Sandy Bridge X lockup

Ivan The Viking · Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 1:57 pm Post subject: Sandy Bridge X lockup

Hello all,

This is an odd one for me, typically the forums and some creative thinking fix my issues, but for a change, I have to ask for some guidance!

I have a Sandy Bridge H67 based board with a i7-2600 processor. I've been using the onboard video as a stop-gap until I can pony up some cash for a "real" video card.

My symptom : X freezes the whole system almost instantly after gdm loads, or when I open fluxbox using startx from a terminal, EXCEPT for when I use 2.6.37 for a kernel. I just tried 3.0-RC4 since I saw a ton of fixes on the changelog, but the symptoms are the same as the kernels between them.

Here is what is installed :

chithanh · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 1:39 am Post subject:

Does the system totally freeze or can you still access it via ssh?
Try booting with i915.semaphore=1 kernel parameter.

Ivan The Viking · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:50 am Post subject:

The system becomes so frozen the software based reset switch on it doesn't work. SSH obviously is a lost cause, as is the hope for any log file to get written, that's what is making this difficult.

I had tried i915.semaphores=0 in the past, that didn't help. I never tried setting it to one, as I thought that would be the default, but forcing the driver to use semaphores now makes the screen screw up when it freezes. A quick running strip of nonsense appears on the left of my monitor.

I had read somewhere via a google search that that was *the* big change going to 2.6.38 and newer.

I using the DVI out, not the VGA if that matters, and I may try swapping them to see if that changes anything. I'm doubtful it will, but at this point I'll try anything.

Thanks for the help!

chithanh · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:54 am Post subject:

Maybe you can setup a network console to capture some of the things that the kernel outputs before the system freezes.