Unable to poweroff, reboot, or hibernate due to a frozen "udev" process

General system EndeavourOS installation
1

Hello guys! :smiley:

My specs:
Laptop ASUS X553MA
Kernel: 5.4.10-arch1-1
Processor: 4 Intel Celeron CPU N2930 @1.83GHz
I have a dualboot system with 2 harddrives, one for EndeavourOS, one for Windows 10.

I have a problem that goes from “I don’t exist” to “I AM NOT GONNA CEASE TO EXIST!” with poweroff mainly, but I am unable to restart, “sleep” or hibernate either. Right now my main concern is that I cannot “normally” poweroff nor restart my laptop and that is really annoying. The weird thing is that when I have a fresh install I can poweroff and restart normally for a few times, I can “sleep” or hibernate the laptop once but after “waking” it I cannot do it again, that I can do for a couple of boots, which seems super weird to me. After I use the laptop a few times (like 5) it starts behaving weirdly in those tasks, until, at some point, it just won’t perform any of those. I recall having that problem with Arch Linux distributions since kernel 4.11 or so, but they are now more annoying that ever. The same stuff happens with LTS kernels. Other distros just don’t work good enough in this laptop so I don’t even bother trying them anymore.
So I’ve been researching and the little I have found about the problem points to three possibilities, one, it is a linux bug, two, it is a hardware problem, three it is a bios problem, so that doesn’t help much, I think.
Windows 10 works just fine, so that makes me think that it is not a hardware problem nor a bios issue, so I think it may be a linux issue or a piece of software that I installed causes that after I use it several times for some reason or reasons. I have a very similar laptop and it work just fine, an ASUS X551MA, it never has any issues with linux, so I still wonder if it is “the laptop” itself, I wonder if other people has had a similar problem.

I also have seen that in Ksysguard (I am using Plasma), before I poweroff, if there is just one “systemd-udevd” process , I am able to turn off the laptop and when I can’t turn it if off, there are like 20 of them present before I poweroff and there’s one that has, under the “CPU %” a “disk sleep” message, whatever that means, and it cannot be killed by any means, it just stays there no matter what you do.
So once you try to poweroff the laptop I’ve got this two very similar screens so far, they appear on the screen after several minutes of wait when trying to poweroff:

  1. Report 1
    and
  2. Report 2

and they always have that “waiting for system process: systemd-udevd” which may point to that impossible to kill process I mentioned before.

Here is the systemlog too: http://ix.io/276m

I saw in that log something about “memstick0” I don’t know if that’s referring to the SD reader. If t is referring to that, I wonder if that is trying to load the driver or something and it can’t (as the reader doesn’t work in linux), so after a while it says it is a “disk sleep”. I was wondering if I just have to block something from loading or if I need to uninstall something so the problem may stop, so I need help figuring this out guys, what do I do here? is there any way to solve this? I am lost at this point…

here is another log file with some extra udev errors, it seems: http://ix.io/276y
it has several “EVIOCSKEYCODE” errors there. they appeared while I was typing this.

By the way, I used this command for both log files: lspci > log.txt && lsusb >> log.txt && journalctl -b -0 >> log.txt && cat log.txt | curl -F ‘f:1=<-’ ix.io

Note: I have the latest “BIOS” update (2.14), the are no more updates since 2015. I used Arch Linux before updating to that version and the same problem existed since before I updated it, as I mentioned, since kernel 4.11 or so.

THANKS IN ADVANCE for your help guys!! :smiley:

2

Sounds like a tricky problem.
So I can only give some thoughts and not any tested solutions for now.

First I started wondering if BIOS update would help, but you say you already have the latest available.
Then I thought that you might have Secure boot or Fast boot enabled?

Do you have a memory stick or SD card attached into the reader? If so, try removing the card.

There are many errors in the log. Some of them might be caused by missing or wrong device driver, but I guess it may not be easy to get those right.

What are your swap settings? Could you show the contents of /etc/fstab?

3

does it sound like ?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_X553MA#Laptop_freezes_on_boot

mayby not exact but sound a bit …

1 Like
4

@dante_igashu The EVIOCSKEYCODE errors are coming from hwdb. It has to do with key codes and mostly these errors can be ignored normally. Are you using a wireless keyboard and mouse? Maybe try without them for some testing. I would also try not using hibernation and only sleep mode. Turn hibernation off. Is the set up correct for hibernation to be used? I don’t use those features myself so i don’t know how you have it configured and if it is correct. So someone else will have to chime in here and advise you on that. It would be good if you posted the contents of your fstab and report what your swap setting are as @manuel has said.

cat /etc/fstab

Edit: Also have you checked the wiki for your set up?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate#Basic_Configuration

2 Likes
5

Latest Bios for Asus X553MA :
BIOS 214
2015/09/16
2.61 MBytes

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/X553MA/HelpDesk_Download/

6

Hello! and thanks! for responding :smiley:

About secure boot and fastboot, I deactivate them every time I, for some reason, I go to defaults in BIOS, as if I leave secureboot enable I can’t boot to Linux and if I leave fastboot enabled, I cannot access BIOS on boot.

About the SD card, no I don’t have any card inserted, in fact I don’t even use it in windows. :stuck_out_tongue:

About the swap settings, I decided to avoid using hibernation this last time I reinstalled the OS, as it was just pretty much useless.

@ringo

Actually I had that problem before, probably in a version of kernel 4.10, but now it is different, everything seems to work fine except for the poweroff, hibernation and sleep.

@ricklinux

Yes I am using a wireless keyboard and mouse, I will give it a try with a wired keyboard and I’ll use the touchpad and report back about what happened.

here is the fstab stuff in case it is still useful:

UUID=1F66-6CCF /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 2
UUID=504ee8e1-44dd-4b4a-82eb-258801cfe372 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
UUID=b4c71377-ac78-4cc6-a690-6fd4d483798f /home ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2

@FLVAL

Thanks!..but I already have the lastest BIOS :sweat_smile:

THANKS GUYS!! :smiley:

Okay, I am back, about not using a wireless keyboard and mouse, by saying "trying a wired keyboard I mean that my laptops keyboard doesn’t work so I use the wireless one. I tried with a wired one now but the same thing happens, I “manually” rebooted the laptop and after login I went to check the KSysguard info and it immediately shows exactly 25 udev processes, including the “disk sleep” one, so no changes at all…

7

The lack of a swap partition or swapfile would explain your hibernation problem. :wink:

1 Like
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:no_mouth:

Not really… :sweat_smile:
I mentioned that I don’t have one because I reinstalled recently and removed the swap partition because the Hybernation is practically usless given the problem I have.

But thanks for helping though! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: