Random freezes since Linux 6.7
Brief summary of the problem:
Since Linux 6.7, I've been encountering random freezes while running Linux. There are no logs (checking journalctl -b -1
shows no logs from around the time the freeze happened). It seems to completely freeze the system (not just the graphical session), as the Magic SysReq key does not work when it happens (I have to hold the power button to turn off the PC).
I encountered this issue with the following kernel versions: 6.7.0, 6.7.1, 6.7.3, 6.7.4 and 6.8.0-rc1. (I didn't test 6.7.2.)
I bisected the issue between v6.6
and v6.7
, and found that the bad commit was 06ad7e16425619a4a77154c2e85bededb3e04a4f
("drm/amd/display: Destroy DC context while keeping DML and DML2"). I built 6.7.0 with that commit reverted (as well as 10406abe036b97a9c3549779a41c93ca488a0b7b
, which seems to require the other commit and thus the build fails if this one isn't reverted as well), and it seems like this fixed the issue.
Hardware description:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
- GPU: Navi 21 [Radeon RX 6950 XT] [1002:73A5]
- System Memory: 16GB
- Display(s): 2560x1440@165Hz and 2560x1440@75Hz
- Type of Display Connection: DisplayPort
System information:
- Distro name and Version: Arch Linux
- Kernel version: Linux Firestorm 6.7.0-1-mainline #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun, 11 Feb 2024 19:28:30 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
- Custom kernel: Zen for the 6.7.x kernels and mainline for 6.8.0-rc1 and all the builds during bisecting
- AMD official driver version: N/A
How to reproduce the issue:
The crashes are completely random, they can happen anywhere from a few minutes after booting to several hours of uptime.
I think they happen more often (or maybe only happen) when doing hardware video decoding, such as viewing a Twitch stream in Firefox with VA-API enabled. I suggested this to another user who also had this issue, and they reported that crashes stopped once they moved to Chromium (which doesn't do hardware video decoding by default on Linux). That said, I'm not certain about this.