I’ve just installed OpenSuse 11.3 on my two Sony Vaio VPCF11Z1E machines (which have a Geforce GT 330M graphics card).
Both machines appear to setup correctly and behave normally, but at seemingly random intervals (of the order of magnitude of 15-30 minutes) the whole system locks up for no readily apparent reason. I can still move the mouse pointer around the screen, but I cannot click on anything, and the whole keyboard is unresponsive (including any reasonable ctrl-alt-xxx which might normally help). The only way to get out of this seems to be to press and hold the power button to shut the whole machine off (which is not ideal!).
There is no obvious action performed by me which causes or initiates the freeze - it seems to happen at random.
Does anyone have any idea how I might go about investigating this?
It maybe the nouveau driver that gets loaded by default in the openSUSE 11.3 installation. And on some NVIDIA cards that can cause lockups. I suggest that you work your way through the Guide the oldcpu put together to install the NVIDIA driver for your video card. The Guide is here openSUSE Graphic Card Practical Theory Guide for Users
Thanks - that’s what I suspected. Unfortunately 1-click NVIDIA installs don’t seem to have been done for 11.3 yet, and if I try to do it the hard way the standard driver won’t install on a clean OpenSuSe distribution. If I try, it says:
*ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module ‘nvidia.ko’. This happens most
frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or
improperly configured kernel sources, with a version of gcc that differs
from the one used to build the target kernel, or if a driver such as
rivafb/nvidiafb is present and prevents the NVIDIA kernel module from
obtaining ownership of the NVIDIA graphics device(s), or NVIDIA GPU
installed in this system is not supported by this NVIDIA Linux graphics
driver release.
*
Jesus, nothing is ever easy is it? I need these machines to work by tomorrow, and I really don’t need the stress.
I had disabled KMS but had forgotten to blacklist the nouveau module - thanks for that. Now when I boot up the system I just get a black screen.
Xorg.0.log:
149.451] (–) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce GT 330M at PCI:1:0:0:
149.451] (–) NVIDIA(0): none
149.455] (EE) NVIDIA(0): No display devices found for this X screen.
150.514] (II) UnloadModule: “nvidia”
150.514] (II) UnloadModule: “wfb”
150.514] (II) UnloadModule: “fb”
150.514] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.*
I have the same issue with an Intel GMA X3000 integrated graphics card so I don’t think, that the new Nouveau driver is the problem. (At least for me it can’t be the cause of the freezes :)) My computer freezes the same way that mdt26a’s, approximately 3-4 times a day. With openSuSe 11.2 I hadn’t have this problem.
Well, following extensive Google searching I solved the black screen problem with the NVIDIA driver. I added the following two lines to the “Device” section of my newly-created xorg.conf:
OK - so I’ve now been running with the nvidia driver for about 12 hours, and I’ve never seen any of the lockups that I was getting with nouveau. So - hopefully - and for me at least - problem solved. Hmmmm… yet another day of my life that I’ll never get back.
Well done in sorting this. Not exactly intuitively obvious.
You could write a bug report on having to do this, but I’m not sure exactly where it should be raised ? This appears to be an upstream problem ?
It would be useful to document this somewhere, so that others do not struggle with the same problem. Perhaps you could look at the openSUSE hardware compatibility list: Portal:Hardware - openSUSE and make an edit there in the appropriate section/table, describing what need to be done to get this to function ?
Hi,
I’ve an VAIO VGN-SZ5XN, with dual video card, an NVIDIA go which I never use, and an Intel915 that I use.
I’m having the same ramdon freeze and can’t figure what happens, theres no log at all, no warnings, no significative info in dmesg.
This always happened with KDE so I’m trying with GNOME now.
What I can say is that the CPU gets really hot when it freezes and the fan goes over the roof.
I’ve tried with a newer kernel 2.6.35-rc2 from kernel head repository and go the same problem.
To be sincere I don’t think it’s related to NVIDIA driver as I don’t use it at all.
You REALLY should start your own thread, rather than tagging on to someone else’s thread (where this current thread may be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT problem).
I’m getting the same problem with my “vaio VGN-NW22OAF with Intel GM45” … i suspect that this has nothing to do with nvidia …i guess, because i got others 2 computer with nvidiia video cards and this is not happen there …
x_pedro_x on GNOME are u getting those problems again ?
Hi,
I had same problem (system freeze) in my box (Opensuse 11.3, Nvidia 8200).
I solved by installing the drivers from nvidia repository packages.
No special procedure: add repository → software management → install nvidia packages → reboot.
Now all work fine
Hi,
I have exactly the same issue: Mouse pointer completely freeze up for a few seconds every 20 or 30 seconds. I run GKrellm and can see that every time this happens one of the CPUs hits 100%.
I have tried both the nouveau driver and the NVidia driver (which I installed using the “hard way” from the openSuse site) and this occurs with both. Looking at the ‘top’ monitor the it looks like it might be xorg, but of course ‘top’ freezes too!
The graphics card is an Nvidia GTX 260 and no hardware has changed since it was running with no issues under Suse 11.2.
I may try XFCE to see if it is a Kde problem.
I have also closed down KMail and the akonadi processes as
I think that I have solved the problem. Logged out and logged back in using Gnome. I then found that there was no system freeze… But I like having Gkrellm up. Started it and freezing returned (under Gnome). I had included the CPU and Graphics card temperature monitors in GKrellm, which I suspected might be the problem. Switched those off and freezing stopped in Gnome. Logged out and back in to KDE and no more mouse pointer freezing. Hurray.
