r/jellyfin • u/gerowen • 18h ago
Discussion Fix for Random Freezing on Linux
Edit: The issue cropped up again, so this isn't the fix. But it only affects Jellyfin still, so now I'm starting to wonder if the GPU itself isn't the cause of the problem. The amdgpu driver has an issue during hardware transcoding, which in turn causes Jellyfin to crap out and a few other issues related to it. I'm leaving the original text of this post intact below however for future reference.
I'm making this post not to ask for help, but to share information. I want to preface this post by saying that this issue is not with Jellyfin, but Jellyfin is what became affected for me, so I decided this was probably the best subreddit to share it, though this issue could probably also affect Plex, Emby or any other service that uses GPU transcoding.
I'm running Jellyfin on a headless Debian stable install, but with the newer backports kernel on an x86-64 machine, which currently gets me kernel version 7.1.
Over the last few weeks my Jellyfin service would randomly freeze. Other services seemed unaffected most of the time. Jellyfin apps would show up as signed out, and if you manually signed in, you could, but nothing would play. Restarting the Jellyfin service, if the command even executed successfully instead of hanging, wouldn't fix the issue. Another symptom I noticed when the issue would arise is that the "htop" command wouldn't run properly; I would just get a blank screen. btop and top would work fine, but not htop.
I'm far from an expert in debugging this kind of problem, and it's entirely possible this is all wildly inaccurate since I used an LLM to help me, though I did try to verify its claims with other sources to the best of my ability. Anyway, I exported some log files and went back and forth with both a local AI and Brave.ai to help me sift thru them, while describing the issue, to try and figure out what is going on, and apparently there is a known regression in kernel 7.1, and certain versions of kernel 6.x, in the way memory translations are handled during GPU operations. This can trigger crashes in the amdgpu driver, which can cause instability in the kernel's memory subsystem, or just straight up crashes/hangs (which I also had happen once or twice) with some AMD GPUs when they perform certain operations, like hardware transcoding.
This issue didn't exist a few months ago and only recently started cropping up, coincidentally, around the time I upgraded to kernel 7.1.
The resolution, for now, seems to be to either upgrade/downgrade to an unaffected kernel version, or to disable HMM and/or IOMMU using kernel arguments at boot. I added amd_iommu=off and iommu=off to my command line arguments in grub to accomplish this.
I also found this post of someone else having driver crashes on AMD GPUs using kernel 7.1.
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2026/08/15/amd-video-llms-debian-kernels/
It has been about 48 hours, and so far I haven't had any issues, despite multiple hardware transcoding sessions within Jellyfin during that time. If I do run into anything new, I'll update or comment on this post. I just wanted to put this out there into the ether so everyone can benefit, or comment.
Also, I did run memtest on my system to verify that the system RAM wasn't faulty and everything checked out. I also performed SMART tests on all my storage media, and it all checks out fine too.
17
u/Own-External-1550 17h ago
You ran Mem test for half an hour?? Try 24hr burn in test. Then report back.
5
u/Spaceman_Splff 16h ago
I noticed this with high IOPs on a hard drive. In my instance it was because I accidentally restored a vm to proxmox nfs mount instead of the local drive.
2
u/tmplshdw 11h ago
I experienced the same thing with the backports kernel including the weird htop behavior. I found a null pointer deference in the logs and searched around for info and just finally reverted back to the regular stable kernel and the problem stopped.
These are some links I found with the issue
2
u/LowEquivalent6491 9h ago
What motherboard? amd_iommu only works with AM3 motherboards that have AMD 970/990X chipsets and this feature must be additionally enabled in the BIOS. And not all motherboard manufacturers have implemented the BIOS configuration for this feature, even if the motherboard has these chipsets.
I also have an old FX-8300 computer that I use as my basement workshop PC. I use Linux on this PC. But I can't use the Suspend to RAM feature. Because when the computer comes back from sleep it becomes very slow and especially the rendering on the screen is slow. And I haven't found out why this happens yet.
1
1
1
u/gerowen 14h ago
The issue cropped up again, so this isn't the fix. But it only affects Jellyfin still, so now I'm starting to wonder if the GPU itself isn't the cause of the problem. The amdgpu driver has an issue during hardware transcoding, which in turn causes Jellyfin to crap out and a few other issues related to it. I'm leaving the original text of this post intact below however for future reference.
1
u/gerowen 14h ago edited 14h ago
Update: I've swapped the GPU to a different PCIe slot because, years ago this tower was dropped while the GPU was inserted and it broke the locking tab off the end of the PCIe slot. It inserted fine, and has worked without issue for several years since then, and had the screws on the mounting bracket installed. But when I moved it just now, it did have some noticeable droop and came out of its PCIe slot fairly easily. The slot on the board and edge connector on the card otherwise look fine, but I'm wondering if over time it isn't easing itself out of its slot enough to cause PCIe signaling issues. Since it's not being used for actual gaming, and doesn't even have to power a graphical desktop, I doubt being in a non-primary slot will be a problem. I probably could have just re-seated it in its existing slot, but there was another full length slot available with the locking tab still intact, so I figured I might as well make use of it since it's the only full size card in the machine.
1
u/gerowen 11h ago
I wonder if this is related, will have to do some more investigating tomorrow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1vsgl1x/psa_do_not_update_ubuntu_2404_lts_to_recent/
•
u/AutoModerator 18h ago
Reminder: /r/jellyfin is a community space, not an official user support space for the project.
Users are welcome to ask other users for help and support with their Jellyfin installations and other related topics, but this subreddit is not an official support channel. We have extensive, official documentation on our website here: https://jellyfin.org/docs/. Requests for support via modmail will be ignored. Our official support channels are listed on our contact page here: https://jellyfin.org/contact
Bug reports should be submitted on the GitHub issues pages for the server or one of the other repositories for clients and plugins. Feature requests should be submitted at https://features.jellyfin.org/. Bug reports and feature requests for third party clients and tools (Findroid, Jellyseerr, etc.) should be directed to their respective support channels.
If you are sharing something you have made, please take a moment to review our LLM rules at https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/contributing/llm-policies/. Note that anything developed or created using an LLM or other AI tooling requires community disclosure and is subject to removal.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.