[gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable

[gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable

[covici]

Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable -- once I
get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying gnome,
console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop --
even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.


I am using an nvidia card with the closed source module, if that makes
any difference.  I re-emerged the keyboard and evdev driver, but that
made no difference.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

[gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[walt]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying
> gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
> control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
> somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop
> -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.

The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be hardware
specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18 kernels as the
default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list are using it without
problems too.  I had some scary problems with that kernel version
that were very difficult to diagnose until I just rebooted with an
older kernel and the scary problems vanished.  The 4.2 series seems
okay so far on my VMs. (Even my gentoo VMs had some minor problems with
3.18.x)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[covici]

walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
> covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> 
> > Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> > once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying
> > gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
> > control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
> > somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop
> > -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.
> 
> The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
> 3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be hardware
> specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18 kernels as the
> default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list are using it without
> problems too.  I had some scary problems with that kernel version
> that were very difficult to diagnose until I just rebooted with an
> older kernel and the scary problems vanished.  The 4.2 series seems
> okay so far on my VMs. (Even my gentoo VMs had some minor problems with
> 3.18.x)

I am using 4.1.9 from gentoo sources -- do I need to downgrade maybe the
server and nvidia-drivers?

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

[gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[walt]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 17:26:43 -0500
covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
> > covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> >   
> > > Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> > > once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is
> > > displaying gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of
> > > that console -- control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I
> > > try to ssh in from somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the
> > > x server will not stop -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I
> > > have to reboot the system.  
> > 
> > The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
> > 3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be
> > hardware specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18
> > kernels as the default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list
> > are using it without problems too.  I had some scary problems with
> > that kernel version that were very difficult to diagnose until I
> > just rebooted with an older kernel and the scary problems
> > vanished.  The 4.2 series seems okay so far on my VMs. (Even my
> > gentoo VMs had some minor problems with 3.18.x)  
> 
> I am using 4.1.9 from gentoo sources -- do I need to downgrade maybe
> the server and nvidia-drivers?

I think downgrading xorg and a video driver sounds more complicated
than trying a different kernel, but you're in a better position to know
that than I am.  Depends on how many packages you changed just before
you noticed the problem.  If you've been running kernel 4.1.9 for a
while with no problems, and you just recently upgraded xorg/nvidia,
then maybe that would be the simpler thing to try.

If you still have some older kernels available, I personally would
reboot with one of those and see if the nvidia driver will compile with
that version. (You may need to reinstall/reconfigure the older kernel
sources if you've already removed them.)  A big PITA either way :(

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[covici]

walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 17:26:43 -0500
> covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> 
> > walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
> > > covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > >   
> > > > Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> > > > once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is
> > > > displaying gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of
> > > > that console -- control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I
> > > > try to ssh in from somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the
> > > > x server will not stop -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I
> > > > have to reboot the system.  
> > > 
> > > The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
> > > 3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be
> > > hardware specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18
> > > kernels as the default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list
> > > are using it without problems too.  I had some scary problems with
> > > that kernel version that were very difficult to diagnose until I
> > > just rebooted with an older kernel and the scary problems
> > > vanished.  The 4.2 series seems okay so far on my VMs. (Even my
> > > gentoo VMs had some minor problems with 3.18.x)  
> > 
> > I am using 4.1.9 from gentoo sources -- do I need to downgrade maybe
> > the server and nvidia-drivers?
> 
> I think downgrading xorg and a video driver sounds more complicated
> than trying a different kernel, but you're in a better position to know
> that than I am.  Depends on how many packages you changed just before
> you noticed the problem.  If you've been running kernel 4.1.9 for a
> while with no problems, and you just recently upgraded xorg/nvidia,
> then maybe that would be the simpler thing to try.
> 
> If you still have some older kernels available, I personally would
> reboot with one of those and see if the nvidia driver will compile with
> that version. (You may need to reinstall/reconfigure the older kernel
> sources if you've already removed them.)  A big PITA either way :(

I am running 4.1.9, but there is a 4.1.12 and I may go to that and try
again, but you are correct, its a pita either way.  In this last update,
I could not keep the same x server and nvidia drivers I had which worked
fine, due to portage not letting the update go through because of
various slot conflicts -- very annoying.


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: problem which makes gnome unusable

[Fernando Rodriguez]

On Friday, November 06, 2015 1:46:08 PM walt wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:45:43 -0500
> covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> 
> > Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable --
> > once I get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying
> > gnome, console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
> > control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
> > somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop
> > -- even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.
> 
> The part about kill -9 failing is exactly the problem I had with the
> 3.18.x kernel series a while ago.  I know this problem must be hardware
> specific because some distros are still shipping 3.18 kernels as the
> default, and I'll bet others in this mailing list are using it without
> problems too.  I had some scary problems with that kernel version
> that were very difficult to diagnose until I just rebooted with an
> older kernel and the scary problems vanished.  The 4.2 series seems
> okay so far on my VMs. (Even my gentoo VMs had some minor problems with
> 3.18.x)

I've been using 3.18.x for a while now and I only had a very similar problem 
when I updated to 3.18.23 about a week or so ago. Everytime I ran sudo the 
desktop would become unresponsive and if I tried to switch to another VT it 
would freeze completely. I didn't tried to ssh in, but the SysRq keys worked 
for rebooting. I could reproduce it everytime with 3.18.23 so I went back to 
3.18.22. There where two updates to the sudo package since then and yesterday 
I tried booting 3.18.23 and it worked fine so it was the sudo-1.8.12 and kernel 
3.18.23 combo that caused it. Now I'm using 3.18.24 without problems. I use 
kde and ati-drivers.

-- 
Fernando Rodriguez

Re: [gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable partially solved

[covici]

covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Hi.  I am having a very bad problem which makes gnome unusable -- once I
> get into the virtual console where the xserver is displaying gnome,
> console 12 in my case, I can never get out of that console --
> control-alt-f1 or anything does not work.  If I try to ssh in from
> somewhere else, I cannot stop gdm because the x server will not stop --
> even kill -9 will not stop it and I have to reboot the system.
> 
> 
> I am using an nvidia card with the closed source module, if that makes
> any difference.  I re-emerged the keyboard and evdev driver, but that
> made no difference.
> 
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, I did a couple of things, which made it work, but I think its
pretty fragile.  First, I did go to 4.1.12 which is still the latest
lts.  I had to reinstall the nvidia-drivers and I still had the problem,
interestingly enough, it manifested when I went from console 1 by moving
alt-left-arrow to the X console and got some kind of modeset error.
this led me to think that maybe nvidia-settings had something to do with
it and I discovered I had an old version  not sure how that got to stay
and I tried to install the latest one, which had two effects -- it
downgraded nvidia-drivers to 3.55.11 and tried to install
nvidia-settings, but that would not install because there is a file conflict
with -- guess what -- nvidia drivers!  So I unmerged the old one and for
now it seems to work, but I don't know what will happen in the future
this way.  Very strange!


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable partially solved

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 07 Nov 2015 03:23:53 -0500, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> this led me to think that maybe nvidia-settings had something to do with
> it and I discovered I had an old version  not sure how that got to stay
> and I tried to install the latest one, which had two effects -- it
> downgraded nvidia-drivers to 3.55.11 and tried to install
> nvidia-settings, but that would not install because there is a file
> conflict with -- guess what -- nvidia drivers!  So I unmerged the old
> one and for now it seems to work, but I don't know what will happen in
> the future this way.  Very strange!

Looking at the ebuilds, it appears that nvidia-settings is installed by
the nvdidia-drivers package, controlled by the tools USE flag. Try
setting that flag and unmerging nvidia-settings.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

He's so cool, he could get frostbite from masturbating.

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Re: [gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable partially solved

[covici]

Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Sat, 07 Nov 2015 03:23:53 -0500, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> 
> > this led me to think that maybe nvidia-settings had something to do with
> > it and I discovered I had an old version  not sure how that got to stay
> > and I tried to install the latest one, which had two effects -- it
> > downgraded nvidia-drivers to 3.55.11 and tried to install
> > nvidia-settings, but that would not install because there is a file
> > conflict with -- guess what -- nvidia drivers!  So I unmerged the old
> > one and for now it seems to work, but I don't know what will happen in
> > the future this way.  Very strange!
> 
> Looking at the ebuilds, it appears that nvidia-settings is installed by
> the nvdidia-drivers package, controlled by the tools USE flag. Try
> setting that flag and unmerging nvidia-settings.

hmmm, tools seems to be the default and it did not emerge
nvidia-settings, but it did want  to upgrade the driver, but I think I
will leave it for now since it seems to be working  without the
nvidia-settings package which has a conflict anyway.


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] problem which makes gnome unusable partially solved

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 07 Nov 2015 08:44:13 -0500, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> > Looking at the ebuilds, it appears that nvidia-settings is installed
> > by the nvdidia-drivers package, controlled by the tools USE flag. Try
> > setting that flag and unmerging nvidia-settings.  
> 
> hmmm, tools seems to be the default and it did not emerge
> nvidia-settings, 

What, no nvidia-settings executable installed with USE="tools"? Did I
misread the ebuild?


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort.

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