I have openSuSE 12.2 running on some pretty old hardware (circa 2007 – 2.4 GHz Xeon CPU, with an nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400 graphics card).
I am not sure what happened. I was running some less than robust (vendor supplied) scientific instrument control program. I clicked on apper button to do some updates. After which, the screen froze. I could still ping and ssh into the box. At first I thought it was the application. However, when rebooted, the boot process proceeded normally until the xdm login screen should have appeared. At this point the screen went black. There were VC’s available. I would still ssh into the box. I searched in /var/log/messages and the Xorg log file. I think these lines, which I found in /var/log/messages might be related to the problem:
Jan 22 13:44:07 bragg kernel: 22.827106] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PFIFO_DMA_PUSHER - Ch 1 Get 0x000280c4 Put 0x00012118 State 0x80008188 (err: INVALID_CMD) Push 0x00000000
Jan 22 13:44:07 bragg kernel: 22.828756] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PGRAPH - ERROR nsource: DATA_ERROR nstatus: BAD_ARGUMENT
Jan 22 13:44:07 bragg kernel: 22.828778] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PGRAPH - ch 1/4 class 0x009f mthd 0x0184 data 0x00001400
I’ve googled the string, and found some bug report from 2011 (I think on freedesktop.org) but no solutions. Anybody have a clue about how to fix this? I guess I could reinstall the box from scratch, but I would rather not, if it can be avoided. I forced a re-install of the Xserver pattern from YaST2, but that didn’t cure the problem.
On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:56:02 +0000, pboyle4848 wrote:
> However,
> when rebooted, the boot process proceeded normally until the xdm login
> screen should have appeared. At this point the screen went black.
If you boot from a LiveCD, does the video come up OK?
On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:06:03 +0000, pboyle4848 wrote:
> hendersj;2521049 Wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:56:02 +0000, pboyle4848 wrote:
>>
>> > However,
>> > when rebooted, the boot process proceeded normally until the xdm
>> login
>> > screen should have appeared. At this point the screen went black.
>>
>> If you boot from a LiveCD, does the video come up OK?
>>
>> I’m wondering if there’s a hardware issue here.
>>
>>
> Good point. I just found my original DVD. I can’t do it until
> tomorrow. Will get back to you.
Well, the original DVD will let you reinstall, but a LiveCD will let you
boot into a working environment. Since you’re using the nouveau driver,
that should be included on the LiveCD so if you get a desktop, you’ll
know it’s something in the installed config - and if you don’t, you’ll
know something else is the problem.
