this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I feel you. The bugs that get the machine to crash and you have zero chance of getting any useful debug information, are by far the most annoying ones.
In my experience it's most of the time some driver issues in the kernel or the (NVidia) proprietary drivers. Or an hardware issue. On Debian I can install several kernel versions alongside each other. So there would be no need for me to install more than one distribution. Most of the times a proper crash isn't caused by the userspace anyways, so it boils down to the different kernel versions and configurations anyways. You could also try an older kernel.
I have an AMD + AMD setup but apparently the Dell G5 series has issues with linux so it's been an uphill challenge.
I did see that LMDE 6 makes it easy to boot different kernels at startup which is handy. I tried looking at Liquorix Kernel but I don't think it's ready for LMDE 6 just yet. I can't recall exactly why but I got a big nope when trying to download it. I think I tried looking at the Zen Kernel as well but couldn't figure out if it's just for Arch or if it's compatible with Debian.
Too much to learn and now enough hours or attention span. Slow progress but I guess it's a thing to do besides watching my plants grow.
Maybe just start with the different versions available in your distro's package manager. I've never downloaded a custom kernel from somewhere else. (Well, I have but that was embedded stuff and not a desktop computer.)
pages like this also suggest things like updating the BIOS and the graphics card firmware with some AMD tool. And I've read several times you should try the kernel parameter
amdgpu.runpm=0Make sure to do all of that first. And observe if the freezes happen in certain circumstances. Maybe you can deduct something from that. Maybe it happens while gaming (GPU). Or when under load. Or if you move it around (loose connection), or when hot or after a certain time even if idle. Disable power management and see if that helps. Should be less effort than installing 5 operating systems. (If the crash isn't super rare) And try using the magic SysReq keys to force linux to sync and reboot to see if the kernel is still alive somehow.
Fortunately I updated my BIOS from windows before switching to Linux and as of recently, I still have the latest version.
I added
amdgpu.runpm=0and that did increase stability considerably. My system froze up way less often which was great.I also found that adding
processor.max_cstate=1has made my system even more stable and I haven't had a freeze up in days now. This page gives a nice run down of what it does.I wouldn't be surprised if there is a freeze up in the future but overall my system has been a lot more stable making everything far more enjoyable.
Awesome. Let's hope the eventually fix the remaining hiccups. Maybe it's really the power management if those kernel parameters did it.
To this day I have no idea how to even get journalctl errors from exactly before that crash.
Like all this
journalctl -r -b 1and all that doesnt seem to show the right ones.On my debian machine something like
journalctl -b 1 -kshows stuff. There's also lots of debug files in /var/log/ like boot.log debug, kern.log, messages, syslog.But it somehow needs to be able to store the log on your disk. If the system craps out completely, it won't get written to disk. The magic SysRequest keys might help if it only freezes. I learned "Raising elephants is so utterly boring." You might wanna goggle that and learn how to do it.
Other than that, I mostly look at all logs (no '-b1' and search for the place where it rebooted. Sometimes you find other related stuff while scrolling. But my own (old) thinkpad doesn't ever crash.
I think there are other crash-dump tools available. It believe there's something called 'kdump-tools' available on Debian. YMMV.