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Apologies for the nondescript title, I'm a total beginner in these issues.

For several weeks now, my laptop (running Ubuntu 22.04) has been freezing regularly with the fan running at high speed, which I assume means that the CPU is working at high loads. I've now taken a look at several /var/log/syslog (one example here) and a common theme is that the "Tasks state" table (line 1873 onwards) always lists an entry slack that has an abnormal total_vm:

Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204087] Tasks state (memory values in pages):
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204088] [  pid  ]   uid  tgid total_vm      rss pgtables_bytes swapents oom_score_adj name
[... leaving out lots of lines for the sake of brevity ...]
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204095] [    770]     0   770    49386      564   401408      355          -250 systemd-journal
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204101] [    849]     0   849     6811      222    81920      520         -1000 systemd-udevd
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204107] [   1300]   108  1300     3709      162    73728      177          -900 systemd-oomd
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204112] [   1301]   101  1301     6524      327   102400      977             0 systemd-resolve
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204116] [   1302]   103  1302    22347      160    77824      178             0 systemd-timesyn
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204494] [   3580]  1000  3580 296853692    10587  1617920     4228             0 slack
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204505] [   3610]  1000  3610  8477519      148   589824     1776             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204509] [   3611]  1000  3611  8477516       14   606208     1875             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204512] [   3614]  1000  3614  8477516       13   450560     1882             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204533] [   3734]  1000  3734  8499511      199   708608     2093             0 slack
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204537] [   3736]  1000  3736  8499511      598   700416     1659             0 slack
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204553] [   3894]  1000  3894  8495000      861   712704     1684             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204556] [   3908]  1000  3908 10779379    32031  1867776     4500             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204559] [   3973]  1000  3973  8520125     1073   860160     2019             0 slack
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204562] [   3997]  1000  3997   420549     1167   249856      631             0 snap
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204566] [   4252]  1000  4252  8561739      257   716800     1841             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204574] [   4538]  1000  4538  8585844      319   856064     2073             0 slack
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204597] [   6077]  1000  6077  1314366   109736  5701632    20878             0 firefox
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204643] [ 107212]  1000 107212   383559   101022  1429504     5975             0 emacs-gtk
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204649] [ 145611]  1000 145611   450272    84326  2314240    97921             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204679] [ 199883]  1000 199883   654254   429684  4337664     7395             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204682] [ 200036]  1000 200036   323670   101561  1683456     4982             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204685] [ 200063]  1000 200063   342541   108994  1785856     9742             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204689] [ 204378]  1000 204378   471997   164703  2215936     4875             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204693] [ 204677]  1000 204677   888815   336601  5427200      637             0 julia
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204786] [ 251672]  1000 251672  8485747     1952   634880        0             0 skypeforlinux
Jun  4 07:23:14 thinkpad kernel: [157532.204790] [ 251694]  1000 251694  8477555      206   532480     1707           200 skypeforlinux

Is it therefore safe to assume slack to be the most likely culprit of my system freezes?

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5
  • 1
    It should be easy enough to test this assumption, if the freezes are frequent enough.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jun 4 at 8:52
  • 1
    My laptop was also going slow/freezing and becoming unresponsive - I believe the problem was swap (even though it was on an SSD). I reduced vm.swappiness to 10, and reduced the size of my swap file and the problem went away. The fact that the first 2 lines of your screenshot talk about memory values in pages and oom_score_adj (ie out-of-memory score adjust) lead me to wonder if you are having a memory issue.
    – davidgo
    Commented Jun 4 at 8:57
  • @harrymc True, I'll try running my laptop without slack over the weekend (I need to too much for work to test during the week).
    – jpb
    Commented Jun 4 at 16:43
  • @davidgo With memory do you mean RAM? I'll keep that in mind if everything else fails and the issue persists.
    – jpb
    Commented Jun 4 at 16:43
  • 1
    Yes.I mean RAM (but also its interaction with swap/virtual ram - indeed its the process of swapping RAM to/from disk that is the issue - otherwise apps would just die rather then freeze the system.)
    – davidgo
    Commented Jun 4 at 20:48

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