[Solved] Problems with stability...

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

Hi.

I updated to kde 5 plasma desktop probably about 6 weeks ago... perhaps a little while longer (when it became stable in gentoo). I've been having trouble with stability, and I was wondering if anyone else was having these problems.

I have it installed now on 3 different systems, and they all exhibit the same behavior.

I couldn't even login after initially updating. I found that installing the bleeding edge nvidia drivers fixed this. Now I can login , but I do have some stability issues. The worst, however, is when I switch to a VT (CTRL+ALT+F[1-9]). The system locks up hard, and I have to cut the power. Also, I find that at least 1/2 the time I try to reboot my system, it hangs on its way down.

I did follow the recommendations of the wiki when I upgraded,and I have /default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/plasma set as my profile.

I really thought that if I just updated daily, that eventually these problems would abate. And on the whole, I'd have to say that the systems are more stable -- but that VT issue has not shown any signs of letting up. It is 100%.

The one thing my systems all have in common is that they all have NVIDIA cards (GTX 750, GTX970 and a 750 mobile). They are all amd64 systems and multi-core.

Anyone else having issues? Did I miss something?

Thanks.

G

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

OK...

At first I thought this was an issue with KDE, but that does not seem to be the case. Too many things upgraded on that last update... major kde upgrade, introduction of sddm, x11, kernel and nvidia drivers... difficult to pinpoint.

The problem seems to be with my graphical environment. If I remove xdm from the default runlevel, and come up to a text-only console, I can switch between VTs without any issues, as many times as I like.

If I so much as run a startx and fire up TWM, the problems arise. I cannot switch between VTs without locking up. I cannot even reboot. I have updated my kernel to 4.6.3, but it didn't help. I cannot upgrade xorg-11, because there is only one version in portage right now. I have updated my nvidia from current/stable to the very latest portage has to offer. The problem still persists.

I have looked through my dmesg and my syslogs.... I don't see any real complaints anywhere.

Thanks again.

G
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Logicien · Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 3:58 pm Post subject:

Your problem seem's to be between the Linux video driver and the Xorg one. Without X, no problem because only Linux manage the video card. With X, switch between the Xorg driver and the Linux driver create a freeze.

I only use Nouveau with my

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

Hi Logicien, and thanks for your response.

I am definitely using the nvidia driver, and I have my framebuffer set to uvesafb. It has always worked for me in the past, so I didn't question it. I know I could try nouveau, but I didn't have a lot of luck with that in the past... Is it working well now days? Do you get full graphic accelleration through it? Or does the performance take a hit?

Logicien · Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 7:57 pm Post subject:

Hi,
at the beginning I was using Nvidia drivers. Than I switch to Nouveau. Nouveau give me 3000 FPS according with Glxgears. Nvidia give more. It's like Radeon versus Fglrx, Fglrx is more performant than Radeon. Both Nouveau and Radeon have been enough good for me. I never came back to Nvidia and Fglrx.

I prefer free softwares, so I give a chance to them even if proprietary ones can be better. I can contribute to ameliorate them, as a user I test them at the same time. Because free drivers are often written without full hardware specifications available, developpers do reverse engineering to write the code. It's a kind of miracle for me that this code work.

Linus Torvalds ever denounce the few collaboration of Nvidia with GNU/Linux.
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Paul

tomtom69 · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:04 pm Post subject:

I had to set eselect opengl xorg-x11 (instead of "nvidia") in order to get plasma to start and work. Additionally I switched off all effects because they sometimes freezed the system.
However this is an older board (MCP61) with nvidia-drivers

parramata · n00b Joined: 25 Jul 2004 Posts: 18

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

So it sounds like the only thing to do is try to work around it.

I find it interesting that every time I have a problem that vexes me for this long it always traces itself back to one of the very, very few closed-source components of my system. Nvidia is usually pretty good, but I seem to recall something like this before several years back... they eventually sorted it out. I think most of the Ubuntu-style users never use VTs, so they probably don't even notice, so it probably isn't a priority to NVidia. They will get it eventually, I think. But I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

I think I will try nouveau on one of my systems, and see how it goes.

Thanks.

G
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tomtom69 · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:13 am Post subject:

Nouveau may be the better choice if it works with your chipset (and it works with most chipsets).
I would also use it, but I am stuck at nvidia drivers because nouveau has severe problems with my old board (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50091)

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:00 am Post subject:

Please choose a better title

Problems with stability with kde5

I assume your issues are with kde5, so I leave this topic as is.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

There is no kde5.

gerard27 · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 12:14 pm Post subject:

@genstorm

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:09 pm Post subject:

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

Chiitoo · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 2:07 pm Post subject:

gerard82,

I sometimes call it 'KDEFP5' or 'KDEPF5', more or less as a joke, but in case you haven't bumped to it before, here's something that should clear up at least some things about the official naming they went with: There’s no such thing as KDE 5, and its status on Gentoo

grooveman,

Did you try disabling 'uvesafb' (and any other in-kernel framebuffer drivers)?

You might (probably should) see something like this in your 'dmesg' output:

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

[quote="Chiitoo"]gerard82,

Chiitoo · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 6:01 pm Post subject:

I probably need to make my post a bit more clear-like. Sorry about that! :]

I agree that your issue is not KDE-specific. I added the KDE (kwin/nvidia-drivers) issue I have had as a side-note, as it was related to my experience, and indeed similar, but the main focus was supposed to be that the proprietary 'x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers' and in-kernel framebuffer drivers /really/ isn't a supported combination, and that I have experienced similar, if not identical issues (not KDE-specific) before with said combo.

So whenever you have the time and energy to look into this again, I would suggest disabling 'uvesafb' (do you actually use that for anything else than a high(er) resolution console? I tried it years ago, but I didn't make use of its special features so I went with the more simple 'vesafb').

Also worth trying with 'x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-367.35-r1', if possible.
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Kindest of regardses.

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

OK. I decided to bite the bullet on this one, and go back to VESAFB.

That did the trick! My system behaves as it should. They changed how vesafb works a little bit since I last used it. I used to use vga=0x792. Now it likes vga=0x31B ... just in case anyone else tries this. Otherwise, you get a 640x480 fb display, which isn't really very useful.

I feel like I have a system again. Thanks for the help.

G
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