New subject: [trinity-users] Random xorg & kernel errors, keep logging me out of TDE, and power management wonky

23 Jan 2019

Greetings,

First, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TDE! The horrible things they have done to
KDE from 4.x onward seem unspeakably bad. I am so very grateful you
revived this much more productive interface.

I am however having some trouble and not sure how much is TDE, video
driver, touchpad/touchscreen driver, kernel, and/or other hardware
driver issues. If it isn't TDE itself, I appreciate help isolating
which components to tackle first.

I haven't figured out the causality yet, and it is random seeming but
frequent. Periodically the little crash indicator red light icon shows
up in the lower right corner of taskbar. 

Sometimes the message when I mouse hover over the icon:
"A problem in the xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.20.1-5.1.el7 package has been
detected". Other times it is something about a kernel error, and then
before I can read more, I get logged out of TDE and brought to the
login screen.

Also the screen will dim down considerably some times, seemingly
randomly, appearing to be around 10-25% brightnness, but command line
cranking it up to 1.0 barely raises it up. I have to fully reboot the
system to get the screen brightness back to normal.

It _might_ (and I emphasize guessing heavily) coincide with multitouch
on the touchpad, but really can't trigger it reliably. It usually
happens faster if I am using the laptop, but sometimes I come back and
it has logged itself out without my being there at all.

Sometimes it seems to trigger the logout when I am using 2-finger or
3-finger scrolling on the touchpad. Sometimes the touchpad makes the
mouse jump around. Other times it behaves just fine.

There is also a weird behavior if I accidentally click two fingers on
the touchpad 3-4 Konsole screens appear, and I click on the X in upper
right hand corner of each window to close, when I click on the 2nd to
last one, 3 more appear!  The only way to stop that is to type "exit"
in each rather than using the mouse.

Weird behaviors, but seem interconnected somewhat?

Everything else seems to be working well though I haven't tried any 3d
tests yet.

The "Automatic But Reporting Tool" shows "My (0)" and "System (4)
but
in the right hand column shows "No problems detected!".

I'm not sure where to begin as far as logs that might be useful, so
could use a little guidance. There is a lot of whitenoise (to me at
least) on the logs, so suggestions would be appreciated.

This is a very new 2 in 1 laptop, and I wonder if it has anything to do
with the drivers between the touch screen (which I only rarely use) and
the touchpad (use a lot), and/or something with the video drivers. But
I'm totally shotgunning here.

Specifications information here:
http://www2.techtalkhawke.com/news/linux-on-dell-xps-9575-15-inch-2-in-1-1

Also at end of posting linked above are log outputs 
from /var/log/messages, tdm.log, Xorg.0.log, ~/.xsession-error, etc.

Appreciate help isolating the issues or if this is common/known issue
on this new hardware, any known fixes or workarounds to try.

Thanks kindly!