freeze [Solved]

[Danathar]

Interested in that zram swap :-)

have you tried running without that and if so are you still seeing crashes / lockups ?

Your machine has enough ram, and a simple, small swap file probably wont even be used... so why the zram swap?

And I dont recall if you tried it... but have you tried a liquroix kernel?

It is a good point on the swap. I had it configured on other systems and I guess it's just part of my default setup, but you are right with the amount of memory on this laptop I probably don't need it. I have tried the liquoroix kernel. Crashed on that as well. Do you really think zram swap could cause that? I've never encountered crashes with that on.

There has GOT to be a way to collect information on this.

WWLTD!!! (What would Linus Torvalds do?!)

[Charlie Brown]

"Reseat".

[Charlie Brown]

In the meantime (off-topic) :

/boot ... used: 95.2%

when booted with the kernel you want to keep: "MX Cleanup" - Kernel Removal Tool (below the window). Remove unnecessary kernels simply with 2 clicks and open some space.

[l0dr3]

@Danathar

Have you tried to find an issue with 'DELL Pre-Boot Diagnostics' ??
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u ... sa-and-psa

And 2nd: from your QSI ...

Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 73.2 Wh (100.0%) condition: 73.2/97.0 Wh (75.4%) volts: 12.5 min: 11.4
model: LGC-LGC8.33 DELL 5XJ288A type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: full

This indicates, that your battery is in a degraded state! I'll highly recommend, that you check, whether its 'swollen' and therefore may put mechanical pressure on the Motherboard

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en ... lenbattery

[Danathar]

In the meantime (off-topic) :

/boot ... used: 95.2%

when booted with the kernel you want to keep: "MX Cleanup" - Kernel Removal Tool (below the window). Remove unnecessary kernels simply with 2 clicks and open some space.

Yea, I noticed that too and got rid of the un-needed ones. I also fell back to the nvidia 470 driver. I know it's bad science to change more than one variable at at time...but maybe

I SO REGRET buying this Dell. I should of done the SANE thing and bought a thinkpad. For some reason I thought it would be cool to have a decent GPU on the laptop.

[Danathar]

@Danathar

Have you tried to find an issue with 'DELL Pre-Boot Diagnostics' ??
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u ... sa-and-psa

And 2nd: from your QSI ...

Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 73.2 Wh (100.0%) condition: 73.2/97.0 Wh (75.4%) volts: 12.5 min: 11.4
model: LGC-LGC8.33 DELL 5XJ288A type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: full

This indicates, that your battery is in a degraded state! I'll highly recommend, that you check, whether its 'swollen' and therefore may put mechanical pressure on the Motherboard

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en ... lenbattery

Thanks on that. When I bought this used, it that was the first thing I checked, it's fine though and on my list of things to fix (if that is..I end up keeping it which if this keeps up...)

[Danathar]

"Reseat".

I ran memtest86 for 6 hours with no errors. Why would re-seating make a difference?

[CharlesV]

+1 @Charlie Brown

The cool thing about zram is with a fast machine you can store more in swap ... the bad thing ... it uses lots of cpu to compress - And I do not KNOW this for a fact, but I have read that zram compression is BEST when it uses gpu cycles ...

The crash your are talking about is pretty much going to kill any log writing other than 'unexpected...' and when things go bad in ram or overlaps is when you get bad news lockups.

As for Linus - I read his 'words of wisdom' were to "keep it simple - one thing for one job" To me, applied to your issue that means remove as many variables as you can - make it all as simple as possible, with as little running as possible - once your stable, then add back in apps / processes, one at a time, with plenty of time to see if your still stable.

[CharlesV]

And sorry to say ... I never recommend Dell .. too many things are 'custom or seconds' (in my opinion!)

[Charlie Brown]

"Reseat".

I ran memtest86 for 6 hours with no errors. Why would re-seating make a difference?

Experience from previous threads. The very same thing happened many times. As I said: Mem-Test shows everything fine, that's why I began skipping the mem-test suggestion.