Chrome is freezing Ubuntu when opening a tab or restarting
This just started happening yesterday. I didn’t knowingly change anything although I have auto-update enabled in Ubuntu.
I can start chrome fine, it will work for a while, but then I open a tab and it will freeze everything except the mouse which I can still move around. I can't do anything (including switching to ctrl-alt-fX) so only option is to REISUB (or hard-reset). Restarting chrome after a while usually has the same effect as opening a tab.
I tried completely purging chrome and removing the settings folder before reinstalling latest version but it didn’t help. Disabling all extensions didn't help.
I'm running latest stable Ubuntu 14. 15gb ram, intel i7
Another oddity is the little notification windows I get from chrome, which would usually show info about a new email or any of the plugin notifications, it's now just a black block, no content.
Is there a log I can look in to find something about the crash? I checked dmesg but it doesn’t mean much to me:
dmesg | grep chrome
[ 132.889813] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] multiple instances of buffer 125 on validation list
[ 132.889818] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] validate_init
[ 132.889819] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] validate: -22
[ 422.162086] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] multiple instances of buffer 121 on validation list
[ 422.162092] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] validate_init
[ 422.162094] nouveau E[chrome[2606]] validate: -22
[ 422.178322] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.201707] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.202702] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.220245] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.236486] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.269815] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.302031] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.334962] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.336436] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.351666] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
[ 422.368438] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] TRAP ch 5 [0x007f6f9000 chrome[2606]]
I have not tested chromium, I have read that similar happens in that one. Other topics I have read suggest switching to Firefox or chromium but that Isn't solving the problem. I need chrome for numerous work reasons and as it works just fine at home on same Ubuntu version so logic would suggest that it is fixable.
I think it's more linked to the duration chrome has been running and not ubuntu. If I start Ubuntu and launch chrome right away it will crash on a new tab after a few minutes. If i don't start chrome after booting and only start it later it will launch fine then crash after its been running for the same few minutes.
Many thanks
The problem is with Google Chrome v44. You can keep working by starting chrome without gpu acceleration:
google-chrome --disable-gpu
Or by removing chrome and installing the version just before that one:
sudo apt-get remove google-chrome-stable
wget http://mirror.pcbeta.com/google/chrome/deb/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_43.0.2357.81-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_43.0.2357.81-1_amd64.deb
This will let you use Chrome until a fix is out.
Note: you cannot disable gpu acceleration from the settings URL, as it will freeze your system immediately:
# DON'T go to (this might crash the system):
chrome://gpu
# or (this will definitely crash the system)
chrome://flags
I have been having the same problem with ubuntu 14.04 and Chrome. I have nvidia geforce gtx 650 graphics card. The problem seems indeed to be Ubuntu's nouveau graphics card driver. The fix for me was to go to System settings -> Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers and choose a proprietary nvidia driver (or which ever card you have) instead of nouveau. This change also seems to have fixed a problem I have had with youtube's media player (may or may not apply to other media players). Fast moving video image in particular used to seem to update in sections with horizontal "fault lines" appearing. It seems to be gone too.
I uninstall Chrome and then deleted all my configuration files, and nothing, got the same problem. This works for me in Ubuntu 14.04 64 bits
google-chrome --disable-gpu