How can I tell why 20.04 is crashing?

For the past week or so, Ubuntu 20.04 randomly freezes (3 or 4 times a day) on my Dell XPS Developer Edition laptop. All I can do is hold down the power button to manually turn off the machine and then restart.

There are no logs in /var/crash and running

journalctl -b -1 -e

doesn't reveal any logged info - the last logged item is about 10 minutes before the crash.

I also installed sensors and was monitoring the temp yesterday while working. When a crash happened the temperature was normal (about 40.0°C on all cores).

All software is up to date.

Each time it crashes I'm doing something different. The only common program I (probably?) have open is Chrome though I'm not completely sure, it's just a guess because I almost always have it open.

Any help is appreciated. 18.04 rarely crashed and 20.04 was fine at first but several months after upgrading here I am...

It's a Dell XPS 13 7390 Intel® Core™ i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz × 12

aaron@xps13:~$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           15Gi       1.7Gi        11Gi       640Mi       2.3Gi        12Gi
Swap:          31Gi          0B        31Gi

aaron@xps13:~$ sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 60

aaron@xps13:~$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
[sudo] password for aaron: 
1.5.1

aaron@xps13:~$ grep -i swap /etc/fstab
/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw              0       0

aaron@xps13:~$ ls -al /var/crash
total 8
drwxrwsrwt  2 root whoopsie 4096 Jun 29 07:54 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root     4096 Apr 18 21:51 ..

aaron@xps13:~$ ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
ls: cannot access '/home/aaron/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions': No such file or directory
aaron@xps13:~$ ls -al /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun  2 11:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jul  9 23:04 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 11 14:33 desktop-icons@csoriano
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun  2 11:48 [email protected]
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 18 22:38 [email protected]

Disks screenshot

grep -i ata /var/log/syslog*

grep -i iwlwifi /var/log/syslog*

/var/log/syslog showing crash

aaron@xps13:~$ uname -r
5.4.0-40-generic

Solution 1:

Dell XPS 13 7390

BIOS

Your BIOS is current at version 1.5.1.

fsck

You have a dirty file system.

• boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB in “Try Ubuntu” mode
• open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
• type sudo fdisk -l
• identify the /dev/sdXX device name for your "Linux Filesystem"
• type sudo fsck -f /dev/sdXX, replacing sdXX with the number you found earlier
• repeat the fsck command if there were errors
• type reboot

memtest

Go to https://www.memtest86.com/ and download/run their free memtest to test your memory. Get at least one complete pass of all the 4/4 tests to confirm good memory. This may take many hours to complete.

swap

Your /swapfile is excessive. There's no guarantee that this will fix your problem, but it might. We'll reduce /swapfile from 31G to 4G.

Note: Incorrect use of the dd command can cause data loss. Suggest copy/paste.

sudo swapoff -a           # turn off swap
sudo rm -i /swapfile      # remove old /swapfile

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=4096

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile  # set proper file protections
sudo mkswap /swapfile     # init /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile     # turn on swap
free -h                   # confirm 16G RAM and 4G swap
reboot                    # reboot and verify operation

Add this line to /etc/fstab (if it doesn't already exist)...

/swapfile    none    swap    sw      0   0

Samsung NVMe

Check for firmware updates for your Samsung NVMe. Download the Samsung Magician here. This will require Windows, or you can try building a FreeDOS USB stick to do this.