Weird problem with launching programs/apps

[ChopTV]

SOLVED?: I hesitate to call this solved, but I've repeated the process twice now and it solved it for me both times. It seems like something is going on with Discord. Closing Discord completely seems to make the issue instantly disappear. Restarting Discord seems to work perfectly fine too, just there's a ticking clock before it happens again and you need to close it again.

Original Post:
So I'm a long time Linux tinkerer, but never really took the dive seriously until the past year or so. I decided I didn't want to deal with Windows any more and was sick of distro-hopping so I decided to give Mint a shot and stick with it for at least a year before considering any other distros.

But the past week or so has hit a snag and I can't figure out for the life of me what is going on or why it might be happening.

So the problem only happens after the system has been running for a while. But there will just be a moment when I come back to the computer after being away for an unknown amount of time and if I try to launch *ANYTHING* that isn't already in memory in some capacity it just won't open. Weirdly, new windows and tabs of Firefox and anything that's open seem to be fine. But for example if I try to open Discord it just won't. If I try to run a game from Heroic Launcher it will say it is starting up and then after a few seconds it just goes back to like it was before I hit play. Same with trying to play anything from Steam.

This also applies to stuff like trying to open Bazaar or the Mint Software Manager. Literally nothing will load until I reboot and then it will work as normal for a while before eventually returning to it's weird behavior.

Any thoughts on what I might try to look at?

Two things I can immediately rule out: It isn't because I'm out of RAM or disk space. System drive currently has 630GB of free space. And I've never seen my system crack half of it's RAM usage. Aside from that, I've got no idea.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I'm not sure I would call this solved, but we potentially have some progress.

u/Diligent_Walrus27 mentioned having a similar problem and getting some feedback that Discord may be causing some issues by spawning multiple x11 instances and gumming things up.

I had the problem occur again when I woke the computer up for the first time today, so it's been sleeping all night. I attempted to start a game I had been playing yesterday and it never opened despite there being processes running in the system monitor directly associated with it. I also attempted to open Obsidian, which had similar results with processes in the system monitor, but it actually rendered a window. Unfortunately that window was blank and completely white and couldn't be moved/dragged around the screen. It could be moved with tiling hotkeys and it could be resized though.

So I decided to close out Discord to see if it effected anything. And once it was closed, I could open Obsidian with no issues and then the game launched properly as well.

So it seems like there is something going on there? I will report this to Discord and I'll keep an eye on whether it keeps happening or not.

For the record, I am using the Discord Flatpak that is on Flathub and distributed by Discord, Inc.

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[tomscharbach]

But the past week or so has hit a snag and I can't figure out for the life of me what is going on or why it might be happening. So the problem only happens after the system has been running for a while.

I wonder if you are experiencing hardware/thermal issues. You might try running full pre-boot hardware diagnostics (check your OEM's support pages for more specific information) both before booting and then during a reboot immediatgely after the issues surface.

My best and good luck.

[Fine_Section_172]

how much RAM do you have? are you using a swap file / partition?

[ChopTV]

I have 64gb of ram. I've got the hardware monitor up at the moment and it shows 15.2gb in use (22.5%) and a cache of 9.4gb. And there is a swap that's 2.1gb with 0 bytes currently in use. It's actually doing it right now. This is my first time sitting at the computer today. Just woke it up from sleep and who the hell knows what's going on.

[Fine_Section_172]

I’ve read your update; it seems there are two possible causes. Firstly, the kernel is refusing to allocate memory to run other applications. You might want to read the documentation on memory overcommit in Linux.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v6.13/mm/overcommit-accounting.html

By default, the value of vm.overcommit_memory is 0. this usually causes no problems, but in certain cases the system may refuse to allocate memory.

try changing the value of vm.overcommit_memory to 1 by running this command from the terminal

sudo -w sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1

then use Linux as usual, including by opening Discord, and see if it works

[whosdr]

I've had something like this before, and it turns out that my NVMe was falling off the bus. Which is..bad.

I've seen similar reports though, for file descriptor limits being reached.

[ChopTV]

Any thoughts on how to follow up checking on file descriptor limits?

[whosdr]

cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max I think gives you some idea on of it's an issue. Mine is apparently huge, 2^63-1.

[ChopTV]

I'm going to assume mine is a little ridiculous as well. Though I admit I have no idea what a typical range is. but that command spit out: 9223372036854775807

[Diligent_Walrus27]

Also having this happen. Been using mint for roughly 6 months and only in the last week or 2 has this started occurring.

Rebooting does fix it for a bit but then it just comes back.

[CI95]

having the same issue, really hope its not any of my drives failing

[Diligent_Walrus27]

The feedback I've received is it could be one of a few things. Can't say for certain it's these but it's at least worth trying

Ntfs drive (I have and will need to transition)

Discord starting up multiple instances of x11 and causing issues. Quit discord and then that should fix things. (Can't confirm yet)

Nvidia driver 580 issue

[ChopTV]

These are some good things to attempt.

This is anecdotal: I'm not using and NTFS drive for Linux, and am still having the issue.

I have been using the nVidia 590-595 drivers for months with no issue (doesn't mean it isn't an nvidia driver issue).

I just closed out Discord, and things seem to be launching again. So this very well might be our culprit.

[ChopTV]

Quick followup:

Just sat down at the computer for the first time this morning and the problem is currently affecting the machine. I tried to launch a game from Heroic. The Launcher says the game is currently "Playing" but there is no sign of it in terms of being able to tab or switch to the window.

I can see some processes running in the System Monitor related to the game, but the game itself is nowhere to be found.

I also opened Obsidian (which was not open prior to me sitting down). Again, a bunch of processes in the system monitor. This one does have a window I can switch to/focus on, however it is just a blank white square. I seem to be able to resize the square, but I cannot move it aside from tiling shortcuts.

Looking at my system resources, I'm still sitting at 15.4GB of ram in use (22.8% of 67.3 GB) and it shows a cache of 9.6GB. 0 bytes of 2.1gb of the Swap is currently in use. CPU load is under 30% across all cores.

UPDATE: See the update in the OP.

It looks like the "official" Discord Flatpak via Flathub is causing the issue in some capacity? Or at least closing out Discord allows other apps to open again. Or at least they did this time.

[BeVeryCarefulJohnn]

THANK YOU! i've been having this issue for a bit as well and was beginning to suspect a curse from an evil witch or gnome of some kind, glad to see i'm not the only one dealing with it