My experience with Nvidia on opensuse factory

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi forum
I would like to share my experience with the new kernel, Xorg and it’s interaction with my integrated Nvidia 8400GS. Hopefully someone would have the same problems I’m experiencing.

First I must say, I’m really impressed with the work the nouveau guys have pulled out. Really impressive. I’m using kde 4.6 with a full blown 3D desktop. the responsiveness is simply amazing : no more lags that plagued KDE when I used the Nvidia binary blob. When I resized a window before, the whole desktop would hang for like 5 seconds. Not with nouveau. KDE is actually usable, fast, and tear free now.

But, there are some puzzling downsides :
when using nouveau the keyboard and touchpad react REALLY oddly : when I use them events are randomly triggered. For exemple when I type
“I want to eat an apple” sometimes the results can be “I wannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnt to eattttttttt an apple”… Hope I’m making sense to you.
For the touchpad, some random clicks are triggered when I’m moving the pointer, for exemple.

Also the synaptics driver don’t seem to be loaded properly at boot time. If I put my preferences in 50-synaptics.conf they are somewhat respected though. see :

[01:36]azalou~]>synclient -l                                                                                                                                                             
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?

Here is my xinput list :

⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]                                                                                                                              
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]                                                                                                                              
⎜   ↳ PS/2 ALPS GlidePoint                      id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]                                                                                                                              
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                                              
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]

When I suspend and resume I get :

xinput list                                                                                                                                                              
⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]                                                                                                             
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]                                                                                                             
⎜   ↳ PS/2 Mouse                                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]                                                                                                             
⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint                  id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]                                                                                                             
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]                                                                                                             
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]

I didn’t plug any mouse, but there is a PS/2 mouse that show up. Also after resuming the synaptics driver is properly loaded and all of my preferences in 50-synaptics.conf are taken into account. But the touchpad control module utility in kde still complain about synaptics not being loaded.
I would make a bug report but I don’t even know where the bug could be : is it in nouveau ? in evdev ? in the kernel ? in xorg ? why when I install the binary blob I don’t have such issues ?
What do you think ?
For the record I’m using the Opensuse 11.4 milestone 6.

2

Anyone ? Maybe I should point out that I’m not necessarily looking for a solution. I’m pretty sure this is a bug, I just need help tracking it down to the source before I report it efficiently.

3

On 02/04/2011 02:36 PM, azalou wrote:
> For the record I’m using the Opensuse 11.4 milestone 6.
> Anyone ?

thanks for being a software tester!!

but, you are asking about your beta software in the wrong forum…

please PM a moderator or two and ask someone to move your thread to
the correct forum: Forum: Pre-Release/Beta - Questions about
pre-release versions of openSUSE Linux (software & hardware)

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/pre-release-beta/

it is there that folks who wanting to TEST SOFTWARE (the next version
of openSUSE) get together to discuss problems, decide if they have a
bug and etc…

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11

4

Thanks and sorry, I will do that

5

Sorry to bump, but I’m really on my own here. the only lead that I have so far is that nouveau interfere with the xinput system, and mess with the keyboard and mouse. Does anybody have this issue ?

6

Try a clean install of 11.4-RC1

KDE uses “synaptiks” note the “k”.

Clean install means no pre-existing xorg.conf files.

There an be problens with an incorrect locale in KDE-4.6.0
RC 1 – Selecting Locale causes it to crash every time

7

azalou wrote:

>
> Sorry to bump, but I’m really on my own here. the only lead that I have
> so far is that nouveau interfere with the xinput system, and mess with
> the keyboard and mouse. Does anybody have this issue ?

I’m having a bear of a time myself, so I’ll be watching this with you.

Have you been able to install the Nvidia proprietary drivers from the repo?

–
Will Honea

8

I already tried a clean install. In fact I started by one because I wanted to try nouveau. there was no additional xorg.conf.d file. Also when I tried the nvidia blob I didn’t modify any of the config files, and left them as is. But then the synaptics driver was behaving properly and there was no random input of events. I noticed, when I’m listening to music, that the random inputs happend when there was a “skip” in the sound. Don’t know what that meant.

Also I don’t have any crash issues per se. it’s just the random events that pops out. I would say maybe it does more often when I’m using amarok or when I’m surfing on flash heavy site. maybe it’s related to the 200 lines patch of the kernel ?

thanks

9

Do you have the same issues as me ? I installed the nvidia driver “by hand”. Didn’t try the one from the repo

10

Tell you what. I will try kubuntu with the same kernel and see if I have the same problem. If I do it’s upstream related for sure

11

azalou wrote:

>
> Will Honea;2291598 Wrote:
>> azalou wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Sorry to bump, but I’m really on my own here. the only lead that I
>> have
>> > so far is that nouveau interfere with the xinput system, and mess
>> with
>> > the keyboard and mouse. Does anybody have this issue ?
>>
>> I’m having a bear of a time myself, so I’ll be watching this with you.
>>
>> Have you been able to install the Nvidia proprietary drivers from the
>> repo?
>>
>> –
>> Will Honea
>
> Do you have the same issues as me ? I installed the nvidia driver “by
> hand”. Didn’t try the one from the repo

I just tried the repo version. When I get some time I’ll try the manual
method but I’m not in a great hurry to get at it since other projects are
keeping me busy. NB: don’t retire - all that supposed free time is just a
myth.

–
Will Honea

12

I’m almost certain that it is a nouveau driver bug. I installed Kubuntu 11.04 and I had more or less the same issues : phantom ps2/mouse that appear after resume from suspend. No synaptic driver loaded before suspend. And the issue disapear when installing nvidia binary driver.

On the other hand I didn’t notice any random input events since. Maybe this bug was squashed in kernel 2.6.38. I’ll try and report this to the nouveau bug tracker (never done it so if anyone have any pointers please feel free to share)