any update on this issue. I recently updated my Librem 15v3, I am now running on kernel 4.13.0-1-amd64 and I got 3 freezes in the last 24 hours.
I was running Firefox and a youtube video in a tab when the first freeze occurred.
Chrome with Hangouts video when then 2nd/3rd freeze occurred.
Any luck in reproducing the bug systematically?
I’m now running with intel_pstate=disable on kernel args and haven’t had the problem since (looks like it still happened when setting everything to performance or with just one core on powersave, just way less often), so the problem kind of lost priority for me given the lack of interest.
Playing multiple videos really is a reliable reproducer for me (with default powersaving options); so given some said they can’t get it to crash and more importantly given that almost no-one else reported the problem (we’re, what, 5 so far? For a problem that happens multiple times a day with regular computer usage anyway!), I’m thinking this is some subtle hardware problem in a bad series of chips and call it a day; if more folks show up here it might revive some interest though, curiosity stll wants me to probe the cpu voltage when frequency varies and things like that, just not enough time to do everything.
thanks for that. So from what I understand this disables the intel cpu built-in governor. However, does that mean that a a generic ACPI module takes over the cpu governance as suggested in this discussion?
I actually had no replacement (acpi-cpufreq module is not compiled on my kernel), my original goal in disabling intel_pstate was to use the userspace governor and manually change frequency when going on battery but I never really finished that either… I assume that if nothing cares the cpu frequency is stuck at some default value and never changes from there, which should be pretty much the same as the userspace governor with a fixed value.
I’ll play along and test acpi-cpufreq a bit today.
I checked my currently loaded kernel modules lsmod but don’t see intel_pstate listed, does that mean it ain’t running on my system?
[EDIT]
ok, I found that to check if intel_pstate is enabled, I need to run the following command:
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_driver
it is indeed running.
Just some general thoughts, hopefully helpful in some way:
Userspace code can never (directly) cause a real freeze, it is either hardware or kernel/driver.
Almost always if a system appears frozen, it can still do more than most people assume:
It would be interesting to know if the result is the same fore everybody affected.
On the video decoding:
This might only create reproducible results if everybody decodes the same file, or at least the same encoding, maybe resolution etc. If hardware decoding on the GPU is involved, your screen may be dead, but ssh could still work. Then, a kernel (GPU driver) update could be the cause.
But even if “only” the GPU is stuck, I could (hardly, but still) imagine that some hardware problem is at the root, like the voltage regulator can’t handle high GPU usage plus CPU freq changes at the same time. This, in turn, could have been hidden with an older (less optimized?) kernel.
I went back to debian’s kernel with acpi-cpufreq available, but the module won’t load despite disabling intel_pstate as your link suggested it would. There’s nothing in dmesg either.
Looking it up it looks like there normally is a bios setting necessary for that, but with coreboot it should just be possible to enable cpu configuration bits later on instead, I just wish I had a clue how 
@Caliga: I don’t know what others have, but what I observe is “just” some operations sometimes not behaving as expected. Sometimes only the video player crashes, sometimes the compositor crashes, sometimes something in the kernel oopses to the point even sysrq won’t work anymore… It’s the same with video - playing the same media twice can work without any error once and crash something the next time; I have tried various media and they all exhibit the same behavior when there are frequency changes.
More than 5 freezes since I received Librem 15 v3 last week, mostly when I am watching video content using purebrowser, that makes me 6th person so far. I also tried firefox on Debian 9 Gnome but same problem. I been trying to disable intel pstate in PureOS for several hours without any success 
. I need help with that.
thanks for the detailed post. I will test out this lead in my next freeze session. However, now that you mention it I get the following msg on my boot screen,
firmware: failed to load i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.
i915 is the open source intel graphics driver, so does the above refer to a specific version of the driver ?
lsmod shows that the i915 module is loaded, furthermore
$ modinfo i915
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko
license: GPL and additional rights
description: Intel Graphics
author: Intel Corporation
author: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
firmware: i915/bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
firmware: i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin
firmware: i915/skl_guc_ver6_1.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
firmware: i915/skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
the i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26 firmware is listed, does that means it is loaded after-all?
@gEck0: Thanks for letting us know! That definitely renews interest a bit 
Since you’re using PureOS I can help, you need to add intel_pstate=disable to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in your /etc/default/grub file then regenerate your grub config with update-grub. The whole session should look like:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
# at this point find the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and add
# intel_pstate=disable within the quotes, then exit with ctrl+X,
# press Y to save changes, enter to validate filename
sudo update-grub
You’ll need to reboot after this change for it to take effect.
@vrata: this file is “just” a firmware blob that helps with a feature called DMC, which provides additional graphics low-power idle states according to the documentation. I have tried installing it (you can find it in the non-free linux-firmwares package, or straight in the linux firmware git https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git ) – that did not help me.
Thanks @Asmadeus that worked without any problems, a little addition to that ‘GRUB_CMD…’ line must look like this to work:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash intel_pstate=disable”
I will keep posting the results for next couple of days. Hope this solves freezing problem on this Librem.
@Asmadeus Today (means after 1 day) I again experienced a freeze, I just clicked on a youtube link listed here:
with intel_pstate=disable ?
Yes
Now I re-installed PureOS for another issue I am having right now, please help if you can
though I will keep you updated if I again experience system freeze, I disabled intel pstate right after I finished installing OS. Hope that helps.
For the freezing issues, it might help if you install “SKYLAKE GUC - 9.33” firmware from this page: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads
This might help us debug the issue. Instructions are provided within the package.
Does this hold true for the Librem 13v2 as well?
downloaded the tar archive and extracted it to a temp location, from a terminal I executed the following file in the extracted folder,
sudo ./install.sh
the binary file was installed and I was instructed to reboot.
However, I don’t see any changes in the firmware after reboot,
$ modinfo i915
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko
license: GPL and additional rights
description: Intel Graphics
author: Intel Corporation
author: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
firmware: i915/bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
firmware: i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin
firmware: i915/skl_guc_ver6_1.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
firmware: i915/skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
my guc is still at v9.14 which is I had earlier reported in this thread.
Am I missing something?
[EDIT] this is what I get when I install the firmware, its warns of several missing files, but still reports of a successful installation,
$ sudo ./install.sh
Success: /lib/firmware/i915/skl_guc_ver9_33.bin installed!
Forcing initrd/initramfs update...
Trying to backup /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-1-amd64
Created a bakcup of your current initramfs /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-1-amd64.i915-fw.backup
Trying to update /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-1-amd64
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-1-amd64
WARNING: Setting CRYPTSETUP in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf is deprecated and will stop working in the future. Use /etc/cryptsetup-initramfs/conf-hook instead.
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/skl_guc_ver6_1.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin for module i915
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin for module i915
Adding /lib/firmware/i915/skl_guc_ver9_33.bin
Success: Please reboot your machine!ok, I got another freeze today, but due to lack of another computer I couldn’t try @Caliga’s suggestions of ssh’ing into my frozen laptop… BUT I got another interesting symptom to report, I was listening to SoundCloud, a streaming music platform on my browser when the freeze happened, and the music didn’t completely stop playing but instead looped over the last second of play. This platform streams mp3 which is partly cached on the browser, therefore I am assuming that the decoding froze, but the audio didn’t.
So can this point to a cpu issue as @Asmadeus suggested in his post?
However, rereading @david.libremone’s post,
I have to admit that all my freezes happen while running Firefox. Odd because this time I was running FF Quantum which I believe is a total re-write of FF.
One of our devs also reported freezes when running Firefox.
Interesting, is this something Purism is looking into or will look into and fix ?