24.04 Freezes and Becomes Non-responsive

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1

Hey,

I completed an ubuntu desktop 24.4 /gnome install on this computer a few days ago. (dual boot with Win 11)
Here’s all the computer and distro info.

Motherboard:
Asus Prime B450M-A/CSM AM4 AMD B450 SATA 6GB/s USB3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD
AM4 Socket
AMD B450 Chipset
Bios Version 1002 x64
Build Date 03/07/2019
NVMe M.2, USB 3.1 Gen2, DDR4 and Gigabit LAN
LED EC Version AUMA0-E8K4-0101

CPU:
AMD Ryzen 5 2nd Gen - RYZEN 5 2600 Pinnacle Ridge (Zen+) 6-Core 3.4 GHz (3.9 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2600BBAFBOX Desktop Processor

RAM:
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Desktop Memory Model F4-2400C15D-8GVR
DDR402400 4GBx2

Hard Drive 1:
SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 250GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 64L V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7E250BW

Hard Drive 2:
Toshiba OCZ TR200 Series 2.5" 480GB SATA 64-layer 3D BiCS Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) THN-TR20Z4800U8

Video card:
PNY GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5
VCGGTX10606PB

Monitors (x3):
ASUS VP278QG 27" Full HD 1920x1080 75Hz 1ms 2xHDMI VGA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync/FreeSync Built-in Speakers SPLENDID Video Modes Flicker-Free Backlit LED Gaming Monitor

So far the computer has been rock solid stable… with one exception. Sometimes when I try to copy large files from one drive to another, hard drive to hard drive, or hard drive to USB drive, the computer freezes and becomes totally non-responsive. Mouse pointer freezes, no response from the keyboard, even raising elephants does not work. I have to resort to a cold hard motherboard reset or power down.

Any ideas?

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Does this happen when copying from a Linux filesystem to another Linux filesystem? From a Linux filesystem to a windows filesystem? From a windows filesystem to another windows filesystem? On the same drive? To a different drive? Does this happen without regard to the size of the files?

A cold shutdown is not a good idea and you should be able to use REISUB from Linux explained at the link below.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/4408/what-should-i-do-when-ubuntu-freezes

3

This is a dual boot system with Win 11. I can’t recall exactly, but it is entirely possible that this happened when copying files to or from the windows file system. That would be NTFS from the Windows drive to the ubuntu drive, or NTFS or FAT32 to/from USB drives. It likely did involve moving large files or folders.

Yes, I realize a cold shutdown is a bad idea, but I had no choice. As I said, I already tried REISUB. Didn’t work. Maybe I missed something there.

4

Not to be pedantic or anything, but I am assuming you mean 24.04? There is no 24.4.

Let’s make sure we’re using proper yy.mm terminology when referring to Ubuntu versions.

Additionally, the “catatonic” hyperbole isn’t necessary, please edit your title to be more specific.

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I have seen some discussion on other forums and groups about ubuntu hanging, freezing, becoming non-responsive, etc., when trying to transfer large files to and from NTFS or FATx partitions. Some of these discussions were several years old and referred to older ubuntu distributions, but some referred to current versions. I never did see any evidence that there was a conclusive solution to the problem, thus, I am asking here.

6

Have you run fsck via a “Try Ubuntu” live session.
File system damage is a common problem following an ungraceful shutdown.

Try to transfer the files using the terminal with a progress flag and see if/where it freezes?

rsync --progress <filename> <destination>

Example

user@pc:/media/user/data$ rsync --progress Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_x64.iso /home/user/Downloads/
Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_x64.iso
  5,832,091,648 100%  149.35MB/s    0:00:37 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
user@pc:/media/user/data$
7

After some study, I get the idea that almost all of the recent and current linux distributions use a kernel module called ntfs-3g to read and write to NTFS formatted disks.

Someone on another forum, who would appear to me to be knowledgeable, suggested that “this module [NTFS-3g] is not a 100% alternative for the native NTFS driver used by Windows. Especially searching the limits of the driver is likely to cause unwanted behavior.” (I can cite the source if it is necessary.)

That could explain this problem. If this is true, I would have thought that someone would have filed a bug report about it by now.

I was thinking about trying to reproduce the problem using a “Try Ubuntu” live session. If the system froze up again, requiring a hard reset, that shouldn’t damage my resident file system.

Is this correct?

8

Your still pulling data from that Drive, so not 100% safe.

I know your circumstances, but It’s just best to gracefully shut-down any system.

1 Like
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The “slow copy” or “decrease of transfer rate when copying large amount of
data” are known problems, with many askubuntu questions and launchpad bugs
filed. The basic problem is system buffers get filled, memory fragmentation probably happens and drags the system to a crawl, almost indistinguishable from a freeze-up.
Me culpa, for years I’d copy an ISO, see no problem and shrug (with 24GB memory). Copy a 50GB vm, and oh my, that’s the issue plain as day (copy speeds dropping below 1MB/sec, sometimes way below , two more orders of magnitude, with equivalent degradation of system performance – mouse/kb, etc.). Lots of workarounds for some specific problems, but filling system buffers is the basic issue. The fix? quotas for system buffers?, copy programs that check for free buffer space?,…

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