I have endeavour OS with XFCE installed in a desktop computer.
It happens quite often (not every day but definitely every week) that the computer starts going slow, and after a while it reboots out of the blue.
In fact, perhaps “reboots” is not the correct word, but the session ends for no reason and suddenly I see the greeting page where I must enter my password to access a new session (that’s a screen I don’t see when I boot the machine from scratch, I have only one user).
When the new session starts, all windows are lost (obviously) and all apps must be started from scratch. The logout happens very quickly so perhaps it’s not really a reboot, and I can see a VPN connection from the previous is still active (and that’s something I must do manually when I power on the machine).
I don’t know why this happens but I would very much like to make it stop, it’s very annoying as all my work needs to be resumed every time it happens.
Some information about my machine from neofetch, please kindle let me know whethere there’s another detail that could be relevant for diagnosis or debugging:
We will need more details. With the little information you have given its not helpful to us to help you solve the issue. It could be a software issue or it could be a hardware issue. Have you checked the file system? Have you checked Htop to see if something is using up a lot of resources that is probably causing the issue? Try wiping out your cache and see if it still happens
rm -R ~/.cache you can just remove the whole folder it will be recreated
Thanks, @thefrog. I had a look at the ~/.xsession-errors (I guess that’s what you mean), but I’m not sure what I should be looking for in it. It has 41795 lines, most of them written by a Java program that I run a lot.
I can see programs there that use a lot of resources (normally Firefox), but I don’t see why that could cause rebooting. It could cause slow down, but it shouldn’t force me to start a new session.
I have removed the cache, we’ll see whether that helps.
Thanks. Manuel
it sounds like it could be something to do with the gpu
to check file system i usually sudo fsck /dev/sd?
what i would look for in the xsession-errors file is for something that is repepative around the time the event occurs. and yes its the one in your homefolder ~/.xsessions-errors
I don’t know anything about firefox. I havent used it in years just became way to heavy for me I use brave not that its any lighter but I like it better
And memory usage is not normal for a machine running XFCE and . I have 40 gigs of ram and it hardly hit 2 GB when I’m not using virtual machines. Even if I use my browser for hours it doesn’t go up as much as that. I use Brave as well because it has better memory usage than other browsers and it’s faster.
Seems like your session is crashing due to your system running out of RAM. Which causes the session to refresh itself. Don’t know if you have already done but it’s better to restart your computer. Which will refresh everything in your system and release any cached memory.
If possible use pastebin.com to share your xsession-errors. I bet your session is running out of memory which leads “X” to crash which intern makes the session crash.
How many tabs or instances of Firefox are open? I often have 4 to 5 tabs open but have only 8gb of ram and it comes nowhere near this
Have you set up swap?
I have many tabs open in Firefox, more than I can count. Currently 18 instances with many tabs each. However, I don’t see how that could be the reason for the sudden rebooting, that’s how I work in all my machines and I don’t have that problem in other machines. The issue must be specific to this machine (either software or hardware), not how I use Firefox. But perhaps I’m totally off the mark of course.
Thank you so much for your reply and for having a detailed look.
I don’t know, how can I check. I thought I can hear the fan from time to time, but perhaps it’s something else.
Ok, I use Firefox and in my experience it has always done this, I try to close tabs when I’m done with them, from time to time, but before I do, I’m used to seeing it having these high thirst for memory.
Do you mean restart when the problem happens? What I try to do is to press the SysRq and type REISUB to rebook cleanly, but it’s not always responsive. Sometimes I have no other option than pressing the power button.
Would it help if I kill Firefox from time to time?
Here’s my .xsession-errors file. Unfortunately pastebin has a 512 kb limit, I was exceeding that.
I could be wrong but I think @s4ndm4n is getting at is you should probably reboot before you get started. With the Uptime you have and the fact your memory usuage is way out there. even for the swap file thats a lot of memory usage. Not sure how long this is been going on however with the work load you have I would definitely invest in more RAM. From what I could see in the xsessions-error file you have basic error messages I have had in the past and they never caused my session to end. From all I can tell your work load is more than your memory can handle. I would go at the least 32gig of ram.
not sure the fan speed is a problem my laptop doesn’t show fan speed either however I don’t worry about it as i have a 6 fan cooling pad that my laptop sits on. This doesn’t show the gpu or the driver that i find a bit concerning
You’re correct. What I’m trying to tell him is that his workload is overflowing physical RAM he has. And he should get into using bookmarks and make the browser start with one tab. FF taking 5GiG of RAM is too much.
Thanks @thefrog
What I don’t understand is why this issue never happened in other machines with less RAM that this one (in paricular, laptops running MX Linux or Windows).
I honestly don’t know. I’m what I would call a power hobbiest. I’m not in IT or even work for that matter. I am disabled. I love these kinds of problems because they help me learn. I can then pass that knowledge on someday. There could be a corrupt file that is trying to load that logs you out This is why its important to clean cache.
. I have 40 gigs of ram and it hardly hit 2 GB when I’m not using virtual machines. Even if I use my browser for hours it doesn’t go up as much as that. I use Brave as well because it has better memory usage than other browsers and it’s faster.