r/linux • u/No-Mention-4812 • 9h ago
Discussion LINUX KEEPS RESTARTING
Weird issue I can't figure out. My desktop (Linux Mint XFCE) randomly restarts, but only when it's hooked up to Ethernet. Unplug the cable or turn off the router and it's totally stable. Right now I'm just tethering internet off my phone through USB-C and it hasn't restarted once.
Stuff I've already checked/ruled out:
- Swapped the router AND the cable for new ones, still happens
- Went through journalctl for the previous boots — no kernel panic, no Oops, no MCE, no thermal shutdown, no watchdog reset. Nothing. The log for the crashed boot just stops mid-sentence basically, no shutdown sequence logged at all
- Ran smartctl on my SSD thinking maybe it was dying — health says PASSED, no reallocated sectors, temps fine. Only weird thing in the error log was a handful of READ commands that got cut off within like 30-40 seconds of boot, which honestly just looks like the power died mid-read, not the drive actually failing
- Also tried moving the PC off the extension board straight into the wall socket, didn't help
It's not instant either — I can be connected and just sitting there and it's fine, but if I actually start using the internet (browsing etc) for like 5-10 min it eventually reboots, sometimes 2-3 times back to back before it stabilizes again.
Onboard NIC, pretty sure it's a Realtek chip but I need to double check. Anyone run into this before? Trying to figure out if this is a dying NIC, some driver issue (r8169 maybe), or something totally different I'm not thinking of. Can post more logs if it helps.
1
u/Adept_Percentage6893 3h ago
Kind of hard to figure out from the description. It could be a hardware failure that is only triggered when there's activity on the NIC.
I would look at the logs again of the installed OS to see what the OS at least thinks the reason for the reboot is. It's probably not the hard drive but you can test by booting from USB to a live environment and seeing if you can coax a self-reboot out of that.
Sometimes a driver error might cause a kernel panic. If it does it should produce a stack trace that lets you know what was running when the panic happened.
You might also try to boot to multi-user mode to see if it only happens when you're in a GUI or if it gives you more information.
If your firmware is super old you might also try to update it.
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u/0riginal-Syn 2h ago
First Rule #1.
Second I would recommend going to r/linuxmint for issues on Mint.
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u/ang-p 2h ago
Weird issue I can't figure out.
Hardly surprising when you couldn't figure out the words
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u/1neStat3 3h ago
https://askubuntu.com/a/1472422