A couple things I've noticed since installing Mint 22

[hollow stag]

I installed Mint 22 as a dual boot on my laptob, about a month ago. I've been noticing some things that I haven't been able to quite explain away in my mind.

1. My system locks up all the time. More specifically, I have changed the power options to not automatically log me out, suspend me, or go into any kind of screen saver. My system stays on and up and running all the time. I am the only one who accesses it and I have no need for the extra security of locking it up all the time, nor the patience to deal with entering my password. However, often, when I get back to it in the morning, everything is black, I've been logged out and when I attempt to recover it, the whole system is locked up, forcing me to run a hard restart.

2. I run a total of 5 monitors (including the laptop monitor). I accomplish this with various external convertors that run off Thunderbolt ports. I've changed the settings to only have my main screen show the login prompt, and the others to show a different background, but Mint doesn't seem to care about these settings and each monitor mirrors the main screen until I log in.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there's more. I have a second laptop that I also installed Mint 22 on and it has similar problems, however, that system has it's home folder encrypted, so I'm guessing that's why I'm getting logged out, even though the settings declare it should never log me out. I have it pretty much set up the same way, minus all the monitors (it just has the main screen), yet I'm always logged out after some time and now it even seems to be going into suspend mode, when even this has been turned off.

Through all of this, normally, I'd be pretty upset and frustrated, but the switch to Linux/Mint 22 has been so nice that I'm surprisingly able to tolerate it. I'm new to all of this, so If I'm doing something wrong, let me know.

[hollow stag]

Oh yeah, I'm also getting the occasional screen flicker on all the onitors, not just the ones with the adapters. If it was just the ones with the monitors, I would question if it was the adapter, but since it takes place across all of them, it leads me to believe it's more of a Mint/Linux/Kernel thing.

[hollow stag]

Guessing that no one knows anything? Or there really isn't any support? Seems kind of odd to have a support section on here, but no one replies to anything. Thankfully, I solved my own issues. So, don't worry about responding to this, the issues have been resolved. If not, judging by the fact this has been on here with no replies, I guess I'll just start figuring it all out on my own from now on. Thanks.

[formal dew]

There is support here, it’s just rather inconsistent I find. You gotta remember that this support forum isn’t ran by people whose job it is to monitor it but by individuals with jobs, families, hobbies, etc. on their own time. Although I do understand and relate to your frustration due to the lack of responses. However, even though I don’t have these issues I’d like to know how you solved them for curiosity sake and if someone in the future has this problem they can find this thread.

Also it’s been a day, give them time.

[toxic lark]

also 5 monitors is pretty damn exotic. most ppl wouldnt answer this

[hollow stag]

Apparently, I didn't fix it. I woke up this morning to the entire system locked up again. It keeps going into suspend mode and then becomes unresponsive, other than it will wake up the screen. Other settings are getting changed in the process of all of this, too. Looks like the only fix is going to be a fresh install. This all started because I downloaded PIA VPN's software and installed it directly from them. Lesson learned. I've since removed it, but I'm guessing that in the process, this is what caused the issues. Problem is, I can't do anything about it right now, as I am also having an issue with a 1Tb external drive that keeps crashing and is my main backup. I constantly have to go back into Windows and repair the drive, get back into Linux, then I get a good 30 mins of use before it starts all over again.

[hollow stag]

Well, I have 3 right in front of me for handling all the day-to-day. And I have 2 others in front of my work bench that are used for everything else. The other 2 others were both old TVs that were donated to me. I run an electronics repair business, so having schematics in front of my work station is paramount, especially considering it's a 55" "monitor". It makes reading some of that small print super easy on my old eyes.

I do apologize for the lack of patience. I shouldn't have responded the way I did, but I'd have expected someone would have seen something in 36 hours and responded with something I could check to see what the issue is. However, like I said, I will probably end up just running a fresh install once I can get another ext. drive.

[formal dew]

When you end up fixing it I’d still like to hear how you did it! I use PIA vpn too and their Linux install process is not very intuitive whatsoever

[toxic lark]

for benefit of longevity, reliability any external hard drive u want to use with linux strictly, format it as ext4

or btrfs ( i believe Windows has third-party btfs apps/tools to read that if needed)

ntfs is rather unstable on linux. it can be read from, but over time, much writing to that filesystem will corrupt it, then u have to always use windows to chkdsk it.

exFAT is also a basic, extended capacity alternative that works cross platform, but has no journalling protection like ext4 or btfs

[hollow stag]

I had nothing but problems with PIA VPN, on Windows, Android, and Linux. Their product just simply doesn't work well and they don't seem to know how to fix it. I could never connect to my LAN devices, even with the paid subscription. Their customer service/tech support is a joke. And you're right, their Linux package was a nightmare. Since learning about openvpn and being able to just use config files from Proton VPN, I've been much happier, as I can also add multiple servers to the config files to make my own custom file.

[hollow stag]

yeah, I'm seeing this. My computer has crashed 4x already today in the process of me trying to clear space on my 2T drive so I can reformat it. I was originally going to go with NTFS again, but I decided against it after my other HDD crashed on linux. That one is partitioned into a NTFS and EXT4. Right now, the NTFS won't load, but the EXT4 is running perfectly. I plan on completely doing away with Windows, but the one thing that prevents me from doing it right now is that I still have some software I haven't been able to get replacements for, more specifically, Fusion360 is by far one of my favorite software packages and there is no compatible linux version. Only thing I could find was a version on snap, but I didn't like the permissions it needed and didn't like that it would have root access.

[hollow stag]

So, this is the first night my computer hasn't crashed. The only difference being that I unplugged all the monitors, because I kept having these funky screen flickers on one of them and got sick of dealing with it. Low and behold, this morning I come to a computer that is still running, didn't go into sleep/hibernate and still seems to be doing ok.

It should be noted that all the monitors come up as the monitors they are in the system menu, meaning they are recognized by the computer. But it would appear that Mint 22 has an issue with having so many monitors plugged in, but I'm also curious if it isn't a driver issue.

[hollow stag]

Looks like there was a couple things going on.

1. While trying to run a clean install of Mint 22, I discovered that my flash drive was corrupt and the install was screwed up. This could have been present the last time I did a fresh install. I'm not sure and have no way of knowing, but I was able to flash a new ISO image on the drive and resinstall Mint with no issues.

2. I discovered that one of my monitors was bad. This was likely causing the issue with that specific screen and somehow it was causing the whole system to crash and lock up. After removing that monitor, the crashing/locking up stopped. After a fresh install, and not reconnecting that monitor, all seems to be well.

[hollow stag]

Ok, just had the system lock up again. Ran a hard restart and then checked "journalctl -b" in the terminal. I have the following as an error in the last two lines:

[ 77.440185] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] ERROR CPU pipe A FIFO underrun

[ 102.655385] i915 0000:00:02.0: Using 39-bit DMA addresses

[hollow stag]

Doing a little digging on this issue, I've come across some articles that unfortunately, I don't have any links to at the moment, but they mention this is a pretty common issue with Ubuntu based installs. It seems it has something to do with power management of the monitor on the laptop. I've gone into my BIOS settings and taken off the power management of the monitor for better graphics, so we shall see if this fixes any issues.