this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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How to diagnose a complete system freeze (no REISUB, no mouse/kb, have to hard reset)? (piefed.zip)
submitted 6 hours ago by MindfulMaverick@piefed.zip to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hey everyone,

I'm running into a frustrating issue and could use some guidance on how to pinpoint the faulty component.

My system completely locks up every few hours. It's not just a DE crash; the entire machine becomes unresponsive. The mouse and keyboard are completely dead (no cursor movement, Caps Lock key doesn't toggle). I've tried waiting 10-15 minutes to see if it recovers, but it never does.

REISUB does not work. Holding Alt + SysRq and pressing the keys in order does nothing. The only way out is a hard reset using the case button.

The last time this happened, I ended up buying components for a new computer and replaced them one by one until I found the faulty one. I'd rather try a more targeted approach this time. Though if it takes too much effort, I do have another computer I can fall back on.

Any advice on how to diagnose this efficiently? Logs to check, stress tests to run, or hardware to suspect first?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

My system completely locks up every few hours. It’s not just a DE crash; the entire machine becomes unresponsive. The mouse and keyboard are completely dead (no cursor movement, Caps Lock key doesn’t toggle).

Before you rule out a DE (or Wayland issue), are you 100% sure the entire system is unresponsive? Like is it still online and responding to ping or SSH? Just to be sure try enabling SSH on the system - then set up a spare laptop/computer on the same network that can normally ping or SSH to your Linux system. Next time the issue occurs test to see if the Linux system is truly unresponsive by checking if it is still responding to pings and allowing you to SSH into it.

If you don't have a spare laptop/desktop but do have an Android phone you could do the same with Termux.

Also if you can SSH into it you should be able to force logout your own user, that would bring your Linux system back to the login screen and you'd then be able to use mouse/keyboard normally again. (run "who" to view logged in users, run "pkill -u your-username" to kill and logout the user, may need to run those with sudo)

Only reason I mention it is that I have an ancient desktop that exhibits similar behavior occasionally but my system is still alive on the network. So far for me it seems like it might be a Wayland + Nvidia + GNOME issue. Once I switched back to X11 it doesn't seem like the issue occurs anymore.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

The Caps Lock LED being unresponsive is a good indicator the CPU is locked up hard. USB keyboards don't send interrupts like PS/2 so the bar for operation is slightly higher, but it still signals something is very wrong with the system