[Ubuntu] Freezing on login screen

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Hello, I have a Framework 16 running Ubuntu 22.04.5 that has recently started freezing on the login screen for about the last week. I’m fully up to date, but I don’t have Ubuntu Pro enabled. It’s not happening on waking from sleep; it mainly happens when powering on from a fully-off state.

What normally happens is you hit the login screen, it’s frozen for a few seconds, you get a black screen with a _ for a couple seconds, and then it switches back to the login screen and you can move the mouse, click things, log in, the clock updates, etc.

What happens instead is it just freezes indefinitely. Can’t move the mouse, clock at the top of the screen doesn’t update. Interestingly, you can adjust the volume and brightness, which gives the expected little sound pings.

I’ve even had it hard freeze once in the middle of regular usage, though since it’s only happened once I’m not too worried about it.

Here is the journal log – the clock froze on 07:54, and I rebooted around 8:10.

Thanks for looking! This has been pretty frustrating/alarming, so I hope there’s a solution.

edit: it started after installing BIOS 3.05, but that might be a coincidence.

2

Another symptom that occurs is sometimes (once a day?) the “frame rate” of the system drops significantly, to the point of being able to move the mouse once every 5 seconds or so. It’s a struggle to reach the menu to power off the system, and even when I click it, it takes a significant amount of time to shut down. I’m not sure if this is thermal throttling or something, but it’s sudden, the fans aren’t ramped up, and…we don’t have a cat, so it’s not like the fans are gummed up.

I’m going to try switching back from my graphics module to the expansion bay shell for a few days and see if that helps.

3

It seems like this is the error message that is related to the problem:

Jan 01 08:01:00 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to lock front buffer on /dev/dri/card0: gbm_surface_lock_front_buffer failed
Jan 01 08:02:00 max-Framework-U2 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1415]: KMS: DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB failed: No such device
Jan 01 08:02:00 max-Framework-U2 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1415]: KMS: DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB failed: No such device

Maybe it is related to this bug report? Failed to lock front buffer on nouveau starting with mutter 46 (#3389) · Issues · GNOME / mutter · GitLab
Despite the title it also fails with external AMD GPUs.
It was fixed in Gnome 46 as far as I can tell.

Although Gnome has problems loading settings here (line 3221ff):

Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to open atomic modesetting backend: GDBus.Error:System.Error.ENODEV: No such device
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: g_hash_table_destroy: assertion 'hash_table != NULL' failed
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to open legacy modesetting backend: GDBus.Error:System.Error.ENODEV: No such device
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to hotplug secondary gpu '/dev/dri/renderD129': No suitable mode setting backend found
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to open atomic modesetting backend: GDBus.Error:System.Error.ENODEV: No such device
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: g_hash_table_destroy: assertion 'hash_table != NULL' failed
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to open legacy modesetting backend: GDBus.Error:System.Error.ENODEV: No such device
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Failed to hotplug secondary gpu '/dev/dri/renderD128': No suitable mode setting backend found
Jan 01 07:54:16 max-Framework-U2 gnome-shell[1415]: Device '/dev/dri/card2' prefers shadow buffer

To be honest, I have no idea how to solve this

1 Like
4

Thanks for your reply! Yeah, I do get crash report popups sometimes for gnome-shell, which does suggest that’s related.

There might be some different AMD drivers I can try – the latest AMD drivers I’m seeing (24.20.3) are for “Ubuntu 22.04.5 HWE”, which seems to be a special kernel that I’m assuming I’m not running.

I could also upgrade to Ubuntu 24, which would get me GNOME 46, but I was holding off because Unity (the game engine) was having compatibility problems the last time I tried it.

I’m trying to determine if there’s something worth documenting here – like Framework 16 w/ Graphics Module + Ubuntu 22.04 = :confused: ?

For now, I’m going to run without the graphics module for a few days for productivity reasons, but after that I’ll try installing the hwe kernel and the latest AMD drivers and see if that helps any.

5

Sounds like a good idea to try the HWE kernel. Hopefully it can be resolved by that…

6

Alright, so it turns out I already had the HWE kernel. Installing the AMD drivers off the site seemed to have no effect.

I switched back to my non-graphics module shell and that worked for a while. I did have one login freeze, but overall much less often. No mid-session stuttering.

Since I actually do want to use the $500 module I paid for, I’ve since in-place upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04 and have been using it for about a week. The good news is the login doesn’t freeze anymore, and 0 mid-session stuttering. The bad news is…touchpad doesn’t work 2/3 of Ubuntu boots, the JetBrains AppImage launcher tries to install itself on every boot (unsuccessfully), and the Steam application has trouble showing itself most of the time. Still, those are persistent annoyances rather than major blockers. Still, would be nice to get my touchpad back (it’s not an uncommon issue apparently).

So my take is…while the Framework 16 has official support for Ubuntu 22.04, the Graphics Module does not work well and needs Ubuntu 24.04.

7

Glad it was kinda resolved now.
Have you ever tried booting from a linux from a live disk?
Maybe there is something borked just with your system and you could replace it with a fresh installation while keeping your home directory