Desktop froze

[Bret Busby]

On 12/6/23 05:48, Bill wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am using Mint 21.1 (Vera) with the Mate desktop, running on an I 7 CPU 
> and 12 GB of memory.  Recently, I had the desktop freeze up.  At the 
> time, I was doing nothing of importance (playing solitaire while waiting 
> for an important phone call) and there was nothing that I was running in 
> the background.  I was dragging a card to another pile when the drag 
> operation just stopped.  The entire desktop stopped.  The mouse cursor 
> could move around normally but nothing could be selected.  The keyboard 
> also stopped working, so obviously all of the input functions were not 
> working.  I could not even select a terminal window to drop down to a 
> command prompt or do an orderly shutdown.  The only solution was to hold 
> down the power button to force a system shutdown. After a new startup, 
> everything worked as it should.
> 
> My question is, what happened?  Presumably I could find a clue to what 
> happened by looking  at the log files.  Which ones should I look at and 
> where are they located.  I do not think it was a hardware problem and 
> probably was the Mate desktop.   I want to know what happened and is it 
> very serious.  It seems that everything now is OK and I was doing 
> nothing of importance and lost no data.
> 
> Bill Stanley
> 
> 

How long ago did it happen?

I am running Linux Mint Mate 21.1, and, a couple of hours ago, I tried 
to open a file, using pcmanfm, and, when I right clicked on the file, 
the three buttons in the top right corner of all my windows, 
disappeared, and I could not do anything with the open windows, so, I 
did the only thing that I was able, and, that was to use the "Shut down 
the computer button that I have in the panel, and, used the "Restart 
computer" option, and, I am in the process of restoring, as much as I 
can, the state of the system before the problem occurred.

I had assumed that it was "just a glitch", but, depending on when your 
instance occurred, and, whether anyone else simultaneously had a similar 
problem in Linux Mint Mate 21.1, it could be something more sinister 
than a glitch.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............