Stange crash when running X

favonius · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2005 Posts: 8

This has been a problem on my computer for a while now. Whenever I launch the xserver on my machine, it works, but I can never close the xserver or switch to the command line. If I do either of these, my system freezes and all I see is a black screen. This problem occurs in every version of linux that I've tried and on every livecd I've tried. I was just wondering if anyone has heard or experienced anything like this, or if you have any thoughts as to why this is happening.

My system's specs are as follows:
Supermicro X7DAL-E Motherboard
2x Xeon 5150 CPUs
2GB ECC RAM
Nvidia 8800GTX (ASUS)

Any help would be appreciated.

masteroftheuniverse · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 259

this usually happens if you use the nvidia drivers and also try to use a framebuffer for your console.

Dirk.R.Gently · Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 546 Location: Titan

masteroftheuniverse has a good point here. You don't require the console framebuffer on x86 systems. I disabled it on mine and xserver freezes ( when restarting or shutting down ) became less frequent. Usually this problem points to the x driver not playing nice with the console framebuffer. Even without it, if you own a newer computer, the drivers can still cause this to happen. I have an i810 chipset and the X didnt' start to behave as expected until this last version ( a few days ago ) so it gets better.
_________________
• Helpful Linux Tidbits

favonius · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2005 Posts: 8

Hmmmm, I never thought that the frame buffer would cause an issue. Thanks for the advice guys I'll play around with that and let you know how it goes.