Desktop froze

[Bill]

On 2023-06-11 19:09, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 12/6/23 05:48, Bill wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am using Mint 21.1 (Vera) with the Mate desktop, running on an I 7 
>> CPU and 12 GB of memory.  Recently, I had the desktop freeze up.  At 
>> the time, I was doing nothing of importance (playing solitaire while 
>> waiting for an important phone call) and there was nothing that I was 
>> running in the background.  I was dragging a card to another pile 
>> when the drag operation just stopped.  The entire desktop stopped.  
>> The mouse cursor could move around normally but nothing could be 
>> selected.  The keyboard also stopped working, so obviously all of the 
>> input functions were not working.  I could not even select a terminal 
>> window to drop down to a command prompt or do an orderly shutdown.  
>> The only solution was to hold down the power button to force a system 
>> shutdown. After a new startup, everything worked as it should.
>>
>> My question is, what happened?  Presumably I could find a clue to 
>> what happened by looking  at the log files.  Which ones should I look 
>> at and where are they located.  I do not think it was a hardware 
>> problem and probably was the Mate desktop.   I want to know what 
>> happened and is it very serious.  It seems that everything now is OK 
>> and I was doing nothing of importance and lost no data.
>>
>> Bill Stanley
>>
>>
>
> How long ago did it happen?
>
> I am running Linux Mint Mate 21.1, and, a couple of hours ago, I tried 
> to open a file, using pcmanfm, and, when I right clicked on the file, 
> the three buttons in the top right corner of all my windows, 
> disappeared, and I could not do anything with the open windows, so, I 
> did the only thing that I was able, and, that was to use the "Shut 
> down the computer button that I have in the panel, and, used the 
> "Restart computer" option, and, I am in the process of restoring, as 
> much as I can, the state of the system before the problem occurred.
>
> I had assumed that it was "just a glitch", but, depending on when your 
> instance occurred, and, whether anyone else simultaneously had a 
> similar problem in Linux Mint Mate 21.1, it could be something more 
> sinister than a glitch.
>
> ..
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> (UTC+0800)
> ..............
>
> WS=> That's interesting.  This happened to me on Thursday, I asked for 
> info on this only today because I was busy.  Of course, my incident 
> seems to be more severe than yours in that ALL sources of input 
> stopped.  I was forced to use the power button on thee computer.  
> Maybe there is a bug and I suspect that it is iin the Mate desktop.  
> That is why an investigation of the log files might help.
Bill Stanley