Bsrgvty

My laptop freezes when running Slic3r app on Ubuntu 18.04 to prepare a 3d print. I had opened a ticket on the slic3r app site and provided a copy of the file, but they were able to process the file. It could be a hardware issue on my Ubuntu laptop, but I have been unable to determine if that is the case.

Notes / what I have tried:

• When it hangs, the cursor initially moves but clicking anything has no effect


• Alt-tab does not switch apps, and control-alt-T cannot open a terminal



• Only solution has been to hard shutdown holding power button




• I booted another notebook (Acer with broken screen) using "TRY UBUNTU" , and ran the same copy of the Appimage that caused the macbook to hang, that Acer laptop running same copy of Ubuntu was able to process the file




• I tried booting the Macbook pro also booting from "TRY UBUNTU" (hoping to find I had an installation issue) but it still froze the computer




• Other than the system hanging when running the slic3r app, the Macbook pro running Ubuntu 18.04 works very well




• No issues were found running memtester



• No bad spots were found on disk


• Installed and ran stress, I don't fully understand the tool but could not see any issues running verbose


• Viewing htop when it hanged, it was using < 1G out of 4G memory, SWAP was not active, CPUs both < 80%

Correction: Using control-alt-f1 I was able to switch to tty and kill the Slicer app which unfroze the machine. However, I still cannot understand why the app freezes the Macbook running Ubuntu 18.04 but not the Acer running the same OS.

Update: Using control-alt-f1 sometimes works, sometimes does not requiring hard shutdown.

I am new to Linux, and at this point I am stumped. Does anyone know what I can try to determine what is causing the Macbook Pro to hang with this app?

Update: I have opened an issue on the Github slicer site, but given that I can run it successfully on Ubuntu 18.04 on a different machine it looks like it is something specific to this Macbook Pro
cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=08e94ee0-7ddf-49b3-ba02-5de27987fd9a / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=8141-EF73 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda3 during installation, commented out by me below and replaced with file
#UUID=67dcee39-a510-46b3-bbb4-b4b4885676af none swap sw 0 0
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0 

//192.168.1.55/SharedData /media/DS_Share cifs credentials=/home/
merlin/.smbcredentials,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0 0 0

//192.168.1.55/SherLinux /media/SherLinuxBackup cifs credentials=/home/merlin/.smbcredentials,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0 0 0

//192.168.1.55/music /media/DS_Music cifs credentials=/home/merlin/.smbcredentials,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0 0 0

//192.168.1.55/photo /media/DS_Pictures cifs credentials=/home/merlin/.smbcredentials,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0 0 0

//192.168.1.55/Budget /media/DS_Budget cifs credentials=/home/merlin/.smbcredentials,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0 0 0

free -h

 total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.6G 1.2G 1.2G 76M 1.2G 2.2G
Swap: 8.0G 0B 8.0G

Update: Ran: sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=80. Output: vm.swappiness=80

Reran slicer app which froze the macbook. Ctrl-Alt-F1 did not switch to tty, hard boot was required

parted:

(parted) print 
Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54503 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 1 105MB 734MB 629MB fat32 boot, esp
 2 734MB 316GB 315GB ext4
 3 316GB 320GB 4022MB linux-swap(v1)

free -h:

I struggled with this request. when system freezes, only thing that works is hard reset which loses everything. nothing works.
To try and answer the request, I ran this script output to log file:

for (( ; ; ))
do
 free -h
 date +%c
 sleep 1
done

Here is the output of the last few entries before it froze:

 total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.6G 1.4G 1.2G 60M 1.0G 1.9G
Swap: 8.0G 0B 8.0G
Mon 27 May 2019 05:13:56 PM EDT

 total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.6G 1.4G 1.2G 60M 1.0G 1.9G
Swap: 8.0G 0B 8.0G
Mon 27 May 2019 05:13:57 PM EDT

 total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.6G 1.4G 1.2G 60M 1.0G 1.9G
Swap: 8.0G 0B 8.0G
Mon 27 May 2019 05:13:58 PM EDT

 total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.6G 1.4G 1.2G 60M 1.0G 1.9G
Swap: 8.0G 0B 8.0G
Mon 27 May 2019 05:13:59 PM EDT

After that it froze requiring hard reboot

How I created SWAP:

I followed these instructions:
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/08/how-to-use-swap-file-instead-of-swap.html

The system is single boot. OSX is no longer installed.
Output of sudo dmidecode -s bios-version is MBP53.88Z.00AC.B03.0906151647,
the firmware on the apple site seems to have a different format.

I found an EFI Firmware 1.9 update that might be relevant. it refers to 320GB drive (which matches mine) correcting issue that causes intermittent freezing... I downloaded the update (MacbookProEFIUpdate.DMG), but I am not sure how to install the firmware. When I attempt to connect to /boot/efi I get a permission denied message.