Glitches after suspend in Zorin Lite 15

Hardware Support
1

Delighted overall with Zorin Lite on an old laptop, but after suspend (to ram) there seem to be bugs, note: Zorin Lite:

  • A lot of kworkers are being initiated without ever closing.
  • dhclient seems to run forever
  • power consumption increases (according to tlp and powertop)
  • and desktop wallpaper disappears.

Tried perf to scan kworkers but it’s over my knowledge and available time. Please let me know what type of information that would be helpful.

Suppling lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak]

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2

Recently I've experienced two new problems: sometimes a kworker process runs, consuming 80% or more of CPU, and slowing everything else down. And sometimes, when I try to "Suspend," the command fails to execute, and instead I'm obliged to power off manually. The post above was the only one that I could find that mentioned similar problems. Is it possible that these problems are related to a recent software update on 4 August 2021? linux-libc-dev:amd64 (4.15.0-151.157, 4.15.0-153.160) (Zorin 15.3 Lite 64-bit.)

3

When you see high kworker usage, can you pop open a terminal and run the command top to observe what process is showing the highest usage?
I think that the High kernel worker usage and the inability to suspend are related. Since a process is running, the computer will not suspend until finished - resulting in that long delay.
Can you post the terminal output of

inxi -Fxzd

4

Hi, Aravisian, Thanks for your help and sorry for my delay. This problem happens only sporadically, but when it occurs, it's difficult to do anything, because everything slows to a crawl. But I was able to identify the process that seems to be involved:

kworker/u8:42+phy0

It can consume as much as 90% CPU. But I can't seem to kill it. Is there anyway to trace what's responsible for it?

5

kworker is the Kernel processing tool. It is possible to run a backtrace on it by running the following at the time of Excessive CPU usage:

sudo -i

echo l > /proc/sysrq-trigger

Then navigate to read the log after rebooting (Give it some time to run, first).
Odds are, however, that downgrading or upgrading the kernel may resolve the issue.
In the meantime, you might check what Background Processes you have running that may cause interference. Like if you never use bluetooth, you can kill that process and remove it from the Startup programs.
Disabling Pre-load may help. Pre-load helps initialize processes you use frequently by keeping them running in the background, instead of initializing them cold when you select them.
ON many machines, this is what helps to create the Speed and performance Zorin OS is known for. But some CPU's may struggle with the workload.

6

Thanks, Aravisian, and apologies for my long delay. The problem simply disappeared, and I suspect that you must have been right when you suggested that it would be solved by a kernel upgrade.

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