Where to find crash logs for hanging/freezing OS?

Hi,

I would like to know if Linux writes crash logs or anything similar for when the system hangs or freezes and where to find them.

Just recently I experienced three freezes where I had to shut down the machine but no clue what it caused. It might be nice to get an idea of what crashed Zorin...

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I try myself still applicable, since it was from year 2017. tail /var/log/syslog or tail -f /var/log/syslog

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Nice one, thank you very much. Will have a good read...

tail /var/log/syslog only shows me logs from the last boot, so no info about the crash before, unfortunately.

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Whats up Timothy? Been a bit since I've seen you! Your not trying to hide your stellarness :star2: from me are you? Well it do you no good, cause I already know your quite stellar. HEHE :blush:

Yepper de doo daa, that is where the logs are located. Its nice to have Rui around too isn't it? After putting in so many days on the forum, I was burnt out from every which ways to Sunday.

You better get some coffee though, those system logs, can carry on for what feels like forever. lol

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/var/crash/log

Also check your ~/.xsession-errors

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/var/crash is an empty folder and the folder ~/.xsession-errors doesn't exist on my system either :frowning:

Yeah thanks, I just realized how big the syslog file is. It will help me pinpoint well what happened though, the next time Zorin freezes. I really wonder what it could have caused.

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It can be many things, first thing i think about is gnome plugins.

Second maybe your gpu ?

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I installed a gnome extension and Gnome Tweaks. Would I find an entry in the syslog if one of those crashed?

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Probably not that specifically.
Gnome-tweaks has not been known to cause crashing.
But Gnome-extensions sure do.

You can use gnome tweaks to disable the gnome-extensions and see if crashing stops. If it does, then enable the extensions, one by one... (sigh) until the crashing starts again to narrow down which gnome extension is causing trouble.

Alternatively, you can list out and reinstall all gnome extensions... and hope that makes the crashing stop.

If you are getting consistent crashing, you should test RAM and Hard Drive.

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That sounds like a plan! It was probably caused by the only extension I installed that is not default: "Sound input and output device chooser".
IIRC there where no freezes prior to installing it.

For the record, I use this extension on POP OS, and I have no issues. POP is based on Ubuntu and uses Gnome, just as Zorin OS does as well, so they should be practically a match in that department. This is probably hardware related more then anything else.

Like Aravisian said, I'd like to see if your RAM passes MEMTEST.

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It took me ages to finally do it but memtest did pass! So I guess everything seems to be alright with my RAM. Haven't had any freezes since... Will report back and thanks a lot to everyone for the helpful suggestions!

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