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I've had this strange problem with my Raspberry Pi 2 for a long time now. I have it set up as a sort of third monitor for my main computer. I've installed Synergy and Redshift, then set the screen to never time out. I usually just open it up to my calendar or to-do list and leave it there, interacting every once in a while. But I've had this persistent problem where, when I launch a web browser, it works, but when I go to something like Any.do or Google Calendar, and then the whole screen fills with one color, usually a lighter one of some kind, and the system stops responding.

Epiphany browser seems less prone to this than Chromium or Firefox but isn't totally immune. I've wiped and reinstalled Raspbian a number of times and this still happens. I don't know if it's a bug with Redshift (EDIT: it's not, behavior persists without redshift), a memory issue (EDIT: unlikely tried running task manager and memory never got past even 25% use, CPU occasionally got to the 90s but never 100), something wrong with my SD card or other piece of hardware or what. Any ideas?

EDIT: Upgraded to the latest version of Raspbian and on a clean install the issue persists in a slightly different way: instead of displaying one color, the signal to the display just cuts out, as if I'd unplugged the HDMI cable. When enabling the full KMS GL driver, the behavior gores back to what I initially described (full screen of a random color, light brown in the most recent example).

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  • "I don't know if it's a bug with Redshift..." -> Then the place to start is to live without redshift for whatever duration it takes to rule it out. IOW, if it doesn't happen without redshift, then it is probably a bug in redshift...
    – goldilocks
    May 1, 2020 at 17:21
  • Logical. So I've eliminated Redshift as a possible sole cause - ran the browser without it and still got the same crash.
    – JPTiger
    May 1, 2020 at 21:03

1 Answer 1

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OP here, seems to have been a power issue. Despite the low voltage icon never appearing, the issue seems to have been fixed by swapping power "bricks" (the plug with electric male and USB-A female). If you're experiencing something similar, try changing your power supply.

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  • Please accept your own answer with a click on the tick on its left side. Only this will finish the question and it will not pop up again year for year.
    – Ingo
    May 24, 2020 at 8:32
  • Done. Still learning the system. Thanks!
    – JPTiger
    May 25, 2020 at 13:30
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    That's the way to get reputation ;-)
    – Ingo
    May 25, 2020 at 16:32

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