Frequent temporary freezes on Dell XPS 13 laptop

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Hi,
I just got my new XPS 13 (the 2019 model) and installed Fedora 29 on it.
Everything looks great except that when I work in the shell I experience
a freeze of the system that lasts for about 1-2 seconds and that occurs
every 30-60 seconds which is quite annoying.
I tried isolating the issue by working in an xterm but this shows the
same symptoms as the gnome terminal I usually use. There is nothing in
the logs that correlates with these freezes and it only seems to occur
in a shell.
What is really strange is that when I have glxgears running in a window
then the animation there will also freeze when the freeze in the shell
happens but when I have a youtube video running in Firefox then the
freezes disappear completely and I can work normally in the shell.
This happens both in a Wayland and X11 session.

Does anyone have an Idea what could cause this strange issue and how I
can debug this further?

Regards,
  Dennis

[ToddAndMargo]

On 3/29/19 1:51 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>  Hi,
>  I just got my new XPS 13 (the 2019 model) and installed Fedora 29 on it.
>  Everything looks great except that when I work in the shell I experience
>  a freeze of the system that lasts for about 1-2 seconds and that occurs
>  every 30-60 seconds which is quite annoying.
>  I tried isolating the issue by working in an xterm but this shows the
>  same symptoms as the gnome terminal I usually use. There is nothing in
>  the logs that correlates with these freezes and it only seems to occur
>  in a shell.
>  What is really strange is that when I have glxgears running in a window
>  then the animation there will also freeze when the freeze in the shell
>  happens but when I have a youtube video running in Firefox then the
>  freezes disappear completely and I can work normally in the shell.
>  This happens both in a Wayland and X11 session.
>  
>  Does anyone have an Idea what could cause this strange issue and how I
>  can debug this further?
>  
>  Regards,
>     Dennis 

Hi Dennis,

That usually means the CPU is so tied up doing something
it can't get around to you.

Try the following

1) see if your hard drive is okay.  Repreads to get over bad
    spots will cause this.

      # dnf install gsmartcontrol

2) run "top" to see if anyone is going CPU crazy

3) run off a Live USB.  If the symptom persists,
    there is something wrong with your hardware.

Let us know,
-T

[Fred Smith]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 05:32:22PM -0700, ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
>  On 3/29/19 1:51 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>  >Hi,
>  >I just got my new XPS 13 (the 2019 model) and installed Fedora 29 on it.
>  >Everything looks great except that when I work in the shell I experience
>  >a freeze of the system that lasts for about 1-2 seconds and that occurs
>  >every 30-60 seconds which is quite annoying.
>  >I tried isolating the issue by working in an xterm but this shows the
>  >same symptoms as the gnome terminal I usually use. There is nothing in
>  >the logs that correlates with these freezes and it only seems to occur
>  >in a shell.
>  >What is really strange is that when I have glxgears running in a window
>  >then the animation there will also freeze when the freeze in the shell
>  >happens but when I have a youtube video running in Firefox then the
>  >freezes disappear completely and I can work normally in the shell.
>  >This happens both in a Wayland and X11 session.
>  >
>  >Does anyone have an Idea what could cause this strange issue and how I
>  >can debug this further?
>  >
>  >Regards,
>  >   Dennis
>  
>  
>  Hi Dennis,
>  
>  That usually means the CPU is so tied up doing something
>  it can't get around to you.
>  
>  Try the following
>  
>  1) see if your hard drive is okay.  Repreads to get over bad
>     spots will cause this.
>  
>       # dnf install gsmartcontrol
>  
>  2) run "top" to see if anyone is going CPU crazy
>  
>  3) run off a Live USB.  If the symptom persists,
>     there is something wrong with your hardware.
>  
>  Let us know,
>  -T 
Also, are by any chance running the Folding At Home client on this
machine? Even with FAH doing GPU folding only I had that problem on
Centos. It was particularly noxious when watching any kind of video.

Fred
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