Mysterious Freeze

[Dolio]

Bullshit. While the fault may be in X.org, neither X.org or Gentoo devs carry any responsibility for fixing this. The responsibility rests solely on nVidia for as long as they insist on only providing non-free drivers.

There are many people using ATi cards with the X.org open source drivers that have this same problem. So it's quite possible that it is an X.org problem in need of their fixing.

On the other hand, that doesn't really explain why the problem occurs with the proprietary nVidia driver, but not with the open source nv driver...

I just had a thought now, though. I'm on vacation right now, and so I'm unable to test on my computer, so I have a question/request for all the nVidia users. Does everyone have 'Option "RenderAccel" "true"' in their xorg.conf? If so, do you still get the freezes with it off? The only connection I can think of between the proprietary nVidia driver and some of the open source ATi drivers is that they have render acceleration. The nv driver might not (if it does, the acceleration is terrible, but I suspect it doesn't).

XRender is used pretty much constantly, because it's used in freetype for antialiasing text, so it's not impossible that that could be the problem. All ATi drivers that support render acceleration have it on all the time, and lots of proprietary nVidia people will probably have it on as well, because you need it for good composite performance.

[korngerd]

I just had a thought now, though. I'm on vacation right now, and so I'm unable to test on my computer, so I have a question/request for all the nVidia users. Does everyone have 'Option "RenderAccel" "true"' in their xorg.conf? If so, do you still get the freezes with it off? The only connection I can think of between the proprietary nVidia driver and some of the open source ATi drivers is that they have render acceleration. The nv driver might not (if it does, the acceleration is terrible, but I suspect it doesn't).

I don't have the RenderAccel setting (which would probably default to "false," I'm guessing). I'm using the proprietary nVidia driver (binary, closed-source one). Again, system's running:
gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.9-r9
xorg-x11-6.8.0-r3
nvidia-kernel-1.0.6111-r3
nvidia-glx-1.0.6111

[iarwain]

1) ATI drivers uses GLX
2) Nvidia close-source drivers uses GLX
3) Nvidia open-source driver doesn't use GLX

1) and 2) = freeze
3) = no freeze

However, my system has crashed even without using a glx app.

[joehni]

1) ATI drivers uses GLX
2) Nvidia close-source drivers uses GLX
3) Nvidia open-source driver doesn't use GLX

1) and 2) = freeze
3) = no freeze

Omitting preemptive seems really to stabalize the system. At least it freezes not deterministically exiting a GLX app.

However, my system has crashed even without using a glx app.

Mine too. Most of the time scrolling in Konqueror with the mouse, once even scrolling with the keyboard in gvim. Had no freezes though with removed preemtive flag yet, although this is no evidence, used the system without this flag not long enough now.

[Dolio]

I guess GLX may be the culprit then. However, I'm at a loss as to why that would be the problem, when I almost never have any problem running GLX apps, and most freezes occur when I haven't been using GLX at all.

joehni: You'll get a freeze eventually. I've been running without preempt for a while, and even without LAPIC, 4k stacks, etc. that have been reported to cause problems for other people, but I still get freezes.

If GLX is the common element, though, I don't know how to explain the fact that the open source ATi drivers use a different GLX implementation than the nVidia drivers do.

[korngerd]

I'm just wondering - is anyone here running a kernel compiled with genkernel? If not, would that be something we should try (to be sure that we're not doing something stupid that the gentoo devs didn't expect us to do)???

[bunder]

I use genkernel with menuconfig.

[schmmd]

I found that after I upgraded to 2.6 and turned udev on, the NVIDIA drivers crashed on startx. It led me to a black screen that refused keyboard input. Other people have noticed a connection between udev and the nvidia propietary drivers. Although I am at a loss for a fix. Udev is off for now! (But I need it so badly!)

[iarwain]

I've always used devfs.

[schmmd]

My problem was a mouse problem! See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... 62#1896862 if you did not properly configure your mouse in the xorg.conf for a udev filesystem. Incorrect setup leads to a black screen and computer freeze on startx.

[korngerd]

My problem was a mouse problem! See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... 62#1896862 if you did not properly configure your mouse in the xorg.conf for a udev filesystem. Incorrect setup leads to a black screen and computer freeze on startx.

I think what most people have here is a setup where Xorg starts properly, and mysteriously crashes in the middle of something.

I'm going to check to see if this could be a Linux kernel specific problem or not by trying FreeBSD. If a BSD setup kills Xorg, we can probably be sure that it's the NVidia and ATI drivers not cooperating with Xorg (I think).

[korngerd]

I use genkernel with menuconfig.

Hm... Then I guess it's not a misconfiguration issue that we're having... Boy, am I out of ideas here.

[cybe]

My friend started complaining about this... and now all of a sudden I notice it's happening here too... no input, but I can move my mouse, so I have to ssh in and kill something. Damn.. Just found this, and other threads.. Doesn't look nice...



first I thought it was XMMS because it froze while using it twice, and killing it helped..
then GAIM...

but i don't know...

Linux daneel 2.6.9-nitro4-gcc34
Radeon Mobility U1

[korngerd]

X is becoming worse by the day. It's crashing in about 10 minutes now (with just Firefox and GKrellm running), so it's really bad now. Looking at my system logs, the only error-like thing that's happening at the time is a failed nmbd packet (seems it's part of samba). So, just a wild guess, but how many people here are running samba and getting this crash? Doubt it's related, but heck... we're desperate here

[bunder]

X is becoming worse by the day. It's crashing in about 10 minutes now (with just Firefox and GKrellm running), so it's really bad now. Looking at my system logs, the only error-like thing that's happening at the time is a failed nmbd packet (seems it's part of samba). So, just a wild guess, but how many people here are running samba and getting this crash? Doubt it's related, but heck... we're desperate here

Nope, its not samba.

[joehni]

joehni: You'll get a freeze eventually. I've been running without preempt for a while, and even without LAPIC, 4k stacks, etc. that have been reported to cause problems for other people, but I still get freezes.

As already feared, X was frozen again despite the missing preemptive flag in the kernel

[bunder]

It appears to come and go... I haven't had it happen in the past 2 weeks...

[korngerd]

Using the "nv" driver seems to be a lot more stable than the "nvidia" driver (running for two days now without a crash). Of course, I lose GLX, which is kind of meaningless, since I bought this NVidia card for its 3d capabilities.....

[ikaro]

if you play games then its isn't the best thing, but for desktop usage it isn't that bad.

Looks like this is a permanent issue, since it been around for years w/out a fix.
bye bye games in linux.

[korngerd]

if you play games then its isn't the best thing, but for desktop usage it isn't that bad.

Looks like this is a permanent issue, since it been around for years w/out a fix.
bye bye games in linux.

yeah, thats the only problem i have too... no games in linux... hopefully someone "up top" sees the problem and gives us "minions" some fixes *pleads for help*...

just wondering, is there a bugzilla for this open already?

[bunder]

Looks like this is a permanent issue, since it been around for years w/out a fix.
bye bye games in linux.

Then how come it doesn't affect everyone...? (besides the fact that not everyone is a gamer)

[gian]

I have the same problem on 2 different computers both running the latest (emerge sync-wise ) software on their respective architecture:

is an amd64+nvidia the other is a pentium4+ati ...
so I believe the issue is not with the graphic driver... both run Xorg and the freeze happens running xscreensaver (on different screensaver, I think only the GL based ones...

I do have preemptible kernel set on both machines... and will now try to remove the option on one of them to do some tests... hope that is not the poblem, since it should afect performance, (and I'm quite concerned with performance due to the numerical applications I usually run, even if preemption might not be important with our homebrew electronic circuit simulators)


a few minutes ago I was trying to send this post while testing (using the xscreensaver -demo menu) which screensaver caused problems (resorting to "visual memory" of what was the image "freezing" on the screen) and got a freeze on one of thesavers I was testing... obviously not the first one and obviously after having already tested some of the sure-culprits...)... I am afraid this bug is very "time dependent" or if you prefer very subtly deterministic... in other words I am afraid it will be real tough to eliminate!!!



hope the problem gets soled soon !!!

[gian]

I personally do not care about games... and mostly do not cae about 3d GL applications, but that does not mean that this problem should not be solved,
did anyone try with the super latest 2.6.9r14 kernelon amd64 ??

[korngerd]

I personally do not care about games... and mostly do not cae about 3d GL applications, but that does not mean that this problem should not be solved,
did anyone try with the super latest 2.6.9r14 kernelon amd64 ??

I'm wondering if it really is a kernel issue or not. I seem to be getting quite a long uptime here with the opensource Nvidia driver (the "nv" driver instead of the "nvidia" driver). I've had to disable GLX for now, but if you're not into 3D apps or games, the opensource drivers might be a solution for you (at least for your Nvidia machine). I'm guessing they have an open ATI driver as well ?

[joehni]

Today I had another freeze. Meanwhile I run sshd and I was able to connect to my "frozen" system. Interesting symptom calling top: X consumed more than 95% of the CPU! But even after killing X the keyboard and screen was still frozen (though I had now a weird screen output). At least I could shutdown the system from the remote console ...