[Solved] Nvidia drivers newer than 270.41.19 crashes...

[gosa]

Hi all,

Time for another Nvidia question. This time I'm not sure where to turn, as the Nvidia forums just returned:

"I know that in Mint/Ubuntu Debian-based you do not need to make your hands with mud trying to compile all things by yourself, but sometimes it's quite necessary to test all the solutions then and only then, ask."

So - falling back to the place where I should have asked the question from the beginning - here's my setup:

A computer with (among other things) An Asus Motherboard (P7P55) an Intel Processor (i7 860) and a Nvidia Graphics card (Geforce GT 430). The OS I'm running is currently the latest Gnome Respin of LMDE, but I've expereinced the same issues with the XFCE respin, and with the first release of LMDE that follows testing. All OS's are x64.

To this graphics card I have two HP Monitors connected (one to the vga & one to the dvi-port) that currently resides on my desk. I also have a LG 32" tv connected through HDMI.

Knowing that I can only run two monitors at the same time my day-to-day settup includes the two monitors on my desk, and when I want to change the output to my TV I just open nvidia-settings and disable one of my monitors and enable the tv instead. All this using "twin view".

This worked until (and including) the driver 270.41.19. Everything above that just crashes my Nvidia-settings when I try to change the tv from "disabled" to Twinview" and pushes the activity on one of my cores (two threads) up to 100%. The only thing that works for getting out of the situation is rebooting the computer.

Ohh.. one more thing - this happens both with the drivers from the repositories (right now 280.-something) and with drivers provided via sgfxi.

Has anyone expereinced anything similar? Any possible solutions?

I'm a bit reluctant about taking this to Nvidia, since they are probably just going to send me to Asus (that's what's printed on the card) and asus is probalby just gonna send me back to the ones makeing the drivers...

Thanks in advance,
/gosa

[h2-1]

You're quite mistaken in your assumption about filing an nvidia bug report. They make it about as easy as can be.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

explains how to do it. Since you are having a stability problem, you'll probably want to use the x verbosity adjustment, but you can just run the bug script as root and get the process started. Remember, the file created will be in whatever directory you were in when you ran the command if I remember right.

Posting issue reports on the non free fglrx or nvidia drivers does nobody any good if the driver authors don't receive them, that's the only way they can fix the problem, user data. Since you have a newer card, this issue will be of special interest to them.

However, also make sure to try their new beta driver, which you can install with sgfxi: sgfxi -B
to make sure the issue hasn't already been fixed. Also, on the nvnews forums, make sure to search the nvidia linux sub forums for your card and see if others have the same issue.

AMD/ATI is the one with the really poor bug handling and reporting process, nvidia's is about as good as it gets. So good in fact that I emulated parts of it, improved, in inxi to assist with user bug reports.

[gosa]

You're quite mistaken in your assumption about filing an nvidia bug report. They make it about as easy as can be.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

explains how to do it. Since you are having a stability problem, you'll probably want to use the x verbosity adjustment, but you can just run the bug script as root and get the process started. Remember, the file created will be in whatever directory you were in when you ran the command if I remember right.

Posting issue reports on the non free fglrx or nvidia drivers does nobody any good if the driver authors don't receive them, that's the only way they can fix the problem, user data. Since you have a newer card, this issue will be of special interest to them.

However, also make sure to try their new beta driver, which you can install with sgfxi: sgfxi -B
to make sure the issue hasn't already been fixed. Also, on the nvnews forums, make sure to search the nvidia linux sub forums for your card and see if others have the same issue.

AMD/ATI is the one with the really poor bug handling and reporting process, nvidia's is about as good as it gets. So good in fact that I emulated parts of it, improved, in inxi to assist with user bug reports.

Hi h2-1, and thank you for jumping in!

My next stop was actually the user forums covering smxi/sgfxi, but now that you've come to me instead...

I did find my way to the nvnews forum yesterday, and there is one more user with the same problem as I have. I just posted there telling him that "you're not alone" (took the verification email many hours to arrive to my inbox)

I will start by following your recommendation of trying out the beta driver and see how well that one plays out. After that - Well, I guess I should follow your advice about posting a bug report after all... guess I shouldn't be keeping old experiences in my luggage, now that you're saying that Nvidia do care a bit more than the rest. It does scare me a bit though trying to get this bug report together, because I can honerstly say that I don't really understand how to "pull" it... (Yeah - I know... it is described in the thread you linked to, it's just that I don't get it completely)

Thanks for trying to keep me "safe" (and sane) in this, I'll report back if I make any progress.

[h2-1]

There's nothing to it, as I said, nvidia is the model for how all software devs should have bug reporting done.

Run the command given on that page, say, first cd /root
so you know where the resulting file will be. This will create a gz file, go to the nvnews forums, post a new issue thread, clearly label it in the subject with your card/driver version tested. Of courser, make absolutely sure you use both the current stable and beta drivers.

The one thing I think nvidia could improve is the file naming of the bug file, so I suggest that you create the first one, with the standard current driver running, then rename it with that driver number, then install the beta, then create a bug report (if the bug persists of course), rename that to have the driver number in the file name, then upload those to the nvnews forums.

The reason they added the auto gz feature is to keep the file size small enough to be allowed in the nvnews forum upload feature.

You can also use the startx debugging option, but that's weird to use because it will start x in root mode, and you'll think something went wrong, but it's just a default desktop without your user configurations.

But start with the basic bug reports, and just provide more if they ask for it.

I thought the above was a few too many steps, so in inxi, I made it: inxi -xx@ 14
which will create the gz user system data files, then ftp upload it automatically to my dev servers. As regular user. But the ideas came from how nvidia does theirs.

[gosa]

Thanks a lot for your guidance (and patience).

I posted a report, and just got a reply from Nividia. Apparently the problem is known, and will get fixed in a future release. I also got the advice of pulling nvidia-settings from an older installer (where it still works) to use with the newer driver. I'm not sure I understood what he meant by:

You can extract the contents of the driver
installer package by running the installer .run file with the -x option;
from there, you can grab nvidia-settings from an older driver and use it
with a driver version that comes with a buggy control panel.

But I suppose it should be enough to "unpack" the file from the installer, and drop it in the directory of my current, faulty install... or maybe it's not that easy?

Thamks again for your help in this matter!
/gosa

[h2-1]

Do what he said, take an older driver, sgfxi stores the ones it installed in /usr/src/sgfxi-downloads so you might already have the file.

Then just extract it like he told you, with the -x option. like so, cd to the directory of the run file, then:
sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9631-pkg0.run -x
that's just an example, of course use the real file name.

Then copy over the nvidia settings to /usr/bin/nvidia-settings overwriting the old one.

I don't know which driver version you can use, but they have all their old ones available, make sure you get the latest that works with the old nvidia-settings.

Anyway, good luck, told you nvidia was good at what they do.

Remember that when you are in /usr/src you have to be root to create or extract files to that directory, but if you copy it to your home directory, you can do it as user, but you have to be root to overwrite nvidia-settings

[gosa]

That little trick works perfectly with the latest beta drivers (285.03)

- Thanks!