[Solved] Intermittent freezing with no apparent errors in the logs

Question

The freezing occurs without warning, and affects the whole user interface. After a few minutes, it will unfreeze for a few seconds, then freeze again. This repeats ad nauseam. The most recent time this happened, I had quite a few  applications open and I decided to close them one by one during the unfreezes to see if any one of them was the culprit, but nothing was apparent.
Checking my logs reveals nothing. Here's the relevant time slot from my everything.log:
May 14 20:11:06 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:07 localhost kernel: [121337.489246] device eth0 left promiscuous mode
May 14 20:11:11 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:16 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:21 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:26 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:31 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 18 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:36 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 16 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:41 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 17 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:46 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 16 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:51 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 18 events suppressed
May 14 20:11:56 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: ratelimit.c: 18 events suppressed
May 14 20:18:47 localhost dhcpcd[2595]: eth0: renewing lease of 192.168.1.146
May 14 20:18:47 localhost dhcpcd[2595]: eth0: acknowledged 192.168.1.146 from 192.168.1.1
May 14 20:18:48 localhost dhcpcd[2595]: eth0: leased 192.168.1.146 for 86400 seconds
May 14 20:37:10 localhost ntfs-3g[1741]: Unmounting /dev/dm-4 ()
May 14 20:37:14 localhost ntfs-3g[1309]: Unmounting /dev/dm-2 ()
May 14 20:37:16 localhost ntfs-3g[1338]: Unmounting /dev/dm-3 ()
May 14 20:37:17 localhost ntfs-3g[874]: Unmounting /dev/dm-0 ()
May 14 20:45:12 localhost gnome-session[4661]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
May 14 21:06:30 localhost kernel: [124661.096831] SysRq : Keyboard mode set to system default
May 14 21:06:33 localhost dhcpcd[2595]: received SIGTERM, stopping
May 14 21:06:33 localhost dhcpcd[2595]: eth0: removing interface
May 14 21:06:33 localhost kernel: [124664.384536] SysRq : Terminate All Tasks
May 14 21:06:34 localhost pulseaudio[4680]: module-gconf.c: Unable to read or parse data from client.
May 14 21:06:33 localhost syslog-ng[2504]: Termination requested via signal, terminating;
May 14 21:06:33 localhost syslog-ng[2504]: syslog-ng shutting down; version='3.2.4'
As you can see, my sysreq keys work fine even during the freeze. I've also noticed that any audio that I am playing when the system freezes continues to play normally. I'm on a 32 bit install running gnome-shell with the proprietary nvidia drivers. The freeze started when I opened a webpage with a flash video on it. I thought that flash might be the problem, but I don't think so now since 1) it wasn't the first flash video I've viewed and 2) killing the browser didn't fix the freezing problem.
Last edited by tdreyer1 (2011-05-20 00:31:17)

Answer 1

Froze again, and this time there was some error logging in the xorg logs:
[ 54950.699] [mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.
[ 54950.706]
Backtrace:
[ 54950.713] 0: /usr/bin/Xorg (xorg_backtrace+0x3b) [0x80e632b]
[ 54950.713] 1: /usr/bin/Xorg (mieqEnqueue+0x1ab) [0x80e567b]
[ 54950.713] 2: /usr/bin/Xorg (xf86PostMotionEventM+0xbf) [0x80c1e2f]
[ 54950.713] 3: /usr/bin/Xorg (xf86PostMotionEventP+0x58) [0x80c1f68]
[ 54950.713] 4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so (0xb4da0000+0x2acd) [0xb4da2acd]
[ 54950.713] 5: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so (0xb4da0000+0x3908) [0xb4da3908]
[ 54950.713] 6: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x8048000+0x673cf) [0x80af3cf]
[ 54950.713] 7: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x8048000+0x12269c) [0x816a69c]
[ 54950.713] 8: (vdso) (__kernel_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb7803400]
[full log here]
I've googled a bit but so far I can't find anything that sounds like my problem.