[Solved] KiCad Crashing Ubuntu

Software
1

Hello everyone,

I trying to build my first PCB and after a while KiCad freezes the whole system and then my PC restarts. There is no constant time interval (30min, 1.5h,…) and no clear method under which condition this is happening.
Sometimes it happens in the schematic design, sometime when I place the PCB (never in the footprint or component editor).

My system:
Ubuntu 16.04 on Asus UX305
Kicad 4.0.2+dfsg1-stable
wxWidgets 3.0.2 Unicode and Boos 1.58.0
Platform: Linux 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64, 64bit

I did not find any related topic on the net. Maybe some of you experienced the same.

Thanks

2

KiCad 4.0.2 is hoplessly outdated. (And has a lot of bugs that have been fixed a long time ago.)

At least update to 4.0.7. There will not be any updates to version 4. KiCad is already at version 5.0.2. The next release will be 5.1.0 (Project compatible with v5.0.2 but new user interface)

If you really only just started then i would suggest you switch directly to version 5. This will require you to transfer your current project to version 5.
These two articles are a must read if you decide to go down this road:

3

I upgraded to 5.0.2. Now I have to resolve the footprints and library issues.

I report back if the crashing problem persists.

4

Side note: Upgrading did not work because the whole library and footprint references changed. It was easier to completely purge the old version and fresh install the newer one (custom libraries and footprint have to be added manually again).

The freeze and crash still persists. I worked ~2h to clear old footprints and replace parts in the eschema. After working a few minutes in the PCB Design the system freezes and Ubuntu restarts.

kicad 5.0.2-bee760~70~ubuntu16.04.1
wxWidgets 3.0.2 Unicode and Boost 1.58.0
Platform: Linux 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64

5

check the footprint library table as suggested in my faq article above. Does it point to local libraries or to github?

6

The footprints point to my local installed libraries when I installed Kicad

${KISYSMOD}/Capacitor_THT.pretty

where

KISYSMOD = /usr/share/kicad/modules

this is valid for all ‘native’ libraries. For my own creations/ modified libs I have a seperate libraryfolder

/media/..../PCB/LocalLibary

And some special ones located in ‘Project Specific Libraries’ in the projects.

7

Since your whole system freezes and restarts I would blame bad drivers or faulty hardware and not KiCad. That is about the only 2 things that can actually do that to a computer nowadays, despite all the bsod jokes.

That it only happens with KiCad is likely correlated to using OpenGL and higher than normal load on your pc.
Try running a heavy opengl benchmark and see if your system crashes then.

8

I’d tend to agree with @qu1ck here. Restarting Ubuntu typically means a kernel panic, which would be driver related. Possibly your video driver. If so, you can try running in Fallback mode and see if that helps.

BTW, what is your video card and video driver? The output of lspci -vv can help here.

9

After a few update/ upgrades.

Video card:

  *-display               
   description: VGA compatible controller
   product: Sky Lake Integrated Graphics
   vendor: Intel Corporation
   physical id: 2
   bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
   version: 07
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
   configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
   resources: irq:126 memory:de000000-deffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:f000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

OpengGl:

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 18.0.5
10

Quick update: After the updates (Kicad 5, Intel Graphics and OpenGl) I now worked for ~4h switching between Eschema, PCB and various library editors. So far no crashes or disturbances.

@Rene_Poschl: Thanks for the hint to upgrade to 5. It is very intuitive to use and I enjoy the overall handling better than before.

1 Like
11

Colleagues and myself worked now combined >10h with Kicad under the same conditions (all machines are setup using the same image and configurations).

There are no Problems.

Thanks to all!

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