Why does switching users completely hang my system every time?

Posted by Stéphane on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Stéphane
Published on 2011-12-27T10:32:11Z Indexed on 2012/10/11 21:48 UTC
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I have a fresh install of 11.04 64bit, with 2 administrator accounts and 4 normal accounts. The 4 normal accounts (the kids' accounts) don't have passwords, they can login simply by clicking on their names.

When any of the users -- either admin or normal -- tries to switch to another account by clicking in the top-right corner of the screen and selecting another user, the screen goes black and the entire system locks up. Even CTRL+ALT+F1 through F7 does nothing. This is reproducible 100% of the time on this system.

I can ssh into the box when the console locks up, and by running top, I see that Xorg is consuming about 100% of the CPU. Looking at the output of "ps axfu" in bash while the system is in this "locked up" state, here is the lightdm and X process tree:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      1153  0.0  0.1 183508  4292 ?        Ssl  Dec26   0:00 lightdm
root      2187  0.4  4.6 265976 164168 tty7    Ss+  00:43   0:21  \_ /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
stephane  2612  0.0  0.3 266400 10736 ?        Ssl  01:52   0:00  \_ /usr/bin/gnome-session --session=ubuntu
stephane  2650  0.0  0.0  12264   276 ?        Ss   01:52   0:00  |   \_ /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/gnome-session --session=ubuntu
stephane  2703  0.8  3.0 562068 106548 ?       Sl   01:52   0:08  |   \_ compiz
stephane  2801  0.0  0.0   4264   584 ?        Ss   01:52   0:00  |   |   \_ /bin/sh -c /usr/bin/compiz-decorator
stephane  2802  0.0  0.3 265744 13772 ?        Sl   01:52   0:00  |   |       \_ /usr/bin/unity-window-decorator
...cut...
root      3024 80.6  0.3 107928 13088 tty8     Rs+  01:53  12:34  \_ /usr/bin/X :1 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:1 -nolisten tcp vt8 -novtswitch

That last process, pid #3024 in this case, is what has the CPU pegged.

In case it matters (I suspect it might) here is what I think may be the relevant information for my video card, taken from /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

[  3392.653] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/extra-modules.dpkg-tmp/modules/extensions/libglx.so
[  3392.653] (II) Module glx: vendor="FireGL - AMD Technologies Inc."
[  3392.653]    compiled for 6.9.0, module version = 1.0.0
...
[  3392.655] (II) LoadModule: "fglrx"
[  3392.655] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/extra-modules.dpkg-tmp/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so
[  3392.672] (II) Module fglrx: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc."
[  3392.672]    compiled for 1.4.99.906, module version = 8.88.7
[  3392.672]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
...
[  3392.759] (==) fglrx(0): ATI 2D Acceleration Architecture enabled
[  3392.759] (--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6410D" (Chipset = 0x9644)

Lastly: I did see this posting: Change user on 11.10 hangs system ...but I checked, and the libpam-smbpass package isn't installed on this system.

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