Unstable system after installing 18.04 LTS

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 24 May 2020 09:07:17 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
>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).

When using some Ubuntu flavour live DVDs I experienced issues related
to screen blanking. The screen stayed black when pushing a key or
moving the mouse. Pushing Ctrl+Alt+F 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 and then going back
by pushing Ctrl+Alt+F7 and the desktop was accessible again. I don't
remember if this happened when using a 18.04 Ubuntu Live DVD, but it's
quite possibly that it happened when using a 18.04 Ubuntu flavour live
DVD.