Black Screen with Nvidia drivers

[cosine]

I've been experiencing this issue with all Ubuntu variants 12.04 and older. Right now I'm using Mint 13.

I've installed the nvidia drivers and removed nouveau from the system according to directions layed out here.

But after a while, the desktop will crash and the system will be unresponcive to key commands; forcing me to do a hard restart.

I thought it was the dual screen twinview I had setup, but I disabled what I thought to be the offending monitor, and I enabled nomodeset under GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub and updated grub properly.

I'm really at a loss of what the problem is.

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cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0       CPU1       
  0:         41         17   IO-APIC-edge      timer
  1:          4         25   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
  6:          0          3   IO-APIC-edge      floppy
  7:          1          0   IO-APIC-edge   
  8:          0          1   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
  9:          0         26   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
 14:        273       2620   IO-APIC-edge      pata_amd
 15:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      pata_amd
 16:      19349        452   IO-APIC-fasteoi   snd_hda_intel, nvidia
 20:        144        436   IO-APIC-fasteoi   snd_hda_intel
 22:          0          3   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1
 23:      21769       4613   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ohci_hcd:usb2
 40:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
 41:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
 42:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
 43:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
 44:       6109       7109   PCI-MSI-edge      ahci
 45:       8018         77   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0
NMI:         13         13   Non-maskable interrupts
LOC:     122794     122984   Local timer interrupts
SPU:          0          0   Spurious interrupts
PMI:         13         13   Performance monitoring interrupts
IWI:          0          0   IRQ work interrupts
RES:     259306     275787   Rescheduling interrupts
CAL:        202        194   Function call interrupts
TLB:       4519       7677   TLB shootdowns
TRM:          0          0   Thermal event interrupts
THR:          0          0   Threshold APIC interrupts
MCE:          0          0   Machine check exceptions
MCP:         10         10   Machine check polls
ERR:          1
MIS:          0


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lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 Memory Controller (rev a3)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 SMBus (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:07.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 IDE (rev a1)
00:0a.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation Device 045b (rev a1)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] (rev a1)
04:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)


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inxi -Fc 0
System:    Host: cosine Kernel: 3.2.0-23-generic i686 (32 bit) Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 13 Maya
Machine:   Mobo: Abit model: AN52(MCP65) version: 1.x Bios: Phoenix version: 6.00 PG date: 05/16/2007
CPU:       Dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 svm)
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1000.00 MHz 2: 1000.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] X.Org: 1.11.3 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1080@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2/3DNOW! GLX Version: 1.4 (2.1.2 NVIDIA 310.32)
Audio:     Card-1: NVIDIA MCP65 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.24
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF116 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel
           Card-3: Plantronics driver: USB Audio
Network:   Card: Marvell 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: sky2
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:50:8d:b2:3e:61
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 2000.4GB (6.9% used) 1: /dev/sda Hitachi_HDS72202 2000.4GB
Partition: ID: / size: 24G used: 4.8G (22%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 976G used: 116G (13%) fs: ext4
           ID: swap-1 size: 10.76GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 26.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 32C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 142 Uptime: 52 min Memory: 452.2/3025.4MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.33


[cosine]

I noticed the timestamp left by folks that had very similar issues to mine. (but whos solutions did not improve my situation.) So I thought to use an older driver that was supported for my card and kernel.
Right now I'm using Nvidia Driver 304.48.

I did more digging on my system and found after a crash:

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$ dmesg | tail
[   11.595202] sky2 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex, flow control both
[   11.595376] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[   11.604773] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process (782) killed by TERM signal
[   12.462310] NVRM: GPU at 0000:04:00: GPU-ad7ef855-f6a1-1b05-a88a-21c5095a79f9
[   12.462319] NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
[   12.462322] NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
[   12.462326] NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
[   12.462328] NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
[   12.462331] NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.


What am I missing, if not vesafb?

[caf4926]

Typically all you need do is

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sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

works for me every time

[cosine]

Thanks for the reply.

I uninstalled the nvidia driver and installed Ubuntu's set of drivers in their repos. (equiv. to your suggestion)
I also updated the system's other software (there were a considerable amount of updates)
The vesa errors aren't showing up anymore either.

But I just tried to recreate the problem and I managed to get the X server to crash, locking up the entire system, while running around in World of Warcraft.