2

I'm using KUbuntu 20.04 on the Dell E6410. Supposedly it has GT218M [NVS 3100M] display adapter (at least, lshw says so). For a long time I've been using the nouveau driver (xserver-xorg-video-nouveau), but today I've noticed a webpage that causes an OS hang for me (when I open that webpage via either Firefox or Google Chrome, it reproducibly causes a full hang, even SysRq keys don't work; with the nvidia-340 driver this doesn't happen).

I would like to report this problem to nouveau. I see the bug reporting manual and specifically the hang diagnosis manual. But the problem is that I still doesn't understand how to get kernel messages: on the one hand – in the first manual they claim /var/log/dmesg isn't what they need, on the other hand – the output of the dmesg command seems to be cleared on reboot. The hang seems to be at least level-8 per their scale in the second manual. Their first suggestion is “mounting the partition, where system logs are written, with sync option”, but, although I can mount the root partition with the sync option before reproducing the hang, I don't know which file to get then (as they say /var/log/dmesg isn't what they need).

sasha
  • 129
  • 1
  • 10
  • 1
    What is the URL of that bad web page? What version of Firefox? Are you using Chrome or Chromium? I'd be prepared to give it a go on my Debian version of Mint [LMDE] on my nvidia GPU (driver is nouveau). – Jeremy Boden May 03 '21 at 13:53
  • 1
    Provided you are using systemd, that you have configured it to keep log info over several boots, then `journalctl -k` should display kernel messages (rather like a dmesg log). You may need to adjust an appropriate systemd config file to achieve this. You can add the -b parameter (see man page) to start at the appropriate boot. – Jeremy Boden May 04 '21 at 01:54
  • 1
    @JeremyBoden, for comment #1: any `*/products/*` page on flareaudio.com, e.g. https://www.flareaudio.com/products/calmer; firefox 88.0+build2-0ubuntu0.20.04.1; google-chrome-stable 90.0.4430.93-1. For comment #2: thanks; it looks l like `journalctl -k -b …` helps (at least the outputs of `journalctl -k`, `journalctl -k -b -1` and `journalctl -k -b -2` differ); just for curiosity, what part of a config file matters (for future)? – sasha May 04 '21 at 06:10
  • 1
    I tried FF - 78.10.0esr on that site and it appeared to work perfectly despite it being full of trackers - I always have the DuckDuckGo tracker blocker and adblocker extensions in place. The adblocker claimed to stop 21 ads and DDG claimed to stop 8 trackers. So this is really a site to avoid (on privacy grounds). I **believe** the only systemd file that I changed was `/etc/systemd/journald.conf` in which I altered two entries: Storage=persistent and SystemMaxUse=96M - but see `man journald.conf`. It sounds like you don't need to do this, since you have logs over multiple boots. – Jeremy Boden May 04 '21 at 14:55
  • @JeremyBoden, but if you use adblockers, then the specific parts of the site (that cause hang) might be simply not loaded. Anyway, thanks for your experiment. (But, to say truth, I think it won't say a lot, as you use different hardware.) “It sounds like you don't need to do this, since you have logs over multiple boots” — yes, I understand. – sasha May 05 '21 at 05:31
  • @JeremyBoden, probably, what I should do is to determine what exactly causes the problem: make a clone of that site locally and gradually eliminate its parts until the clone no more causes hanging. I just hoped I can avoid this. (I also can try opening the site within the virtual machine for the sake of experiment.) – sasha May 05 '21 at 05:35
  • 1
    @JeremyBoden, P.S.: If you put that part about `journalctl -k` into an answer, I would give you the bounty (it really resolves my main question “how to report it”). – sasha May 05 '21 at 05:37
  • I think that using `journalctl -k` doesn't really qualify as a full answer - certainly not worth a bonus, given my limited knowledge of Systemd. So I'm glad it helped, but I decline your bounty points. Perhaps you could write up a full bug report submission as an answer? – Jeremy Boden May 05 '21 at 11:34

0 Answers0