There’s a definite pattern here, and it’s definitely tied to xhci_hcd, usb-storage and the Akasa/Genesys card reader. Here’s what I’ve done since reporting this:

1) Set ”Legacy USB 3.0” in the BIOS from ”Enabled” to ”Disabled”, and ”Intel xHCI Mode” from ”Smart Auto” to ”Enabled”. I tested briefly with latter set to ”Disabled” and Legacy 3.0 ”Enabled”, but then the card reader wasn’t detected at all and I’d prefer a working XHCI anyway.

2) Switched to mainline kernel 3.8.0-030800rc2-generic #201301022235. With the earlier kernels (3.5 and 3.2 from Precise repo) things have seemed similar to my findings below with mainline, but data with 3.2 and 3.5 are too few to say conclusively there’s no difference at all. I’ve concentrated my testing to mainline just to keep things simpler.

Here’s the pattern with mainline:

1) Cold boot. Early in the boot, the card reader in USB #4 is asked to reset. This results in a flood of ”xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880403c8d500”:

Jan 8 10:32:12 saegusa kernel: [ 721.015249] usb 4-4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
Jan 8 10:32:12 saegusa kernel: [ 721.032596] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880403c8d500
Jan 8 10:32:12 saegusa kernel: [ 721.032599] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880403c8d540

When these messages are there, the session will crash (panic/freeze) at some point; using the card reader isn’t necessary (panics without it eventually too), but it’s easy enough to trigger just by sticking an SD card into the reader. The reader reports buffer errors on the card and then boom.

Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713295] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdf] Unhandled error code
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713299] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdf]
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713300] Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713303] sd 8:0:0:2: [sdf] CDB:
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713304] Read(10): 28 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 08 00
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713314] end_request: I/O error, dev sdf, sector 8192
Jan 8 10:32:13 saegusa kernel: [ 721.713318] Buffer I/O error on device sdf1, logical block 0

Another USB #4 -related message often preceding a panic in syslog is this:
Jan 8 17:38:21 saegusa kernel: [ 148.282256] usb 4-4: Disable of device-initiated U1 failed.
Jan 8 17:38:21 saegusa kernel: [ 148.285747] usb 4-4: Disable of device-initiated U2 failed.

The panics, when visible, are always in Pid: usb-storage, and mostly of the ”ring_doorbell_for_active_rings” type (above), but I did have at least one ”warn_slowpath_common” too (will attach a picture if requested).

2) Reboot after the panic, USB #4 doesn’t get reset and no ”disabled ep” or ”Disable of device-initiated …” messages appear in syslog. The card reader works perfectly (i.e. SD card can be inserted and read/written without problems).

3) The panic isn’t necessary to get the card reader working: it’s enough to reboot after one cold boot and the reset signal being sent in that session. Just don’t stay in that cold boot session, because it’ll panic eventually.

I’ll attach a complete syslog from yesterday and today to give context to what I’ve quoted above.

I don’t see the syslog I mentioned attached above, so I’m attaching it here. Also, the USB-related stuff just preceding the panic starts slightly earlier than what I claimed above, with this reset attempt:

Jan 7 10:45:01 saegusa kernel: [ 413.991127] usb 4-4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd

Last week I replaced the internals of my desktop computer with a new ASUS P8H77-M PRO, Intel G2120 and 16 GB RAM. With one round of Memtest passed, I booted into my old Precise install and got bit hard by what appears to be Bug #993187: frequent hard lockups (multiple within a few hours of use). I installed linux-image-generic-lts-quantal (currently 3.5.0.22.29) and that seemed to resolve the lockups: I got more than two days of uptime (ending with an intended shutdown), half of which I was actively using the computer.

This morning, soon (half an hour?) after login, the kernel paniced with a reference to usb-storage (I’ll attach a picture). This was different from the lockups with the stock Precise (3.2) kernel: with them I never had any panics shown (only the frozen desktop) and the system had to be powered off to reboot, whereas with the panic here I could reboot using the chassis reset button.

There’s some USB activity in syslog just prior to the panic (Jan 7 at around 10:50), but I wasn’t using any USB devices at the time. I have used them with this kernel previously though, without issues, and currently am too (to transfer the panic picture from my phone). There’s a memory card reader/USB port panel (Akasa AK-ICR-17) permanently plugged into internal USB 2 and 3.

Trying to format a partition to btrfs in palimpsest results in this (untranslated) error:

Error creating file system: Cannot run mkfs: cannot spawn ’mkfs.btrfs -L ”WD30” /dev/dm-5’: Failed to execute child process ”mkfs.btrfs” (No such file or directory)

This seems to be due to btrfs-tools package not being installed currently as gnome-disk-utility doesn’t depend on it, though apparently it should.

Thanks, I can confirm that all the windows I posted screenshots of above now have maximizers in Quantal. The package downloading window (which I only mentioned) also had one, but there was one still missing it: the ’Applying Changes’ window. That one also sometimes gets quite a bit of content with the ’Details’ pseudo terminal. I didn’t post a screenshot of it above, I’ll do so now below with Synaptic 0.75.12build1 running in a VM.

Also, I did notice that the maximizers were missing from all of the fixed windows too when running Gnome Classic (No Effects). But I guess that’s going the way of the dinosaurs anyway so it probably doesn’t matter. With Gnome Classic (without ”No Effects”) the maximizers were there, as with LXDE and Xfce. (Non-fallback Gnome 3 was misbehaving too much to be able to tell either way.)

Chris, are you sure bug #694860 is a duplicate? As mentioned by Sebastien there, that one has roots in a spec [1] (”A compliant player should also keep playing if you close its window while it is playing”) whereas this one is just incorrect behavior (selecting ’Quit’ doesn’t actually quit). FWIF, I don’t agree with the spec and agree with Michael above: RB as all music players should just behave like other apps do without exceptions or special addons.

(It seems that the Finnish locale now also has ’Quit’ translated to mean quit and not ’Close’ as it was when I commented above.)

*[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoundMenu#Music_player_section

Not reproducible in current 12.10 with gdm 3.6.0-0ubuntu4, still reproducible in 12.04 with gdm 3.4.0-0ubuntu15.

Steps to reproduce:

1. From View > Columns, hide all but (for example) Title and Username
2. Try to scale Title column smaller by dragging the separator between it and the Username column to the left.

What happens:
A new, blank column appears between the two columns and grows bigger as I try to make Title column smaller.

What I expect to happen.
For Title column to get smaller, Username column to expand into the space being freed.

Further info:
This is on up-to-date Quantal, up-to-date Precise is also affected.

This looks a bit like RH 426383 [1], but isn’t as grave as that one (all windows apart from the one) are shown here.

*[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=426383

I have two Chromium windows open, 0x31fd46b and 0x3072dc8 (this one):

jani@saegusa:~$ xwininfo -root -tree | grep Chromium-browser
0x31d2a67 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 321×216+275+321 +275+321
0x30fb2de ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 246×307+1232+305 +1232+305
0x3157fd9 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 246×307+36+124 +36+124
0x31fd391 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 1×1+-100+-100 +-100+-100
0x31b19f6 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 513×132+1011+38 +1011+38
0x30b5ffa ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 397×125+4+82 +4+82
0x3092643 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 321×216+791+829 +791+829
0x3030c84 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 306×230+587+441 +587+441
0x3030681 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 462×342+127+133 +127+133
0x3000027 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 200×200+0+0 +0+0
0x3000024 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 200×200+0+0 +0+0
0x3000001 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 10×10+10+10 +10+10
0x31fd46b ”Yleisurheilun Eliittikisat | Tv | Areena | yle.fi – Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 1014×438+2322+227 +2322+227
0x3072dc8 ”Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 1659×50+94+83 +94+83
0x30000c3 ”Report a bug about “wmctrl” package in Ubuntu : Bugs : “wmctrl” package : Ubuntu – Chromium”: (”chromium-browser” ”Chromium-browser”) 1920×1056+0+0 +0+24

But wmctrl only knows about the one:
jani@saegusa:~$ wmctrl -l
0x01c00006 0 saegusa jani@saegusa: ~
0x02200003 0 N/A DNDCollectionWindow
0x02200004 0 N/A launcher
0x02200006 0 N/A panel
0x02200007 0 N/A Dash
0x02200008 0 N/A Hud
0x030000c3 0 saegusa Report a bug about “wmctrl” package in Ubuntu : Bugs : “wmctrl” package : Ubuntu – Chromium
0x03e00003 0 saegusa Rytmilaatikko
0x04200009 0 saegusa Kuvakaappaus
0x04600081 0 saegusa Synaptic-pakettienhallinta

This may be related to the fact that the other window has fallen out of view: it’s not visible on any workspace, but it’s still there as the audio’s still playing. It got out of sight due to another bug (probably in Compiz) which I have yet to report.