You’re going to see some typing errors in this post, and thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat is intentioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonal. It’s going to make the post unpleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasant to read, but I assure you it’s more unpleasant to type.
The issue: Every 5-10 seconds or so, my laptop has recently started pausing, with one symptom being repetition of any key I happen to be typing at that moment, whether a letter, deletion, or something else. I haven’t changed anything, and something very similar seems to be happening on mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy Fedora-based desktop.
I have tried thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhe usual troubleshooting steps, such as watchinggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg my processes, disabling gnome extensions, and I cannot pin down the cause.
(1) Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyone seen anything like this?
(2) Any suggestions for troubleshooting?
The laptop is more than powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrful enough, a Gen 8 X1 Carbon. OS and apps are up to date. I assume an OS, gnome, or applicationnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn update has broken something, but I cannot for the life of me pinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn down where the issue is occurring.
EDIT:
Adding system specs –
Intel® Core™ i7-10610U 16GB Intel® UHD Graphics Gnome/Wayland NixOS 23.11 kernel 6.1.57
EDIT 2:
Well, it appears to be gnome. Switched to KDE and everything is perfectly fine. I don’t like KDE (but I fully respect others’ preferences, just … to avoid unpleasantness). I’m going to do some digging around to see if gnome is conflicting with something in NixOS land.
I hope I don’t get flayed for saying this, but I actually had this problem on Windows once, and it turned out to be thermal throttling of the CPU. I was going from 4+ghz to around 200mhz and then it would shoot back to normal. Just needed a thorough cleaning of the fans and ducting.
Thought it was worth mentioning on the off chance it might help someone.
I actually might be having a similar issue on one of my servers, every 5 to 10 seconds the hypervisor will just freeze for less than a second, and it doesn’t repeat characters but it still makes typing in SSH super annoying. I did find using irqstat that during that time, interrupts from the ahci kernel module would spike into the 50,000s, so I have a feeling it’s to do with that, but I haven’t really figured it out yet, since it somehow doesn’t actually seem to affect my VMs.
Although it probably isn’t related considering switching to KDE fixed it for you, and I haven’t got display stuff installed.
the least you can do is provide the basics - AMD/Intel, GPU, wayland/x11, os and kernel version, I’m not looking up what an 8th gen x1 runs on.
as to your question, seen similar with ryzens freezing for seconds intermittently on older kernels.
Anything interesting happening in the kernel logs? Sudo dmesg.
S-tui would give you some idea if there’s a thermal issue.
It is very, very odd that you have the same thing going on in your laptop and desktop. Has the thermal conductance of air (or some other related physical property) changed locally? Have you replaced the thermal paste on both devices with asbestos exhaust pipe putty? I keed, I keed.
It’s a great suggestion (even kidding – though Doc Brown asking about the strength of gravity in the future crossed my mind), but that’s exactly why I don’t think it’s a hardware issue. It’s going to end up being some weird kernel/gnome conflict triggered by one specific flatpak.
I never sorted out what the answer was but I’m almost certain it was a gnome issue, possibly a conflict. I did manage to completely hose my system through troubleshooting, but, hey, I just grabbed an earlier version of my nix config, typed one command, and was back up and running in an earlier state. NixOS is weird and troublesome to learn but goodness it’s useful.
