Comment 28 for bug 438379

I started noticing this problem a few days ago. My system has been running smoothly since the original install (10.10). However, it has become totally usuable today. I used to "fix" the problem by inserting a live CD and running fsck, but this time, the bug is systematic. It was apparently just happening after a resume, but now this is also straight after a coldboot, 100% of the time (5 live-cd, fsck, reboot cycles in a row).

I think that this might have something to do with recent power optimization I have made using PowerTop (the problem started to occur approximately at the same time). I remember having set some option related to the hard disk. This might be some kind of bug caused by timeout due to the spinoff on the disk while EXT4 is trying to flush data.

I would have liked to post more details from dmesg, but when this problem happens, it's the whole system that becomes usuable, even the browser.

From the top of my head, this was kernel 2.6.35-icantsayfutherthanthat, on 32 bits install, under 10.10, with EXT4.

I'm now re-installing the whole thing, but this time I won't play with powertop, just to see if it makes any difference.