Bug#859639: Similar issues here

[Samuel Smith <leon36@gmail.com>]

Having the same problems here on a Lenovo T520. It used to happen only 
if I had the internal screen and an external monitor both active. Now it 
happens randomly with only and external monitor hooked up since the 
upgrade to 4.9.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.65-3 (2017-12-03) x86_64 
GNU/Linux.

I get random screen freezes where I can still move the mouse cursor, but 
clicking on anything doesn't do anything. Usually only happens when 
heavily using Firefox. Machine has 16GB of ram as well.

Xorg logs would have:
[201653.062] (WW) modeset(0): flip queue failed: Cannot allocate memory
[201653.062] (WW) modeset(0): Page flip failed: Cannot allocate memory
[201730.916] (WW) modeset(0): flip queue failed: Cannot allocate memory
[201730.916] (WW) modeset(0): Page flip failed: Cannot allocate memory
[201730.916] (WW) modeset(0): flip queue failed: Cannot allocate memory
[201730.916] (WW) modeset(0): Page flip failed: Cannot allocate memory

dmesg would have:
[drm:ironlake_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun


I have since stopped using the modeset driver and added to 
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf


Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Graphics"
        Driver          "intel"
EndSection


No issues yet but I will post back if it happens.