Thinkpads Forum

I apologize in advance for being so wordy. I'm trying to be as thorough as I can, both for the sake of providing info as well as trying to sort this out myself!

The setup:
X61T
- 1.8ghz L7700 w/Middleton BIOS
- 3gb RAM
- 64gb SSD
- BCM970015 Broadcom Media playback card
- Running Ubuntu x64 14.04.02

The problem:
System is up and running, Chrome is loaded, and multiple tabs are loaded - at this point everything is fine. I load a youtube video, it plays and everything is fine for awhile - Then, my window borders, the unity launcher, and bar at the top of the screen all disappear. I've tried restarting unity and the display manager, but neither will bring things back and I have to shut down the system by holding the power button. The problem happens regardless of video quality and length of video.

IIRC, the Broadcom card does not help with youtube playback, only with local files played back with something like VLC Player.

The problem only occurs when running Chrome. Firefox will play videos with no problem, but this isn't apples-to-apples as Firefox will only play videos at 360p and seems to be using a completely separate plugin. This only happens with youtube videos, not with any other flash/java/whatever.

Possible Problem/Solution:
Just not enough RAM. I had a similar issue with my T500 a few years ago. Upgrading from 2GB to 8GB fixed the problem, so I wonder if it may help in this instance. 3GB really isn't a lot for a 64-bit system. Also, isn't RAM on the X61T split between system and Intel graphics?

Hopefully this all makes sense, it's all a big messy jumble in my head right now. Suggestions?

Possible causes:

1. Chrome and Opera 15+ uses graphics hardware acceleration; on Windows this can cause BSODs.
I've personally encountered this on computers with Intel GMA 3650 (Atom N2600 w/ PowerVR SGX) and nVidia GT730 64-bit (Kepler). It's possible that this can happen in Linux as well.
Solution: there's a way to disable hardware acceleration in these browsers, but I can't remember how since I don't use Chrome at all.

2. If you suspect the hardware, keep monitoring the temps as you use your machine; loading the thinkpad-acpi kernel module (in my Debian setup it loads automatically at boot) will expose all the temp sensors for programs like psensor to read. X61Ts generally run cool: the CPU idles slightly below 50c , and I've never seen a temp reading above 70c on an X61T under normal circumstances. Note that I'm in a tropical country with ambient temps over 30c for half of the year.

Just not enough RAM. I had a similar issue with my T500 a few years ago. Upgrading from 2GB to 8GB fixed the problem, so I wonder if it may help in this instance.

The root of the problem is that Chrome is a memory hog. I don't know how memory-hungry Unity is though.

My main Linux setup is Debian 7 64-bit XFCE on an X61 T9300 with 2GB RAM. It's pretty fast, and only slows down when I run out of RAM while opening way too many tabs (20+) on Opera 12.16.

The "slowing down" is due to the OS running out of available RAM and being forced to use the swap partition on the hard drive. If your Linux install doesn't have a swap partition, running out of free RAM will almost definitely cause a crash.

t140568 wrote:X61T
- 1.8ghz L7700 w/Middleton BIOS [....]
- BCM970015 Broadcom Media playback card

That's my machine, except I'm running Windows with 8GB.

t140568 wrote:IIRC, the Broadcom card does not help with youtube playback, only with local files played back with something like VLC Player.

I'm not 100% sure if that is right or not. I think the Broadcom card helps with MPEG4 (using h264 codecs), MPEG2 (or DVD) playback, and a few other video formats (inlcuding XVID). In general, that used to mean local files, but with HTML 5 video, the question of hardware assisted support it will depend on which codec/format is being delivered to the browser.

t140568 wrote:The problem only occurs when running Chrome. Firefox will play videos with no problem, but this isn't apples-to-apples as Firefox will only play videos at 360p and seems to be using a completely separate plugin. This only happens with youtube videos, not with any other flash/java/whatever.

So Chrome uses HTML 5 to play Youtube videos, and Firefox supports HTML 5, but also continues to support Flash. And even if you are using HTML 5 format in both Chrome and Firefox, their preferred codecs are not the same, so the level of hardware support provided by the Broadcom chip in these browsers will be different - or possibly non-existent in some cases.

It is also very possible that Broadcom chip is causing crashes due to driver issues. The drivers have not been updated in either Windows or Linux for several years now, and some Linux projects (like XBMC/Kodi) have dropped support for the Broadcom chip altogether because it is so flakey to begin with.

I don't have a suggestion here. But I would note that on my Windows 7 x64 machine, I sometimes get crashes in Youtube too. I use the Youtube High Definition plugin to control how Youtube plays in Firefox, and force it to play 720p via Flash, but I will sometimes get crashes. I assume the problem in my case is that Flash is terrible software. But I also find that if I restart Firefox, that usually fixes things. (And in case you are wondering, I continue to run Youtube with Flash in order to better control the removal of ads and tracking crap that Google inserts if you use HTML 5).

[2015-04-19: edited post, clarified HTML5/Flash/codec support in Chrome vs Firefox, added more details about Broadcom flakiness]

System crashes/lockups could also be due to bad memory or drivers. Being a memory test engineer, I'd eliminate the first prospect by running memtest86+ on the system for at least 2 hours (or good enough for three complete passes through all of the test patterns). While I trust memtest86+ to find any errors, even if it ends up passing all of the memory, I'd still swap out the modules for others and see if that makes a difference in your YouTube playbacks.

The Intel GMA X3100 does use shared system memory. This means that depending upon the nature/number of programs being executed, the amount of memory used by the graphics system can vary.

3GB of ram should be more than enough to play 720p youtube videos on Ubuntu. I have a T60 with T2500, intel graphics, and 3GB of ram on Arch linux + ratpoison WM. Even with 10+ tabs, libreoffice, and other apps open, I can still easily play 720p video.

In addition to what others have suggested, boot off of a linux live usb (like linux mint) and see if you can watch the videos without problems. If you can, the problem is probably your existing Ubuntu install.

axur-delmeria, I tried to disable graphics hardware acceleration in Chrome, but that didn't do the trick. System temps have been fine. Admittedly they're a little higher than I'd like, but nothing crazy.

rkawakami, I did a memtest86 and memory came up good. I'm glad you mentioned it though as I always seem to forget about it.

pkiff, your mention of "HTML5 video" and brchan's mention of my Ubuntu install got me thinking. So, I went to youtube.com/html5 which told me H.264 was not supported. Also, I tried Mint and with all it's media codecs, it played 720p without fail. So, I did a back in my Ubuntu install and viola! 720p is now playing without crashing (so far) in Firefox. Chrome seems to be working well now too.

I should also mention that I've switched from Ubuntu 14.04 to 15.04.

Also, pkiff good idea mentioning drivers for the Broadcom card. I hadn't even thought about it as I'm so used to things being plug-n-play in Ubuntu anymore. I tried compiling the driver from source and it was an immediate failure. I couldn't even get it to compile. As soon as I run make, it fails. I'll look into it a little more later as time allows.

Thank you to everyone!

t140568 wrote: - Running Ubuntu x64 14.04.02

Known linux kernel bug--- there was a huge cleanup in the intel drivers to allow better accel in newer chipsets, and it caused a number of 'crash the GPU' bugs on Intel 965. You'll either need to stick with an early 3.x kernel (I think last safe series was 3.17, I can go check) or go bleeding bleeding edge with 4.x.
Turning off hardware accel in Chrome alone won't do it-. Even the compositor will crash it eventually.

xiphmont wrote: Known linux kernel bug--- there was a huge cleanup in the intel drivers to allow better accel in newer chipsets, and it caused a number of 'crash the GPU' bugs on Intel 965. You'll either need to stick with an early 3.x kernel (I think last safe series was 3.17, I can go check) or go bleeding bleeding edge with 4.x.

Ah, no wonder I don't encounter this problem my X61 and X61T-- they both have the 3.16 kernel (debian 7+backports on X61, Debian 8 RC1 on X61T).

hunh. seems related lately getting overtemp/load from chrome on x61t. playing flash games.
mint cinnamon i.e. basically 14.04.2.
the current workaround/fix is killing/reloading cinnamon. bleh. killing chromium does nothing.
it makes hells of little sense - cpu load is minimal, fan doesn't spin up. but core temps goes thru the roof.

xiphmont wrote:

t140568 wrote: - Running Ubuntu x64 14.04.02

Known linux kernel bug--- there was a huge cleanup in the intel drivers to allow better accel in newer chipsets, and it caused a number of 'crash the GPU' bugs on Intel 965. You'll either need to stick with an early 3.x kernel (I think last safe series was 3.17, I can go check) or go bleeding bleeding edge with 4.x.
Turning off hardware accel in Chrome alone won't do it-. Even the compositor will crash it eventually.

I hate to revive an old thread, but...

I've being testing Debian 8 XFCE x64 (with backports repository) on a recently acquired X61 T7500, and after upgrading to kernel 4.7 have been encountering crashes-- more like hangs/dead stalls where the screen freezes and the mouse and keyboard just stop responding-- while browsing video-embedded sites like youtube on Vivaldi browser, even with compositing turned of on the browser and the window manager.

Downgrading to the stock 3.16 kernel eliminated said crashes.

I don't know if it's just a kernel issue, or if the xorg-intel driver (backports installed 2.99.917+git20160706 over the default 2.21.15-2+b2) is somehow involved as well.

axur-delmeria wrote: I don't know if it's just a kernel issue, or if the xorg-intel driver (backports installed 2.99.917+git20160706 over the default 2.21.15-2+b2) is somehow involved as well.

The specific bug I was commenting on was purely a kernel issue; the in-kenrnel hardware exception handler was mis-handling an otherwise harmless exception thrown by the integrated GPU. I've not run into it in quite a while now (all my machines are on recent 4.x kernels) so if you're seeing it in 4.x, I'm not sure what's causing it.

xiphmont wrote:The specific bug I was commenting on was purely a kernel issue; the in-kenrnel hardware exception handler was mis-handling an otherwise harmless exception thrown by the integrated GPU. I've not run into it in quite a while now (all my machines are on recent 4.x kernels) so if you're seeing it in 4.x, I'm not sure what's causing it.

I'll try reverting to the 2.21.15-2+b2 intel xorg driver, then reinstall the 4.7 kernel.

Bad news: Even with the older intel xorg driver, it still crashes with kernel 4.7.

It's strange thougjh, that the audio from the youtube video still kept playing even after the screen froze and the keyboard and trackpoint stopped responding.

Aren't we a good ways past kernel 4.7? Why not go to 4.8.x?

Bibin wrote:Aren't we a good ways past kernel 4.7? Why not go to 4.8.x?

What are the main advantages of moving to a newer kernel on an X6x? I'm running 3.16 and the machine seems to run just fine. Am I missing something great?

Bibin wrote:Aren't we a good ways past kernel 4.7? Why not go to 4.8.x?

4.7 is the latest kernel in Debian's jessie-backports repository.

jaspen-meyer wrote:What are the main advantages of moving to a newer kernel on an X6x? I'm running 3.16 and the machine seems to run just fine. Am I missing something great?

To be honest, I don't know myself. It's just become a habit to add the backports repository on new installs, and try the newest kernel.

One last thing: is there a way to eliminate tearing?

Subscribed. I have always had many more BSODs on my x61T than on my x61. Both running W10 (same previously with W7) both with 8GB Crucial ram. I always mean to get back to the x61T to determine why, but I just end up doing everything on the x61 and never get back to the x61T. Possibly a x62 board insert would make all this irrelevant?

^ If you'r X61T experiences BSODs on WIn 10, the first suspect would be the Intel 3945 wifi card. I remember reading it in another thread.

Thanks, I will check when I get a chance this week. What is the current intel wifi card recommendation? I use the same wifi card in this x61 with no problems, but the chipset is, I believe, different between this x61 2.4 GHz and the x61T 1.8 GHz.