Whonix-Workstation started freezing some time ago (back on Whonix 14). I’d just turn it on and I’d have a 4 out of 5 chance that the screen wouldn’t even resize because it’d just freeze before that.
I have to force reset over and over and over again until it doesn’t freeze upon booting (Well, only after the DE popped up), but even so it usually freezes later on (When opening a program/browser mostly, but it also happens when the VM is idle)
This doesn’t seem to affect the Gateway and I have no idea what to do… I’ve spent some time reading threads from people having the same issue, tried different things (Changing DE, increasing RAM, and a couple more things I can’t remember) but nothing works.
Whonix used to work fine, it just started doing this out of the blue, and that happens on all three of my computers.
Does anyone know what else I could try? This is getting a bit frustrating. Thanks in advance!
Actually I’m not sure I tried on my third computer, but I’m certain the issue happens on at least two of them.
I really doubt it’s a RAM issue considering both computers I tested this on have 16GB of RAM, 4 of which are dedicated to the workstation (Tried with 8GB as well).
Are all of your three of your computers identical hardware?
Not exactly. But the host OS is basically the same on all computers (As I script my installs and just restore backups). Maybe there’s a common host issue? I just don’t understand why it would only affect Whonix-Workstation…
This is happening in Both Whonix 14 and 15?
Yes. I’ve been plagued by this issue for a good number of months already…
Did you increase your RAM over the maximum or equal to whats available?
No, I don’t see how that would help to give a VM more RAM than my host has…
Do you normally have a large number of browser tabs open?
In the VM? Not really, it often freezes before I can open multiple tabs in my browser.
As for the host, doesn’t seem to matter. If you’re referring to RAM usage, I definitely have enough for the VM.
Are you running more than one Whonix-Workstation at a time?
Nope.
Are your running multi-proccesses on the host while using Whonix?
I’m not sure what you mean by that… Sorry.
I tried creating Debian VMs running both XFCE and KDE, changing the RAM doesn’t do anything.
I had a weird bug on one of my tests (On Whonix) where a key I’d just pressed kept being typed for about 5 seconds (Even if my fingers weren’t on my keyboard) before the freeze happened. I’m not sure why.
Adding more RAM than what is available can cause Low RAM issues.
Meaning, are you running a large number of applications/processes on the host?
Do you have the same problem with Debian VMs. I’m trying to rule out Whonix.
Possibly a common host issue. Could also be an VM config issue since al Whonix VMs are identical. Could you try installing an default host OS on a flash drive and boot from that. Then download fresh Whonix VMs.
With Low RAM issues, its common for Whonix-Workstation to be affected and not Whonix-Gateway. Whonix-Gateway requires minimal resources to run.
Do you have the same problem with Debian VMs. I’m trying to rule out Whonix.
No, Debian works fine. Sorry I just realized I wasn’t clear in my answer.
As for the low RAM issue, I have plenty of RAM available and the Workstation has 4GB allocated to it.
The number of processes running on the host doesn’t seem to matter either as well.
I’ll try installing another OS on a USB drive soon, I’ll report back what happens.
Sorry for the delayed response. I haven’t tested running a different distribution as host yet.
However, yesterday I decided to troubleshoot some more yesterday following Patrick’s advice.
Took me a bit of time to enable persistent systemd journal log because of the freezes.
After doing that I shut down the VMs to try and get it to bug again. While they were shutdown I decided to update my host (I check for updates several times a day so I wasn’t running old software).
This updated both the libvirt and spice packages, and I haven’t had a single problem with Whonix_Workstation since.
I’m kind of confused to be honest, but I won’t complain.
My whonix workstatation keeps freezing as well, but all my packages are updated
libvirt-clients is already the newest version (5.0.0-4).
libvirt-daemon-system is already the newest version (5.0.0-4).
qemu-kvm is already the newest version (1:3.1+dfsg-8~deb10u1).
virt-manager is already the newest version (1:2.0.0-3).
Does your system freeze if you have only 1 browser tab open? Could you try just surfing with only one browser tab without watching any videos for 15 minutes or so. If you don’t have any problems, open a dozen browser tabs (they can all be from the same website) and try watching a long video. Can you reproduce the problem by doing that?
I run Tor Browser it start with Whonix Welcome page and then go afk for 5-10 min. When I came back it was frozen.
One time it freeze 1 min after start, no programs were running.
I will try to reinstall host and workstations when http://yuxv6qujajqvmypv.onion/ A Beginner Friendly Comprehensive Guide to Installing and Using A Safer Anonymous Operating System will be online. Now it’s offline
I believe the end of https://pastebin.com/LZjPxgh4 shows a condition that can eat up memory. Could you use a search engine to look for some of the journal messages and see what you come up with.
I changed it from 6GB RAM to 8 and I still get this bug.
And I installed a fresh Debian 10 and Whonix and use it with default configuration ( I didn’t add extra ram or cpu) and there was no freezes.
It’s some bug if you upgrade Debian 9 to 10 and Whonix 14 to 15 you get freezes in Workstation
@Patrick@0brand I was wrong. With fresh Debian 10 and Whonix 15 still get freezes. Just sometimes it might take 1 hour to wait the freeze, other times I get freeze in 5-10 mins. All other VM’s are working fine. I get same errors RIP: 0033:0x71fb41004427just the code 0x71fb41004427 is different. Only stuff I can find in google about this kind of errors it’s bad RAM. But I think it’s not my case because all other VM work fine.
Sorry to hear that. Is it possible you have a flakey RAM module? There are free and open-source memory diagnostic tools available. You might want to look into that.
You might also want ot monitor system processes on the host and VMs. See if there are noticible differneces when using Whonix vs. Non-Whonix VMs.