[gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[Bruno Lustosa]

Hello, list.

I'm running Gentoo on my box, and got (almost) everything on ~x86,
with the exception of gcc, glibc and binutils, as these have rendered
my box completely b0rked in the past.
(un?)fortunately, this machine has an nvidia graphics display, and we
all know nvidia linux drivers are very far from perfect. I myself have
seen all kind of strange behaviour and lockups with them on various
machines.
Now, I'm helping test Minefield (a.k.a. Firefox 3). And here comes the problems:

- If I try Minefield with nvidia drivers, I experience X lockup (100%
cpu and completely unresponsive) as soon as I try to either open a
message on Gmail or try to compose a new mail. I was going to post
this message when it locked.
- Firefox 2 with nvidia drivers seem to be OK (I'm posting this right
now on it).
- X with opensource nv drivers eat 80% cpu time even when doing
nothing. My box becomes very sluggish, and it looks like my old 486
dx2 :)

I find it very strange that Minefield can bring X down by simply
opening a message or trying to compose new mail. I have managed to
reproduce this error here several times. When this happens, I have to
ssh in, kill -9 X, and then wait a bit for gdm to restart it.

This is very very annoying.

If I could, I would leave nvidia forever, but I guess there are no
better (or less worse) alternative, so I must stick to these crappy
drivers.
Also, this seems to have started after I had to replace nvidia-drivers
with nvidia-legacy-drivers.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

-- 
Bruno Lustosa <bruno@lustosa.net>
http://www.lustosa.net/
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[Kent Fredric]

On 1/10/07, Bruno Lustosa <bruno.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, list.
>
> I'm running Gentoo on my box, and got (almost) everything on ~x86,
> with the exception of gcc, glibc and binutils, as these have rendered
> my box completely b0rked in the past.
> (un?)fortunately, this machine has an nvidia graphics display, and we
> all know nvidia linux drivers are very far from perfect. I myself have
> seen all kind of strange behaviour and lockups with them on various
> machines.
> Now, I'm helping test Minefield (a.k.a. Firefox 3). And here comes the problems:
>
> - If I try Minefield with nvidia drivers, I experience X lockup (100%
> cpu and completely unresponsive) as soon as I try to either open a
> message on Gmail or try to compose a new mail. I was going to post
> this message when it locked.
> - Firefox 2 with nvidia drivers seem to be OK (I'm posting this right
> now on it).
> - X with opensource nv drivers eat 80% cpu time even when doing
> nothing. My box becomes very sluggish, and it looks like my old 486
> dx2 :)
>
> I find it very strange that Minefield can bring X down by simply
> opening a message or trying to compose new mail. I have managed to
> reproduce this error here several times. When this happens, I have to
> ssh in, kill -9 X, and then wait a bit for gdm to restart it.
>
> This is very very annoying.
>
> If I could, I would leave nvidia forever, but I guess there are no
> better (or less worse) alternative, so I must stick to these crappy
> drivers.
> Also, this seems to have started after I had to replace nvidia-drivers
> with nvidia-legacy-drivers.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Bruno Lustosa <bruno@lustosa.net>
> http://www.lustosa.net/
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
Heh, imagine the confusion I was having when nvidia + xcomposite hard
locked my computer :/

If SSH works then you might want to investigate "MAGIC_SYSRQ" hot-keys
as an alternative ( depending on the environment, some say its a
security risk, but i figure if they have access to a keyboard in front
of your box then security is beyond compromised. )

http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/lxr/source/Documentation/sysrq.txt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_Skinny_Elephants_Is_Utterly_Boring

For your problem i reccon a magic K followed by a VT Switch ( K will
often kill X in cases where X's own kill switches fail ) followed by a
gdm restart, if you can't be bothered leaving your seat to find an ssh
box :)

-- 
/<ent Fredric
(aka theJackal)
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Tuesday 09 January 2007 19:00, Bruno Lustosa wrote:

>
> If I could, I would leave nvidia forever, but I guess there are no
> better (or less worse) alternative, so I must stick to these crappy
> drivers.
> Also, this seems to have started after I had to replace nvidia-drivers
> with nvidia-legacy-drivers.
>

since the problems also appear with nv (but not as severe), I would not blame 
nvidia, but minefield.

You should got to the nvidia forum and ask there.

But first, what card would you use, if you don't choose nvidia?

AMD/ATI? With the latest cards not even 2D is possible anymore. And their 
drivers really suck.
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Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[b.n.]

Hemmann, Volker Armin ha scritto:

> since the problems also appear with nv (but not as severe), I would not blame 
> nvidia, but minefield.
> 
> You should got to the nvidia forum and ask there.

It seems to me he's saying that with the nv drivers, X is unusable, 
regardless of Minefield being active or not.

> But first, what card would you use, if you don't choose nvidia?
> 
> AMD/ATI? With the latest cards not even 2D is possible anymore. And their 
> drivers really suck.

Argh. Bad news. Since i'm no gamer/heavy 3d user, I'll stick with my 
Radeon9200se, whose 3D works perfectly with the open source radeon 
drivers. :)

m.
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gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[Bruno Lustosa]

On 1/9/07, Hemmann, Volker Armin <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> wrote:
> since the problems also appear with nv (but not as severe), I would not blame
> nvidia, but minefield.

Yes, I thought it might be some problem with cairo, which might affect X.
I've had some problems with cairo in the past, and as Minefield's
graphics display relies on cairo, perhaps it would be a problem with
it. I'll have a search on gentoo bugzilla.

> But first, what card would you use, if you don't choose nvidia?
> AMD/ATI? With the latest cards not even 2D is possible anymore. And their
> drivers really suck.

That's the problem... I don't think there is anything better :(

-- 
Bruno Lustosa <bruno@lustosa.net>
http://www.lustosa.net/
-- 
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