Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 flaky since Friday's updates!

[Chris]

On Sun, 2015-01-18 at 15:20 -0500, Paul Smith wrote:
> I installed Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 on my system at work back in November or
> so and it's been working great for me up until Friday.
> 
> On Friday I installed a bunch of packages that were available for update
> during last week, and my desktop suddenly got very flaky.
> 
> What happens is that the desktop hangs frequently: every few minutes it
> stops responding for about 20 seconds, then it starts working again
> (most of the time).
> 
> When it's not responding the mouse will move, but can't be used to
> select anything (no buttons appear to work, and the cursor doesn't
> change shape when moved over elements of the desktop).  Other desktop
> elements stop responding: for example I have a CPU / Network IO graph
> applet on my panel and those stop updating while it's frozen.
> 
> If I have a window selected which accepts keyboard input, then sometimes
> I can type there while it's frozen, but not always (I think).
> 
> Also sometimes (seems to be if I'm trying to select something with a
> click just when things hang) the entire desktop will hang and never come
> back, at least as long as I've been willing to wait.
> 
> When the desktop is hung I can switch to a console window with C-A-F1,
> or I can log in remotely to my system via SSH from another system; this
> access is working fine even while the desktop is still hung, so the
> problem doesn't appear to be in the base system.  It seems to be an
> issue with the desktop or graphics somehow.
> 
> I've rebooted a few times to see if it clears up, but it doesn't.
> 
> I've checked system logs and dmesg and nothing is printed.  The CPU load
> (viewed via top from the console) is not increased while the desktop is
> hung up.
> 
> My system is an i7-3770 3.4GHz (8 cores) with 16G RAM and a 1T HDD for
> the system partitions and storage and a 500G SSD for my active work.  It
> uses an Intel graphics controller Xeon E3-1200 and I have two monitors
> plugged into it.  The system has wireless but I've disabled it and I'm
> using standard 100Mbit CAT5 network cable.
> 
> As I mentioned, everything about the system is fine when accessed via a
> console interface/SSH (not using the desktop), so I don't think it's an
> issue with the CPU, memory, disk, network, or keyboard.
> 
> What can I do?!?!  I can't work like this...
> 
> 
Question, do you see anything like this in your syslog:

kernel: [214866.808010] [drm:i915_hangcheck_elapsed] *ERROR* Hangcheck
timer elapsed... render ring idle

You can just do a search on 'hangcheck' and see if it pops up. If you do
see it check this bug report -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1402331 if not,
then please disregard and I apologize for the noise.

Chris

-- 
Chris
KeyID 0xE372A7DA98E6705C
31.11°N 97.89°W (Elev. 1092 ft)
21:55:23 up 10:14, 1 user, load average: 0.45, 0.50, 0.79
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, kernel 3.19.0-031900rc5-generic