• [ACTUAL_PROBLEM] Your computer can't read or write files properly. Your hard drive might be breaking. Save your important files somewhere else right away

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Which Linux distro are you using?

Debian 6.18.5-1 (2026-01-16) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Which release version?
(if rolling release without a release version, skip this question)

(If rolling release, last date updated?) Jan 18, 2026

Which kernel are you using? 6.18.5-1 (2026-01-16) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Which BIOS version are you using? 0.0.3.4

Which Framework Laptop 16 model are you using? (AMD Ryzen™ AI 370 Series + NVIDIA 5070 RTX)

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I got my Frame.work on December 26th 2025. I have this message when I run the combined.sh script:

grep -A 20 “INTELLIGENT RECOMMENDATIONS” “/home/user/combined_log.txt”
===== INTELLIGENT RECOMMENDATIONS =====

:yellow_circle: IMPORTANT Actions Required:

• [ACTUAL_PROBLEM] Your computer can’t read or write files properly. Your hard drive might be breaking. Save your important files somewhere else right away.

:blue_circle: INFORMATIONAL Actions Required:

• [DISTRO_COMPATIBILITY] :warning: Your Linux distribution may not be fully compatible with your Framework Laptop 16 → Framework Laptop 16 officially supports: Fedora 42, Ubuntu 24.04+/22.04 LTS, Bazzite. Community supported: Project Bluefin, Arch Linux, NixOS 24.11+, Linux Mint. Your current distribution may not be fully compatible For the best experience, consider switching to a supported distribution from frame.work/linux

====

So I have a couple of questions :

  • Should I worry about the read/write message?
  • Where can I find more information about this?
  • Should I send the laptop back for repair/warranty?
2

Excuse my ignorance but what is the combined.sh script?

3

It’s the combined log script that you can find here - Linux on Framework Laptops Tools and Scripts

And your ignorance is hereby… forgiven!:innocent:

1 Like
4

After a quick look at the script, which I had also never heard of before, this recommendation is based on finding one of these strings in dmesg output: "Input/output error"|"I/O error"|"read error"|"write error"

That is probably a real problem, although depending on what stuff you have connected and possibly drivers/firmware, it might not be a problem with your motherboard or ssd.

If you run dmesg and grep for those errors, you might be able to figure out the underlying cause, like if it was a usb drive or your nvme.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FrameworkComputer/linux-docs/refs/heads/main/log-helper/combined.sh

2 Likes
5

Well, first… are you encountering a real problem, or are you running the “finds problems for you to be scared of” script for fun?

If the second: you can disregard whatever it prints out.

If the first: what is the actual problem you are experiencing, in your own words?

6

Thanks for the tip to check for these strings in the file - so apparently this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the drive, more with Xorg…:

$ grep -i “output error” combined_log.txt |grep -v xf86

$ grep -i “output error” combined_log.txt

  1 Jan 18 04:02:39 framework /usr/libexec/gdm-x-session[2317]: (WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Input/output error
  1 Jan 18 04:02:39 framework /usr/libexec/gdm-x-session[2317]: (WW) xf86CloseConsole: KDSETMODE failed: Input/output error

Good news is, apparently it’s not my drive that’s faulty.

Now, about expressing the problems I see (and not the symptoms) in my own words, this is what happens (and I’m not sure what causes it)…

  • The display manager is GDM3. For some reason I only got it to work in Wayland, not Xorg. LightDM wouldn’t launch on Xorg either.
  • When I am on Cinnamon (Xorg, after connecting on the Wayland GDM3), “sometimes”, at some point, the screen freezes. Stuff still happens in the background, e.g. if I’m on the Zoom call I can still hear people and they can still see me, but the screen is totally frozen. I don’t think the input is frozen (see next point) but due to the frozen screen I don’t know whether typing or moving the mouse does something.
  • I’m not sure what causes this. Usually I can ctrl-alt-F3 to a virtual terminal and either I reboot the system or restart gdm. Not totally kosher, but at least it does the job.
  • If I first ctrl-alt-F3 and from the virtual terminal try to get back to the Xorg session (either Ctrl-Alt-F2 or to the GDM login screen with Ctrl-Alt-F1), the system is totally frozen.
  • I haven’t observed this behaviour on Wayland.

Not sure what I should check further though…

7

Is there a reason you would prefer X over Wayland? Only one of those things is actively maintained (and being invested in for modern hardware support), and it isn’t the one you are experiencing endless trouble with.

1 Like
8

In defense of running this script, I think that any framework-owning Linux user that came upon this KB page: Linux on Framework Laptops Tools and Scripts

Might reasonably be expected to try everything there just to see how it goes

And then what do you do when this script says you have an “ACTUAL PROBLEM” besides ask after it on the forums? :sweat_smile:

1 Like
9

@Andy_Coder :wink: thank you for your questions, are you perchance familiar with Clean Language? :wink:

Anyway, what do I do? Well I check some of the logs, try to find patterns and when I’m lost I ask about it in the forums. In this case I now know I don’t have a nvme drive isssue, that’s already a relief. It’s always nice to have a false negative.

The graphics driver/system sometimes freezing for no apparent reason issue is something else, another problem I would like to tackle but that could be fixed by a package update (especially when running a non-out-of-the-box-supported distro: debian unstable).

@DHowett yes there is a reason.

  1. Cinnamon is my session manager of choice. Not a big fan of the design of Gnome3 (yeah, personal preferences yadda yadda).
  2. Cinnamon Wayland support is still labeled as experimental. This means e.g. that I can’t launch the keyboard settings. It doesn’t look like Wayland even looks at my ibus settings and I have no clue where to configure my keyboard so it looks like the Framework-16-UK-Extended-Keyboard-with-Right-Alt-as-Compose-Key. Right now my keyboard looks like something different (with the @ sign on top of “2” and the “ sign where the @ should be). Perhaps that’s a US layout though when installing debian I am sure I selected the right layout.
  3. I am a gamer. There’s some older games on wine that I play through PlayOnLinux and/or wine (yeah, I’m aware I can’t use POL without wine). For some older games, “Fullscreen” just works for Xorg and doesn’t with Wayland.
  4. I am a gamer. I use the proprietary nvidia drivers. I’m not sure how to encourage the system to use the discrete nvidia module instead of the AMD when launching graphics-intensive apps. Coming back to PlayOnLinux, when I launch “Icewind Dale - Enhanced Edition” in Gnome3/Wayland or Cinnamon/Wayland, the options dialogue shows that it’s using the AMD card, and when I run Cinnamon/Xorg it correctly uses the nvidia card.
  5. and so on and so forth

So yeah, couple of frustrations make it so that I currently prefer the stability of Xorg vs Wayland that’s actively being developed. Not sure I talked about “endless trouble”, I mentioned that “sometimes” the display freezes, and I haven’t been able to pinpoint the reason. If I were to use the “endless troubles” thing, based on the list above, I think Wayland is the winner here ;-).

10

I agree that you would generally be better off moving away from Xorg… the latest Linux graphics stack drivers and software as well as new hardware like FW laptops are only really supported on wayland.

Personally, I do just stick with a supported distro, even as a long time Arch user. With the luxury of official support, I will take advantage of it, so I’m running Ubuntu LTS. As a result I have had approximately zero issues.

But some of your wayland issues may be solved on any distro. The dgpu driver and switching is no problem at all. You can use the GPUMode tool for extra control, but the .desktop files for applications specify if they prefer the igpu or dgpu, so you don’t have to worry about it except to override afaik (maybe this is different with nvidia…)

If you have games on Steam, you can turn on proton in the settings to have it manage windows compatibility for you. They pick versions and settings based on Steam Deck testing so any fixes needed for fullscreen on wayland will be taken care of. (I’m not sure about non-Steam games though)

For your keyboard, Cinnamon only recently got input method and keyboard layout settings support on wayland, so this is mainly an issue of release lag: Monthly News – September 2025 – The Linux Mint Blog

Xorg handles a lot of things that wayland simply doesn’t. That’s sort of the best thing about wayland and why Xorg is fading away into the past… But that does mean that GNOME and KDE are the only DEs that really cover everything you need at this point (and even that is a relatively recent development). Even though it’s been many years, it is a lot of work

1 Like
11

My last encounter with that script involved it taking 18 hours to run to collect logs. The script uses a recursive bash loop and bash regular expression handling, hence the horrendous performance. I suspect it has a bunch of edge cases which make the provenance of any warnings it comes up with quite tenuous.