Black screen of death: system suddenly stopped working soon after upgrade to kernel 3.16.0.34-generic

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It happened again!

I rebooted and I was working with not problems. Then I plugged in my external drive to my 4-port hub and started running backintime-gnome. A few seconds later the BSOD appeared again. It said that there was a kernel panic and an unhandled exception in one of the interrupts. Also some message about usb-ehcd (?).

I hard rebooted again. This time I have attached my external drive to a USB port *on* my laptop. No problem so far!

Could it be due to the 4-port hub then? Maybe!

Please note that the 4-port hub is still attached to the computer and an external keyboard is plugged into it. So I am guessing that attaching the seagate drive to the port creates the problem.

Thanks a lot Christopher M. Penalver, especially for the really prompt response

I upgraded the BIOS like you said. And I think it has worked!

After upgrade, I booted up system as normal, plugged in the 4-port USB hub and plugged in the Seagate expansion drive into the hub. I then started backintime for a backup and started doing my work.

It has been nearly 20 minutes since then. Backup has completed without a problem. The system is still alive and kicking.

Thanks once again. Huge relief

Hi

I think we will need to reopen this. Since I experienced the same issue
again just now.

If the report is closed how do I re-open?

Pramathesh
On Tue, 2015-04-14 at 22:34 +0000, Christopher M. Penalver wrote:

> pramathesh ambasta, this bug report is being closed due to your last
> comment
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1443764/comments/5
> regarding this being fixed with a BIOS update. For future reference you
> can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status
> in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop
> down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time
> to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any
> future bugs you may find.
>
> ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => Invalid
>

Hi.

the output of the commands

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version && sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date

is:

M74 Ver. 01.09
01/26/2015

What was I doing?
****************

I was working on Caligra Flow to create a flow chart.

Backintime was running a backup of my home directory on an external 1 TB Seagate storage drive (USB) connected to my laptop via a 4-port USB hub.

I was moving the mouse to position an object on the flow chart when the black screen of death occurred again.

Please let me know what other information I need to provide.

pramathesh ambasta, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available from the very top line at the top of the page (the release names are irrelevant for testing, and please do not test the daily folder) following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue.

If the test did not allow you to test to the issue (ex. you couldn't boot into the OS) please make a comment in your report about this, and continue to test the next most recent kernel version until you can test to the issue. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon, next to the word Tags, located at the bottom of the report description:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-3.XY-rcZ

Where XY and Z are numbers corresponding to the kernel version.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-3.XY-rcZ

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results.

Thank you for your understanding.

Thanks once again. I have installed the latest mainline kernel.

uname -r:

4.0.0-040000-generic

from the link you have provided.

System has booted fine with this kernel.

Testing. Will keep you posted

The system is working now. I have been taking backups on the external drive connected to the 4-port hub it since yesterday. The backup (a large one) ran for several hours until late at night without a hitch. Since this morning the system has booted fine and has not shown any sign of crashing.

Thanks to Christophe Penalver for his detailed instructions on how to upgrade the kernel, I upgraded to a mainline kernel. The kernel is linux-kernel-4.0.0-040000-generic.

I am marking the status of this bug as "CONFIRMED".

I have also added the tags as suggested by Christophe.

Thanks once again for all the inputs

pramathesh ambasta, the next step is to fully reverse commit bisect from kernel 3.16 to 4.0 in order to identify the last bad commit, followed immediately by the first good one. Once this commit has been identified, then it may be reviewed as a candidate for backporting into your release. Could you please do this following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/KernelBisection#How_do_I_reverse_bisect_the_upstream_kernel.3F ?

Please note, finding adjacent kernel versions is not fully commit bisecting.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

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