[Bug 1656155] Re: System (keyboard & touchpad) freezes

[Jeffry R. Fisher]

You got some error in the boot log about an unknown stepping function,
right? Then an older, faulty version of the Intel driver loaded in its
place?

Go back to doing a fresh install of 16.10. Make sure you allow 3rd-party
and choose the Intel microcode when offered (and have a working network
connection to download and install updates during the install process).

Verify kernel 4.6+ (should be 4.8), and look at the boot log after
installing (the error about stepping should be gone).

Good luck.

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Title:
  System (keyboard & touchpad) freezes

Status in libdrm package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I have a 1-month old Acer Aspire F5-573-58VX that came with Win-10
  installed. It relies on its Intel i5-7200u for its graphics (HD 620).
  It runs Win-10 with no problems (other than Win-10 itself), so I do
  not suspect the hardware.

  I succeeded in dual-booting Ubuntu 16.04 with EFI and secure-boot both
  enabled, but was suffering random freezes at 3-30 minutes of use, even
  after setting the c-state limit in grub. It hangs both with and
  without Intel microcode. So I upgraded to 16.10 hoping that a newer
  kernel would have a fix in it.

  It's still freezing at random (many apps, and sometimes using only the
  desktop controls). It still has the c-state parameter in grub.

  It appears that if I leave the system untouched with the cursor in an
  empty area, then no freeze will occur (I can see display changing) as
  long as I don't touch anything. Bittorrent runs reliably overnight,
  and then the machine can freeze within seconds of my moving the cursor
  to a control in the morning.

  Thunderbird is also suspicious: I can work most of an hour OK as long
  as I never move the cursor over the scroll slider in the folder pane.
  However, bringing the cursor close enough to change the slider's
  appearance will usually freeze the machine. Update: I've now
  experienced a freeze while the cursor was stationary and I was merely
  typing into an email message window.

  When it freezes, the machine goes quiet (it's not spinning). There's
  no message to the GUI, only a sudden halt. When frozen, soft restart
  and reboot (ctrl-alt-back & ctrl-alt-del) both fail. Only a forced
  power-off has had any effect. (I'll try your alt+sysreq combos in my
  next freeze).

  Synaptic says I have an intel driver update utility installed, but I
  don't know if it has run. When I try to sudo it, I am told that the
  command is not found. I have been unable to locate it in the file
  system. If anyone knows where that goes (or where to hunt), that might
  be helpful.

  I do not (yet) know how to ssh into the sick machine to get kernel
  logs or crash dumps. I'm a user-space programmer, not a sysadmin, so I
  have a learning curve to open the firewall enough to allow an
  intrusion, and more learning curves for the cryptic debugging tools.

  var/log/kern.log has this:
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.002400] [drm:parse_csr_fw [i915_bpo]] *ERROR* Unknown stepping info, firmware loading failed
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.002405] i915_bpo 0000:00:02.0: Failed to load DMC firmware [https://01.org/linuxgraphics/intel-linux-graphics-firmwares], disabling runtime power management.
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.006089] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:00:02.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.018209] ACPI: Video Device [GFX0] (multi-head: yes  rom: no  post: no)
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.018522] input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input5
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.018601] [drm] Initialized i915_bpo 1.6.0 20160229 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.064117] r8169 0000:03:00.1 enp3s0f1: renamed from eth0
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.142340] fbcon: inteldrmfb (fb0) is primary device
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.142437] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240x67
  Jan 14 10:43:26 prop6 kernel: [    1.142466] i915_bpo 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device

  My current work-around is to do as much work as possible in Win-10  :(

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