[Bug 106671] Frequent lock ups for AMD RX 550 graphics card

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106671

--- Comment #11 from Alan W. Irwin <Alan.W.Irwin1234 at gmail.com> ---
Thanks for that idle=nomwait suggestion which I have now just tried (verified
by

irwin at merlin> cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.17.0-3-amd64
root=UUID=1e45a1ee-a5d6-4327-9a7b-2663ffc0b157 ro rootwait quiet idle=nomwait

) and I now indeed have a stable result.  However, that is currently just for
the last 5 minutes in remote access mode.  :-)  So we will see how this goes
for, say, the next two weeks, to see if I can beat my last 4.17.17 remote
access uptime record of 6 days.

With regard to your MB BIOS update suggestion, I am going to hold back on that
for a while since the techs from a local computer company that assembled my box
in May felt such updates were dangerous and therefore a last resort.  And that
is also the consistent advice I have gotten for the other 3 Linux boxes I have
had assembled for me since I started using Linux in 1996.  Of course, this year
may be a special case with all the Meltdown (although not for this AMD
hardware) and many variants of SPECTRE out there so I do plan to update the
BIOS within the next couple of months on the assumption that the SPECTRE BIOS
mitigations recommended by AMD to ASUS for this hardware (PRIME B350+ MB with
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 64GB RAM, and ASUS RX 550 graphics card) will have
matured by then.  

But before I implement that planned BIOS update, I am hoping that the current
cutting-edge Linux graphics stack (which according to a senior Phoronix poster
works well for the RX 560) will also give me stable direct-display results for
the RX 550 once that version of the graphics stack propagates to Debian
Testing.  I estimate that propagation time will be a couple of more months
based on how quickly elements of the cutting-edge Linux graphics stack such as
the kernel has propagated in the past from upstream to Debian Testing.

In sum, it is a waiting game now to see if your idle=nomwait suggestion
restores the complete Linux stability I was used to with my old box (for Debian
Oldstable = Jessie) for at least the remote display case, and if that stability
is obviously much better (i.e., at least a couple of weeks uptime with no
lockups) then I will try the direct display case again with idle=nomwait to see
if it makes that case stable as well.

Thanks, Michel, for your on-going helpful suggestions for dealing with this
troubling instability issue (these troubling instability issues?) for my new
Linux box.

Alan

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