Re: HP Laptop freezes while using Xorg sporadically.

> Can you log in to the computer over the network via SSH when the desktop
> freezes?

Ok, i managed to successfully log in by SSH when the system freezes.
I did it from my phone and I was able to use the top utility, watch some
man pages and even play music, there was no relevant delay in the system
for those actions.

After that, I tried the poweroff command and it took some minutes for the
laptop to finally shut down.
From what I could see, the system is working decently outside of the
graphical interface; and this problem also freezes my keyboards (The USB
one that is plugged in, and the one embedded in the laptop).
So I guess this freezing problem is something about Xorg... What do you
pals think?
If I remember correctly, installing DRM drivers has been kinda messy in the
latest point releases, maybe it has
something to do with that, but I'm not an expert in the field.

> I would also suggest checking the HP website for firmware updates, and
> if any are available, installing them if you can.
>
> The latest version looks to be F.46 Rev.A release just 4 months ago.

I guess the firmware updates could be useful if they had them for FreeBSD
too. From what I can see, they're only available for Windows, and the only
system installed in my laptop at the moment is FreeBSD.


On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 11:37 AM Edward Sanford Sutton, III <
mirror176@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/13/25 18:43, Mauricio wrote:
> > I have an HP 255-G7 Laptop running FreeBSD 14.3 RELEASE which every now
> > and then freezes entirely while using Xorg. When the laptop freezes, the
> > only thing that gives me a response is mouse and graphic tablet movement.
>
>    Have you used other versions of FreeBSD or another operating system
> without issue or is this a new-to-you computer with no known history
> good or bad?
>    Have you tried different versions of graphics/drm-*-kmod packages? I
> assume you installed them from the kmods repository but is that correct?
> Trying some versions requires an older or newer FreeBSD version but it
> might still help track down if it is a graphics driver bug that is
> introduced or fixed in a newer version.
>    Is your BIOS up to date? HP's changelog of BIOS updates is too vague
> to know if there are relevant fixes but you may want to look at
>
> https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/swdetails/hp-255-g7-notebook-pc/model/24381328/swItemId/ob-345901-1
> (if I got the right machine) or even reach out to them for further
> update changes.
>
> > At that point, I can't jump to a virtual console with
> CTRL+ALT+FUNCTIONKEY.
> > I can't even shut the computer down by pressing the shutdown button for
> > less than a second as I usually do.
> > But trying to do both things makes the disk activity light indicator
> > start blinking a lot for a moment.
>
>    Do you have swap configured? If so, how much? I've seen systems get
> very slow and even hang when the was no swap and too much memory
> pressure instead of just closing out processes as expected but haven't
> tested such scenarios on 14.3.
>
> > The laptop doesn't seem to get back to work even after half an hour of
> > waiting or more.
> > Something that i have been noticing is that the freeze seems to be
> > triggered by an increase of resources use. I noticed that because the
> > freezing starts usually after opening a program like a terminal emulator
> > while there are already some programs running in other windows. It also
> > happened one time while trying to use my laptop while copying 23GBs of
> > data in a virtual console.
>
>    If you can narrow it down to a repeatable sequence then you could
> more easily collect data from the occurrence. You could also try to push
> the system into an expected bad state and preemptively use ctrl+alt+f1
> to see if anything shows up on the terminal during failure.
>    Are you able to reproduce without X running?
>    FreeBSD has a tests suite which runs through a series of checks. It
> can take a long time to run, some tests will likely normally fail, and
> some won't run until additional packages are installed. You can have it
> run multiple tests in parallel which saves a massive amount of time but
> then test results become more inconsistent. I normally reboot after
> running it as it some some of the tests leave the system in a strange
> state. Keeping logs of the results could help identify regressions with
> new FreeBSD versions (tests and the OS both get reworked; its not always
> clear at a glance if it is a new but broken test vs an old test started
> failing that caused error count to go up) or help spot intermittent and
> special case hardware failures.
>    There are other non-FreeBSD hardware tests that may be worth running.
> Some are stand alone tools that boot separately like memtest86 but
> others may need a Windows/Linux install to run from. You can look into
> tests that overclockers use to verify system stability; overclock or
> not, an unstable system may still show with the tools. These tools will
> stress the system in ways that the FreeBSD test suite does not. I even
> more recently found a system was intermittently but regularly crashing
> while restoring a ZFS backup (resolved by slightly lowering clock
> frequencies but most laptops don't offer such control).
>    Maybe useful to monitor temperatures too if the issue is not
> repeatable. Physically cleaning even light dust off of hardware can also
> stabilize some intermittent hardware that isn't overheating.
>
> > I leave some routine files here for you to check up if you feel the need
> > of it:
> >
> > dmesg output: https://pastebin.com/C27M5K0F <
> https://pastebin.com/C27M5K0F>
>
>    Probably just from incorrect shutdowns but I noticed disk mounting /
> listed pending error; could run through SMART tests/checks and make sure
> filesystem does fully clean up with correct shutdown or fsck.
>
> > rc.conf: https://pastebin.com/9wX0sKsa <https://pastebin.com/9wX0sKsa>
> > loader.conf: https://pastebin.com/wBrdL8NL <
> https://pastebin.com/wBrdL8NL>
> >
> > As always, thanks to whoever that takes the time to help me with this.
> >
>
>
>