Ask HN: How do you troubleshoot desktop Linux crashes/freezes?
3 points
6 hours ago
| 3 comments
| HN
I've been using Linux all my life. I’d like to be able to claim that it’s stable, but that’s not my experience :) So I’d like to get better at recovering from freezes and crashes, and finding the root cause.

I make extensive use of Ctrl+Alt+f3, and magic system request keys (Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc+f; Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc+reisub). But often the system is too far gone to drop to a virtual terminal. In these cases, I usually try to find clues in dmesg/syslog/journalctl.

The bulk of issues seem to be caused by Nvidia GPUs, and suspend.

What are your go-to commands for recovery? And, when that isn't an option, how do you post-mortem after rebooting?

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stop50
17 minutes ago
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My worst cases were all related with early boot problems, so the dracut shell was helpful.
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BobbyTables2
3 hours ago
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30 years ago, suspend was dicey in Windows.

Things have improved but you’re still pressing your luck…

What about SSH in to debug before rebooting? Or maybe log with the kernels’ net console feature (mainly wired Ethernet), assuming a physical serial port isn’t available

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rythmshifter
3 hours ago
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Claude has me doing fancy stuff with dmesg and journalctl. Can’t pretend to understand a lot of it but it has saved my butt a few times.
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