https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106671

--- Comment #11 from Alan W. Irwin Alan.W.Irwin1234@gmail.com --- Thanks for that idle=nomwait suggestion which I have now just tried (verified by

irwin@merlin> cat /proc/cmdline BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.17.0-3-amd64 root=UUID=1e45a1ee-a5d6-4327-9a7b-2663ffc0b157 ro rootwait quiet idle=nomwait

) and I now indeed have a stable result. However, that is currently just for the last 5 minutes in remote access mode. :-) So we will see how this goes for, say, the next two weeks, to see if I can beat my last 4.17.17 remote access uptime record of 6 days.

With regard to your MB BIOS update suggestion, I am going to hold back on that for a while since the techs from a local computer company that assembled my box in May felt such updates were dangerous and therefore a last resort. And that is also the consistent advice I have gotten for the other 3 Linux boxes I have had assembled for me since I started using Linux in 1996. Of course, this year may be a special case with all the Meltdown (although not for this AMD hardware) and many variants of SPECTRE out there so I do plan to update the BIOS within the next couple of months on the assumption that the SPECTRE BIOS mitigations recommended by AMD to ASUS for this hardware (PRIME B350+ MB with AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 64GB RAM, and ASUS RX 550 graphics card) will have matured by then.

But before I implement that planned BIOS update, I am hoping that the current cutting-edge Linux graphics stack (which according to a senior Phoronix poster works well for the RX 560) will also give me stable direct-display results for the RX 550 once that version of the graphics stack propagates to Debian Testing. I estimate that propagation time will be a couple of more months based on how quickly elements of the cutting-edge Linux graphics stack such as the kernel has propagated in the past from upstream to Debian Testing.

In sum, it is a waiting game now to see if your idle=nomwait suggestion restores the complete Linux stability I was used to with my old box (for Debian Oldstable = Jessie) for at least the remote display case, and if that stability is obviously much better (i.e., at least a couple of weeks uptime with no lockups) then I will try the direct display case again with idle=nomwait to see if it makes that case stable as well.

Thanks, Michel, for your on-going helpful suggestions for dealing with this troubling instability issue (these troubling instability issues?) for my new Linux box.

Alan