Re: [gentoo-user] KDE and HARD lock ups.

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dale wrote:
>>
>> Well, I tried a different kernel.  Same thing.  I tried reseting the BIOS
>> and lurking around in there for a bit as well.  Same thing.  So, right now
>> I'm chewing on a emerge -e kde-meta.  After I remembered the power failure
>> the other day, I suspect a corrupt file somewhere.  I'm just glad I have
>> Fluxbox on here.  I'm in it right now and it works OK.  I just wish the
>> little bar at the bottom was larger.  So far, nothing I click changes that.
>>  Tough on my eyes too.  Teeny tiny stuff down there.  o_o
>>
>> Thinking back, I should have booted the CD and run file system checks.
>>  Crap, the one thing I didn't think of. < sighs >
>>
>> I still use Nvidia's driver here.  it has worked well for me at least.  I
>> don't use any fancy hardware or play any serious games so it works well, so
>> far at least.  That may change next week.  lol   You know me.  Something new
>> pretty regular.
>>
>> I don't guess I use kdepim stuff.  It's installed so who knows.  Any
>> relation to pam?
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
>>
>
> Well, I got rid of openldap.  It runs longer but still crashes so I am back
> to Fluxbox again, which works fine.  I also started with a fresh .kde4
> directory.  That seemed to help more than anything else.  It lasted a LOT
> longer after that.  I don't know if it was a coincidence or what but it did
> lock up once when I logged into Konsole as root.
>
> I started a emerge -e world this time.  This thing has 4 cores so it won't
> take to long.  Any ideas on what else I can try?  If this emerge doesn't
> help, it has to be a config file somewhere.
>
> Again, I'm pretty sure it is not hardware.  It runs fine when compiling in a
> console and I have run from systemrescue stick as well.  Hardware seems to
> work fine.
>
> Ideas?

It's a long shot, but since you're using nvidia, I had random lockups.
It turned out to be due to faulty handling of the on-by-default
aggressive power savings mode of my Nvidia card. It was solved by
placing this undocumented incantation, pieced together from various
Google searches, in my xorg.conf device section for my video card:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nVidia GT 240"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "RegistryDWords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1;
PerfLevelSrc=0x3322; PowerMizerDefault=0x1; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"
EndSection

After that, everything works wonderfully.

You can also use nvidia-settings to change the power saving mode at
run-time, but it does not save it and you must do it every time you
log into X, which is annoying. The xorg.conf method above requires no
further action.

Your card may not even support PowerMizer, who knows? I thought I'd
mention it just in case.