Hi guys
All seems fine, but suddenly on a chat the reply tab disappears and chat freezes. Seconds later the desktop background image disappear with a black screen, except for the top panel and white squares for the icons…
Clicking on the start button shows the normal restart`shut-down option window… but all characters are replaced by squares… (?)
Letting it shut-down it stalls at a WBA line. Powering off and restarting, it boots normally… 'til this happens again, eventually.
It means a problem, for sure. But which one and where ?
Again thanks to the experts
W
p.s. Seems to be an EXT4 -fs error (for what it means) if I rely on what shows in a never ending way if I do not power off.
When rebooting, this time it did a filecheck (a few secs) - lets see the time it<ll take 'til it does it again
[quote=“Watford, post:1, topic:15319”]p.s. Seems to be an EXT4 -fs error (for what it means)[/quote]That’s saying a hard disk issue. Disk partitions are typically formatted EXT4 file system (EXT4-fs).
On most including 17.10 the tool available is: System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Disks
Take a look at SMART data - I believe it also has some tests. Be prepared, the news may not be good and I’d backup anything important ASAP.
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On an SSD less then a year old ?
SSDs have stretched Flash technology to the limits in pursuit of density to compete with spinning hard disks. What does Disks say?
There are other less likely possibilities. Memory corruption may cause what you see in a roundabout way. One thing about general flakiness - it rarely gets better with time.
Smart data says Old Age ! The drive is new from last spring !
Threshold not exceeded
Overall: Disk is OK
Powered on: 4 months and 14 days
self-test completed successfully
Reported uncorrectable errors 0 sectors Threshold 10
Just re-boot and got a “LIDA configuration” window (or something like that) with a terminal black one on the side. It disappeared before I could read what it is.
That diverts attention from the disk but not entirely. Something went bonkers and the disk error may be a secondary symptom. Remember “EXT4 -fs error” is the best vector we have.
The fact the filesystem got corrupted does mean it cannot be trusted, secondary symptom or not. EXT4 is good but not perfect. You can force a disk check next boot with:
sudo touch /forcefsck
And a better, longer test from a live boot is described here.
In the grub menu (press Esc while booting if it doesn’t normally appear) is a memory test (not the serial version). It takes off and runs. I’d run for at least 15 minutes and see if any RED messages appear. This is checking RAM quite well.
I’ve run into memory issues quite a bit but I recycle old crap, too. Many times cleaning the memory module contacts and reseating them does the trick.
Unfortunately, those are the big hitters and there’s a zillion other possibilities. Something went flakey and finding out what it is can be a real challenge. Of course, I’ve focused on hardware but kernels and drivers are not out of the picture.
EDIT: Laptop? Desktop? U-M version? Newer install?
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Bill
Don’t want to tempt fate, here… but I went back from Compiz to Marco… and I’ve been working for hours this morning… no glitch, no stall no funny behavior…
Before you did raise the hardware/disk thing, I was seeing it as a graphic/card or rendering issue.
Lets see. Will come back here if it comes back here 
You could be onto something. I’m a 100% compiz user mainly for the Zoom (old eyes) and cube but I turn off most other stuff. On 16.04 it’s been stable but I know it can be quite the opposite at times.
Let us know how it goes!
