X.org Lockups (part 2)

smypee · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 64 Location: Zurich

After I upgraded to modular X.org I followed the fonts howto http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts and then everything was beautiful.

Mindphaser · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:58 pm Post subject:

Mindphaser · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:49 pm Post subject:

Zee · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 4:08 pm Post subject:

I've removed the nvidia driver and the system "feels" much faster, no 3D acceleration though but can live without it.

we'll see.

zee

ryan83vt · Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:01 am Post subject:

I have had the random freezing. Not all through OpenGL intensive stuff either -- often it's when I'm browsing in Firefox. I recently got new hard drives because my old ones were making some noise and I thought they might be about to fail, causing the problem. After a fresh install of Gentoo on the new drives, I just had my first lockup. I have a geforce FX 5200. I'm running:

xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6
nvidia-kernel-1.0.8178-r3
nvidia-glx-1.0.8178-r1

smypee · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 64 Location: Zurich

I read in some other forum that setting AGP to lower speed (2x/4x) and turning of AGP fast writes may help. Unfortuantely my bios does not support adjusting these values and I can't figure out how to tell agpgart to do so. maybe someone with the lockups and a bios that supports AGP mode setting could try out...

Kronoz · n00b Joined: 01 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

I've never has these lockups with Xorg version in Debian repos.
X Window System Version 6.9.0 (Debian 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 20060403233528 David Nusinow <dnusinow@debian.org>)
_________________
Gentoo Linux Kernel 2.6.15-gentoo-r4
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+
1024GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 6200

ryan83vt · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject:

harlequin11 · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 44

Damn, now I'm getting the same problems.

Recently upgraded to modular x, then;
xgl
gcc3.4
emerge world
kernel upgrade (2.6.9 - 2.6.16)

In that order. Now whenever the screensaver starts it runs for an arbitrary amount of time and then I get a complete freeze, I have yet to experience a non-screensaver freeze but it does freeze sometimes with the xscreensaver preview winow open.

EDIT: My very latest move there was upgrading the kernel. Fortunately I still have 2.6.9 in my grub conf so I'm going to go back and try that out. I'll let you know how I go.

EDIT2: Okay, so 3 hours in an it's looking good. So it's either something I've compiled into the kernel, or something that's happened during boot with the new kernel. Could it be that modular X requires the kernel under which it's built? Seems highly unlikely, but that's one conclusion to draw from the pattern of peoples experiences.

L

ryan83vt · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:42 pm Post subject:

My theory is that it has something to do with hardware accelleration. Because I could get it by doing nothing (I use KDE) while other people would have to be doing something 3D (like a screensaver). However, I found last year that QT uses OpenGL libraries. So, just using KDE could cause a freeze because it's using OpenGL. I wonder if GTK and Gnome are the same way.

harlequin11 · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 44

The only issue with that theory - at least with respect to the problem that I was experiencing - is that I was using xgl and even when I was madly rotating my desktop around, I didn't experience a crash. For me it was only when a screensaver was running.

Kronoz · n00b Joined: 01 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

ryan83vt · Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:28 am Post subject:

Here's everything I know:
I think the switch to my new video card is what screwed it up for me. I've tried older kernel versions, newer kernel versions, older and newer nvidia drivers, and get the lockups with all. I've also replaced my hard drives but that wasn't it. I also know that when I'm in Windows I get no crashes. However, I have not yet tried playing a video game in Windows to see if maybe it really is a hardware problem. In linux, I'm currently using the nv driver and I haven't had a lockup for several days.

harlequin11 · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 44

Out of interest, what kernels have you used?

harlequin11 · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 44

I just booted into windows to play Civ4 and I experienced the same kind of hard crash when a saved game was loading. I'm thinking it's a hardware issue which is a real shit. Interestingly enough though, I still have yet to experience a crash in nix under 2.6.9 running full acceleration under Gnome + XGL, I find that really strange...

chookie · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 7

Hey Guys, ive been following this thread for a few weeks. I too have the same problem

But what ive noticed is a lot of us have similar system specs..

im running -

Gentoo Linux Kernel 2.6.15-gentoo-r7
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+
1024GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 6100

i also notice that it will crash very easily under a web browser... especially if i use the scroll bar and scroll quickly.
also changing my frame buffer size (i got onboard graphics) will change the frequency of lockups... but i havent played around with this enough.

ive used the vga, vesa, and nv drivers with no luck.

i mite just slap on a different PCI-Ex card.

so frustrating!!!!
dan

guino · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 7

Hi there,

I also have been following this for some time. Also, as previous post, I see random locks quite often when,

1: playing with scroll bars
2: when I start typing an http address, and the selector of previous sites in the history appears under the address field.
3: 1 and 2 specially in konqueror as opposite to firefox
4: spontaneously when screen saver starts
5: glxgears behaves oddly

My specs, similar as previous post,
2.6.16-gentoo-r3
x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ (1Gb RAM)
x11-base/xorg-x11-7.0-r1
nForce3 chipset
nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]
sys-libs/glibc-2.4-r1 USE="nls nptl nptlonly userlocales"
media-video/nvidia-kernel-1.0.8756

prelink

I am also available for some testing if needed.

-Alex

hlevyn · Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:12 pm Post subject:

Howdy all,

I recently upgraded from X.org 6.8.2-r6 to X.org 7.0-r1 and am now getting some funky results. The main error I'm aware of right now is that windows do not seem to finish drawing. A screenshot of what I mean can be found here. This happens with all applications, I'm just using Firefox as an example. Other information about my system is as follows:
xorg.conf

bat · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:11 pm Post subject:

hi all,

i got the same problem, my config: 2.6.15-7 on amd64 system (with kde 3.5.2) and 2.6.15-1 32-bit system. last stable xorg, 64bit Sempron 2800, NV GF4 mx 440, mb - foxcon on NF3 ....

I bought this hw just recently (earlier athlon 2600+ on NF2) and took this old GF gpu to new machine (on old one it worked flawless).
Now i have lockups on win XP, gentoo 32bit and gentoo 64bit .... i'm sure, that gpu is okay, ram is ok ... i'm just about to look for possibility to reduce agp speed in bios, but for me it is more likely to be a hw fault, cause it worked good, and now both - win and linux have this bug (altough linux freezes only gfx enviroment and I am able to ssh and do killall -9 X, and Win XP freezes hard and only manual reset helps

)

i've tried nv, but didn't have any lockup, though i've been testing it only for couple of hours.

regs
bat
_________________
/* Understanding is a three edged sword.
Your side, their side, and the truth. */

smypee · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 64 Location: Zurich

I finally solved my lockups

I disabled all power management options in the BIOS, set all BIOS options to conservative modes (timing etc.). That did the trick (didn't have a single freeze for a week now). One small drawback: WinXP doesn't start anymore...nevermind.

caleb · Developer Joined: 02 Jun 2003 Posts: 404

If you run into a lockup, and are able to remotely ssh into your machine:

I was finally able to discern some more information today. I came into work and had a locked up machine and was able to ssh into it. X was running at around 96% CPU.

I use 'strace' to attach to X:

"strace -p <pid-number>"

and got something like this:

--- SIGALRM (Alarm clock) @ 0 (0) ---
sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
--- SIGALRM (Alarm clock) @ 0 (0) ---
sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])

signalling X was in an endless loop.

I also tried attaching to it using GDB:

gdb
attach <pid-number>
bt

But I didn't get a usable backtrace since X was stripped and built without debugging symbols.

So I'm rebuilding X today with debug and symbols (USE=debug and FEATURES=nostrip).

Hopefully this is of value to someone, in case it happens to you and you're able to get in your system and hack a bit inside and see what X is doing.

See also: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-January/012579.html

caleb · Developer Joined: 02 Jun 2003 Posts: 404

One other curiousity I've been toying with is to turn off the "smart" scheduling that X seems to do.

run: startx -- -dumbSched

when you start it up. I'm curious if that affects things, since my crash frequency is highly tied to kernel version.

ouroboros1827 · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 17

kokes · Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 10:11 pm Post subject:

Hint for those, who have problem with V_BIOS initialization:

Look for the patch (comment #37) in this bugreport:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2597.

It can be helpful...
_________________
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jeden jim vem vládne
zagebí se jako ty
do klebu je sváe.

oneandoneis2 · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 9:41 am Post subject: