Why does ubuntu freeze

For example, in the image above, we will stop Firefox using the PID, which is Execute the command below. You might be required to sign in with your username and password. Just like in the Terminal, here, we can also use several commands and utilities to stop the running process. Select the process that you wish to stop and press the F9 kill key.

Other than performing the above tasks on your native machine, you can access it remotely via putty and execute the same commands. Here, you will need to have an SSH server running and configured correctly on your target system. In this post, we will use putty to stop troubleshoot and stop the process on a remote Ubuntu server. Launch putty and enter the Ip-address of the target machine in the highlighted section, as shown in the image above.

You can get the Ip-address of any Linux system by running the command ifconfig. Note, if the target PC is on a private network i. Once you have an active session, you can now start troubleshooting for issues on the system. One of the common ways is using process utilities to check for all running processes in the system.

In this example, we will launch TOP by executing the top command. Some of the common kill commands include; pkill, kill, kill -9, killall. See the examples below.

You can check more options to use with the various commands using the —help option. For example, pkill —help will give you a list of all options you can use with the pkill utility. The SysRq System Request is a specific combination of keys used to communicate directly with the Kernel regardless of the system state. It gives users the ability to send low-level commands to the Linux Kernel. However, this might differ from one PC brand to another.

To use the SysRq, we will first need to go into console mode, as shown in the previous method. In case you cannot drop to console, follow the steps below. It is a combination used to get the keyboard. It terms all the processes running on the system.

It Kills all running and stalled processes. Step 6 Wait for the OK message on the console. You can also check your HDD lights to see if the sync was successful.

It re-mounts all disks connected to the system as read-only. Step 8 Wait for the OK message. Its a combination to forcefully reboot your PC. You asked: How do I change text editor color in Ubuntu? How do I change the terminal prompt in Ubuntu? How do you change the color of the command line in Ubuntu? Why is my Ubuntu freezing? Like this post? Please share to your friends:. Even though HyperTerminal is not a part of Windows 10, the Windows 10 operating. Move the mouse pointer to the lower left corner of the screen, right-click, and.

Improve this answer. Fabby 33k 38 38 gold badges 91 91 silver badges bronze badges. Phoenix Phoenix 5, 1 1 gold badge 12 12 silver badges 4 4 bronze badges. In the event you're forced to do this, do it slowly. Let a few seconds pass in between each keypress so that the commands you're invoking have a chance to finish before you go to the next one. What do you do if you're using a Mac that has no SysRq key? Show 14 more comments. When a single program stops working: When a program window stops responding, you can usually stop it by clicking the X-shaped close button at the top left of the window.

When everything, keys and mouse and all, stop working: First try the Magic SysReq method outlined in Phoenix' answer. UTF-8 5, 8 8 gold badges 28 28 silver badges 60 60 bronze badges. One should never recommend kill -9 right off the bat. Once should instead attempt to kill the process with less drastic signals first, and only use -9 if all else fails.

I have never seen a Linux freeze that can be fixed. Show 8 more comments. In the Command field, enter gnome-system-monitor. Name the shortcut whatever you want. Click Apply and then click where it says Disabled.

Isaiah Isaiah If you can open System Monitor you can get to a terminal, in which case your OS is not frozen. System Monitor is, unfortunately, not the trusty Task Manager on Windows.

As commented above, it will only launch if ironically Ubuntu isn't frozen. And even if it does, it's unresponsive anyway. An alternative is to open a terminal and use top from there. Less resource intensive. Hardware If this is a desktop PC look at your hardware-cards. Software I note you have tried the standard drivers but have failed due to freezes. Installing newer nVidia driver Deactivate uninstall your current nvidia driver using the Additional Drivers window.

X Updates The latest graphics drivers have been packaged in the x updates ppa. This is a testing ppa - do have a ready backup if you want to try this route. HulkingUnicorn 4 4 bronze badges. Are you sure this is a good idea, and that it might solve the problem? Or is this just a guess? As I had a lot of trouble with nvidia-current and nothing worked That's why I switched to the nvidia one. Can I simply restore my whole system from a CloneZilla back-up? The problem is that I haven't got a spare hard drive anymore to put a system copy on I'll try Though I haven't got a hard drive to make a back-up to, so I'll just hope it doesn't break my whole system.

About feeling uncomfortable using beta software: I'm working on Ubuntu Oh dear xD I installed the NVidia driver, and rebooted. X didn't start anymore. No problem, after looking into the log files I saw that another driver was already using the device. I added nouveau to the modprobe blacklist, rebooted, and X started again But now I've got another problem I can't switch back to Gnome Panel and honestly, I wouldn't want to , And don't tell me to go using Unity 2D please cause it doesn't work too well and easy for me.

In fact, Unity is the only reason I still install non-open source drivers. So please help me? I already did that, except for re-enabling nouveau as I don't see the use of that. But I meant help me out with the freezing problem please.

I've actually been through three beta versions of the nvidia driver in this one boot : Anyway Jjed I agree that RAM is usually the culprit for unstable systems. It, too, was fixed by changing memory sticks. Other common causes are unstable power source or poor capasitors on the motherboard. The only way to diagnose these issues is to keep swapping parts until it works. RAM can be faulty without you really noticing it in daily use.

Octavian A. Damiean Nerdfest Nerdfest 4, 2 2 gold badges 26 26 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges. Show 1 more comment. If this is the case you can kill X, which will restart and drop you back at the log-in screen. Saeed Zarinfam If your video driver is using kernel modesetting KMS , it's unlikely this will be sufficient to fix lockups, you have to use sysrq or power cycle.

But when it doesn't work, now you know why. A note for new users about KMS: As a general rule, if you're using a binary driver probably if you have an nVidia graphics card, and sometimes if you've got an ATI card you're video driver is not using KMS. I can't find this in Ubuntu I just looked through all the shortcuts and couldn't find "Key sequence to kill the X server".

Can I still do this on Extender Extender 2, 1 1 gold badge 21 21 silver badges 24 24 bronze badges. Restarting the GUI You can try to restart your graphical desktop with: sudo service lightdm restart If you're running Ubuntu Restarting the Machine If you want to do a clean system reboot, use: sudo shutdown -r now.

Community Bot 1. Floyd Floyd 1, 1 1 gold badge 14 14 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges. DoR and Phoenix has answered this well. The key pressing sequence is neatly described here Ubuntu Forums: ubuntuforums. What I do is opening a terminal with eg. Chielus Chielus 2 2 silver badges 2 2 bronze badges. However, the default behavior of pgrep is not to show anything but the process ID itself.

If you want to know the process's full name and any other information, ps is still a very valuable tool. Li Lo Li Lo I'll give that a shot and post-back the results. This worked like a champ. Identified the problem as my graphics card: "radeon Now I know what to look for. Next try restarting X. Do this by restarting the display manager: On Ubuntu Bryce Bryce 4, 24 24 silver badges 44 44 bronze badges. My desktop randomly freezes as well.

Running 'service gdm restart' always brings it up. Most of the times the desktop seems to freeze when Firefox is running. Well, generally when I find myself using the word 'random' in describing a bug, I take that as a clue that I need to do a bit more to better characterize the bug. You should also consider your hardware and driver. Some drivers like -intel are more likely to have freeze bugs than other drivers like -ati.

Hardware also can play a factor, such as if you put a high end ATI card into a box with a sketchy power supply. Bad RAM, buggy motherboards, overheating, power irregularities, etc. Looking through the other commenters on this page, you can see suggestions all over the map. Freezes are an unfortunately common end result of a whole variety of different kinds of problems.

They can be software, hardware, or a combination of the two. This is why it is extremely important that the original reporter provide as detailed and thorough a report as possible. This is also why two people both experiencing similar freezes really have to be treated as completely separate bugs, unless their HW and SW are exactly the same.

Freezes on different drivers are debugged in different ways. For instance, -intel has a set of debugging tools you can install that allow you to capture GPU dumps.

See wiki. To do this: while booting, hold down a shift key the GRUB menu will appear use the cursor keys to select the last option "memtest86" press enter You'll get a basic display and it will try reading and writing lots of values to all of your RAM.

Hamish Downer Hamish Downer First you use ps. In Bash, both signal names and numbers are accepted as options, and arguments may be job or process IDs. How about if I am not sure about pid which is causing my system to freeze. There could be many processes running interfering with each other making the system freeze.