I did finally get Cinnamon to restart one time. There were some minor issues, but it started back up and was usable for a few minutes. After that, it hung up so hard that only a reboot fixed it. One issue on restart was that the start menu was kind of wonky, like a web page that had lost its css file.
For anyone following this, I found the following link to be helpful.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/143838/how-do-i-restart-cinnamon-from-the-tty
OK, I just did some testing, and it was not exactly what I was expecting. For one, it’s kind of hard to intentionally use a lot of memory. The best thing I found was opening a large amount of tabs in Firefox. I maybe could increase my swap space, but I never hung my system up. I shut down the vm and used about 18 gig of ram. I then started the vm.
The deal is, Stacer isn’t exactly accurate when the VM starts. For some reason, memory usage (on Stacer) drops when the vm starts up. Checking the system resource monitor, memory usage briefly jumped to 28 gig in it. It never reflected this on Stacer. However, without the full 16 gig of ram allocated to the vm, Windows boots up, and then shuts back down after a brief period.
I stopped and started Windows numerous times. It would actually make Linux stutter as the memory maxed out, but it never froze up to the point I had to reboot to fix it.
The swap space did about max out during some of this. I do think I will increase the swap space a little.
It’s pretty much a default install of Linux Mint, with Cinnamon. I haven’t even installed that many programs, yet. Pretty much a vm, vscode, 4 browsers, gimp, and some small utilities.
That question has a lot of ways to go in. A swap file on Linux or Windows running in my vm? Also, I have a new PC with 32 gig of RAM. I allocated half to the vm when it is running. This kind of brings me to why I asked this question to begin with. I have Stacer installed and I’ve never seen my memory usage go over halfway (Stacer graph) when I have the vm running. I pretty much always have my vm running, because I need it running. I shouldn’t be running out of memory. If it shows my 16ish gigs of ram used when the vm is fired up, then I should have 16ish gigs of ram that I’ve never seen being used.
I really wouldn’t think the vm is running out of memory. There is 16 gig allocated and all it has running is IIS server, VisualStudio, and Firefox. I rarely open much more than that on it. I never browse on Windows’ Firefox. It’s just open because VisualStudio opens a browser while I’m debugging. At most, the only other programs running on the vm are File Manager and Notepad.
If I close the vm, Stacer shows my memory usage at 11 Gig. That means the vm should be using close to 6ish gig when it is fired up (according to Stacer).
Note: Yeah, I’m not able to check Stacer after it hangs up. I do spot checks with it from time to time. Like I said, about 50% of the ram is being used when my vm is fired up. No matter what I’m doing, I’ve never seen more than that used.
Thanks,
If banks were really serious about security, more of them would offer yubikey support. None of mine do, unless they just brought it online.
Ugh. It took me a couple of weeks to everything I needed working on this pc. If I have to reboot every week or two, not that big a deal.
I did try and restart my desktop, but it failed. I don’t think I did it right. I found some instructions specific to Cinnamon. I will try them next time.
I still think it possibly has something to do with either video or memory. It isn’t every single time, but no small number of times it freezes, I am doing something on youtube, and then open a new tab in either Firefox or Chromium. It’s like moving that video to the background or opening that new tab went over a limit with memory. I was sure it was videos, but then I have done it a few times with no videos going. For sure, it always involves a browser, but that’s because I work on web pages all day long and that’s what I’m always using. Still, it’s never done it when I’m in any other program.
Just moved to Linux and wanted to test an api. Opened Software Manager and installed Resonance. It looks like there are Mac and Windows versions. It was simple and clean, and did what I needed to get done. I have to admit, when I clicked to install, I was wondering what kind of hoops I was fixing to run into to use it. None. There were no hoops.
So, it just froze on me about 10 minutes ago. I can drop to the console. The vm manager icon did not disappear from the menu bar, so I was wrong about that. Everything freezes. I cannot interact with any browser or any app. The mouse pointer did change from a pointer to hand over a link or something at one point, but never changed back. After dropping to the console, I eventually just had to reboot and restart everything. The best way to describe it is, someone replaced my desktop with an image, and the only thing that still works is moving the mouse around.
I’m thinking it’s been about a week or so since it did this last. Oh, and I was poking around on a web page when it did it. Web browsers are always involved, but not specifically any one browser.
Have you checked dmesg (or historical system boot logs) and also ran memtest86+ to make sure your RAM isn’t faulty? Even if it’s brand new it can still happen. If you have another system nearby (or even just a phone) you could try to SSH (make sure to enable/start the daemon before it freezes) into the machine and see if it’s still responsive.
I have poked around in logs a little. Nothing has jumped out at me. I’ll test the memory and turn SSH on. I used Ubuntu on the desktop for about 8 - 10 years, and then swapped back to Windows ~2018 for work. I used to mess with hardware a lot, but I’ve fried my brain programming for too many years now.
I do see reports of Linux Mint hanging with nothing but the mouse working, but nothing has jumped out at me as a fix. The reports are going back a while, too. A lot of comments say it is something with the graphics card.
My new pc is a: HP OmniDesk Desktop Computer PC, AMD Ryzen 7 8700G, 32GB DDR5 Memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, Radeon 780M Graphics
Outside of this one issue, it’s a beast with Linux on it (I’m not a gamer, though).
I have a pc that’s only a few months old, wiped, and with a pretty much default install of LM. I have 32 gig of ram. Unless there is something about Stacer I don’t understand, it always shows half of the ram used (when I have the vm running). The graph never moves. I pretty much always have the vm running, because I absolutely have to have Windows with an IIS server on it (work related).
The entire system hangs. The only way I can recover is to reboot. The screen freezes, but the mouse pointer still moves around. I can click on things, but it does nothing. The keyboard does nothing.
I’m pretty bad about keeping a lot of tabs open in a couple of browsers. Almost every time it hangs involves opening a new tab in Firefox or Chromium. Sometimes youtube is involved, but I don’t think every single time does.
Like I said, the last time it hung, I just happened to notice that the vm manager icon had disappeared from the menu bar, like it had exited when it hung. I’m going to check for that the next time it hangs.
Luckily, it only hangs about once every week or so. Lately, it has been going almost two weeks. It’s really not that big a deal, but it would suck if it was doing it every few days.
Thanks,
This seems to be Linux’s Microslop. Not only did they add it to Systemd, they banned users on Reddit for just talking about it. I laughed when Microsoft banned users for using the term Microslop. Not so funny now, I guess.