Unstable system after installing 18.04 LTS

[Colin Law]

On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 23:19, Jay Ridgley <jridgley2 at austin.rr.com> wrote:
> ...
> WRTO Colin's question:
>
> Not sure if that is helpful, namely because I have no idea when it
> "crashed", the proper term, I guess is become unusable, there was no
> response from the system when I tried to use the system after several
> hours. when I moved the mouse several times it failed to display the
> background image and the mouse appeared unresponsive. In order to get
> back into operation I was forced to power cycle the system.

You can tell from the log from just before you rebooted whether the
system had actually crashed or whether it was just the UI that was
unresponsive. If the log continues basically ok up to the point of
reboot then it was probably just the UI.
If it is a full crash (so log just stops with no indication of why)
then that could well be a hardware issue.  An indication that it is
probably a full crash (next time it happens) would be that the caps
lock button doesn't cause the relevant led to light.
If it appears to be just the UI then next time try hitting
Ctrl-Alt-Del half a dozen times and then leave it 5 minutes.  It may
log you out and get you back to a working system.
Also try logging in via ssh from another device (if you have one).


Colin