bug#48604: Linux-libre 5.12.5 freezes

[Leo Famulari]

On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 11:22:25AM +0200, Yusuf Talha via Bug reports for GNU 
Guix wrote:
> hello.  i am using a librebooted thinkpad x200 laptop with gnu guix.  if i 
> use the latest kernel on my system, my computer suddenly freezes without a 
> reason after a while of usage.  it is probably a kernel panic.  older kernels 
> don't have that problem.  i'd be glad if you fix this.  thank you for your 
> attention.

Sorry to hear that.

The first step to solving this the "Guix way" is to rollback your
system, using the `guix system` command [0].

For example, you could use `guix system list-generations` to find the
most recent generation of your system profile that does not use
linux-libre 5.12. Then, you would use `guix system switch-generation $N
&& reboot`, where $N is the number of the generation you'd like to roll
back to.

Once your system is working again, I recommend choosing the 5.10 kernel
series, by putting (kernel linux-libre-5.10) in your config.scm [1],
reconfiguring, and rebooting. 5.11 is no longer available.

The 5.10 kernel series will be supported upstream until the end of 2026
[2], and hopefully will not introduce regressions for your hardware.

Finally, you may search for upstream bug reports, or report the bug to
Linux. I doubt many kernel developers are testing on the x200 at this
point, so they will need bug reports in order to fix the problem.

I hope that helps.

[0] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-system.html
[1] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/operating_002dsystem-Reference.html
[2] https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html