openSUSE 12.1, 32 bits, using Gnome 3.2.1, Nvidia 9400GT using the driver 295.71 from the openSUSE Nvidia repo.
First of all this a fresh install (from today) and the OS is up to date after applying updates/upgrades and the all mighty reboot. During the time i have used the desktop with the normal user experience i have noticed that it freezes randomly for several seconds and the screen flickers sometimes and a blue colour appears. During 3 hours of use the freeze was caused either by closing google chrome, by closing foobilliard or even by minimizing a window(this are some e.g.). To make the desktop respond i have issued alt+f2 and typed r to restart the desktop.
Second thing i want to say is that running Gnome in safe mode has no freezing issues.
Is this a general bug of the desktop ?
If not, any ideas on how to stop the freezes beside using the safe mode
Had same problem with openSUSE 12.1 64-bit + 550Ti / 6200TC + KDE 4.7 … reverting to nvidia 295.33 cured the issue for me. This week I updated to a single GT640 card and driver 304.37 without issue so far. Also driver 290.10 is reported to be golden.
Look in your logs and you will see something like “nvrm: attempt to yield in atomic section” or some such. It started happening when the kernel got upgraded, I think.
Malcolm, you where right, installing the latest nvidia driver the hard way helped a lot, so far i have not seen any freezes from the Gnome desktop with normal user experience. I will probably wait for the stable 12.2 opensuse to come out and then i will make a distribution upgrade.
Xorbe, i will keep that output saved on some txt maybe it comes handy in future as well; in what log should i search this output?
Upgraded to openSUSE 12.2, using the latest Nvidia driver installed manually 304.51, with Gnome 3.4 and i still get the random freezes; some times i have to reboot the PC because the desktop becomes unresponsive.
Where do i look for kernel log? in /var/log/ i could only find Xorg.0.log.
Inside Xorg.0.log there are no lines like the one you mentioned in that topic, only resolutions checked by the driver that are compatible with my monitor.
When looking for most recent messages, you could use “dmesg” command, otherwise they should be saved in /var/log/messages*. If system crashes, most recent messages may not be saved though.
Checked /var/log/messages and i did not see any lines either, but to my suprise i see a lot of lines about gnome-session doing a debug on some components ( i guess )
The only lines mentioning something about Nvidia are these:
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289523] NVRM: GPU at 0000:02:00: GPU-70c76a98-eb60-31d0-3dba-44c3d145c1be
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289531] NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289534] NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289537] NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289539] NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
Sep 30 10:14:11 creation kernel: 42.289542] NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.
Anyone know if there has been any progress since the last posting by creatura85?
I have same problem, one running 12.2 and one running 12.1. I have a third, also running 12.1 but no random freeze issues. ALL have Nvidia and ALL display same error in the var/log/warn log:-
NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console etc etc
Linux 3.4.11-2.16-desktop x86_64
Driver NVIDIA 304.43
4.8.5 (4.8.5) “release 2”