NVIDIA Driver 295.40-15.1. crashes my system

The new NVIDIA Dirver from Friday the 13th packed by OBS in the openSUSE NVIDIA repository behaves strange. First i thought my NVIDIA 8600GT is defect because the monitor was flickering. When i start glxgears it will run about ten seconds,
then i get the message from syslogd: 122.735462] Disabling IRQ #19 and then my system (not only X, everything) freezes. I cant even switch on a console or shut my system with the power button down.
I could only stop this behaviour by deinstalling NVIDIA driver and module and compiling an old NVIDIA Driver for my system. Now it works perfectly.

OK opensuse cannot change that because its proprietary, but it would be better if the OBS doesnt package Drivers which only makes problems.

On 04/18/2012 03:36 PM, Pilgervater wrote:
>
> OK opensuse cannot change that because its proprietary, but it would be
> better if the OBS doesnt package Drivers which only makes problems.

How do you propose that OBS test the Nvidia driver on YOUR computer? Driver
295.40 works just fine on my box. I’m using kernel 3.4-rc2, thus I had to build
it myself, but it causes no problem

I updated three machines with the driver from the nvidia repo since
yesterday and none of them has any problems (one 11.4 and two 12.1).
I just tell you that because you say the driver makes only problems. You
cannot generalize from one system to the rest of the world.


PC: oS 11.4 x86_64 | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.2 |
GeForce GT 420
Eee PC 1201n: oS 12.1 x86_64 | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | 3GB | KDE 4.8.2
| nVidia ION
eCAFE 800: oS 12.1 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10 |
xf86-video-geode

nvidia 295.40 breaks Gnome-shell (including cinnamon) on GeForce 6x based systems. I don’t know if it hits all GeForce 6x models, but I’m sure it affects GeForce 6150. I had the issue on two machines - same hardware - dualbooting openSUSE and ArchLinux. On Arch, downgrading from 295.40 to 295.33 solved the problem . On openSUSE, I had to downgrade to the previous version: 290.10-13 from repo (which had other problems though).

Don’t update the nvidia driver if you happen to have such a graphics card and you don’t want to see the “Oh! No. Something has gone wrong” welcome screen. Don’t try to disable extensions, as suggested. The new driver is the culprit.

nvidia 295.40 (from repo) also broke cinnamon (but not Gnome-shell) on GeForce 8400 GS. cinnamon worked before whith the same driver, installed from nvidia run file. I’m not 100% sure that it was the same version - I can’t find the run file again - but I think it was. But this is more a cinnamon issue. I was able to get Cinnamon back by using a version I compiled, which had worked before with all models.

It is looking like the 295.40 driver is a problem for 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx video card versions and in general not worth the effort to upgrade. I am even seeing that the newer driver degrades performance for the older nVIDIA chipsets. Right now I am running 295.40 on a 560 card with no apparent issues OR improvements for that matter and since it only works with a patch as well in kernel 3.3 (used in openSUSE 12.2) or 3.4, it does not appear to be worth the trouble to load. I might also suggest anyone with an nVIDIA driver problem, post their displeasure in the nVIDIA Linux forums ( nV News Forums - Powered by vBulletin).

Thank You,

jdmcdaniel3 wrote:

> It is looking like the 295.40 driver is a problem for 6xxx, 7xxx and
> 8xxx video card versions and in general not worth the effort to upgrade.
> I am even seeing that the newer driver degrades performance for the
> older nVIDIA chipsets. Right now I am running 295.40 on a 560 card with
> no apparent issues OR improvements for that matter and since it only
> works with a patch as well in kernel 3.3 (used in openSUSE 12.2) or 3.4,
> it does not appear to be worth the trouble to load. I might also
> suggest anyone with an nVIDIA driver problem, post their displeasure in
> the nVIDIA Linux forums ( ‘nV News Forums - Powered by vBulletin’

Just a counter point: I have two examples to the contrary, both older 6xxx
models with oS 11.4. The Lenovo is running the 6100 and a Compaq/HP box has
a 6150. The 295.40 has cleared several update problems we were having with
both.

You think maybe we lucked out for once?


Will Honea

I see there are a lot of entries in the official NVidia Forum about this issue. I am very disappointed from NVIDIA drivers now and i switched to Nouveau. Nouveau works fine even with good 3D Support (Nexuiz/Glest/Bzflag) only some minor flickers when switching from BZFlag to KDE with desktop effects. But there is a workaround. If you experience any flickers then disable and enable desktop effects again.
The Nouveau driver ist more stable then 295.40 from NVidia and its openSource.

Yes, but the question is: are you using Gnome3? Actually I bet you don’t on 11.4. I had no other problems with 6150 except that Gnome-shell won’t start at all (not even switch to fallback mode).

Yes, that’s true. Nouveau has improved a lot finally.

I’ve not had a crash, but KWin had to disable all desktop effects with the new driver, and I’ve downgraded to 295.33. Which is a pain, but OK. However, to downgrade I had to get the NVIDIA installer as only the new driver is available in the repos: I’d like to suggest for future reference that after an update like this the old driver(s) should be kept in the repos, for a few weeks at least.

C68 [GeForce 7050 PV / nForce 630a]; openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64); KDE: 4.7.2 (4.7.2) “release 5”

Pilgervater wrote:

> I see there are a lot of entries in the official NVidia Forum about this
> issue. I am very disappointed from NVIDIA drivers now and i switched to
> Nouveau. Nouveau works fine even with good 3D Support
> (Nexuiz/Glest/Bzflag) only some minor flickers when switching from
> BZFlag to KDE with desktop effects. But there is a workaround. If you
> experience any flickers then disable and enable desktop effects again.
> The Nouveau driver ist more stable then 295.40 from NVidia and its
> openSource.

I have a problem with the nouveau driver on the two machines I work with.
They are (obviously) older boxes and the acpi implementation in the BIOS (no
updates available) sets up the chipset with an IRQ that the kernel
initialization won’t use. Result is very poor performance. The native
driver module sees the conflict and changes the irq assignment when it loads
but the nouveau driver does not.

That’s what I get for sticking with what was state-of-the-art when I bought
it. Not worth the bother at this late date so I go with whatever works.


Will Honea

This is a recurrent request … because it’s a recurrent problem. The suggestion was made several times in one of the longuest thread here: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/448653-nvidia-260-19-issues.html?highlight=nvidia+ypnose. We did upload the previous version of the package on some file sharing site, so that users hit by the bug could download it and downgrade the driver. It usually makes sense to keep the last two versions of the rpms on your computer or file server. You can do it under openSUSE for each repo separately, and you should do it for nvidia IMO if you use the driver from repo.

To keep the nvidia packages on your local disk, you can use this command:

$ sudo zypper mr **-k**  $(zypper lr -u | awk '/nvidia/{ print $1}')
RPM files caching has been enabled for repository 'nvidia'.

If you called the nvidia repo “nvidia” (so did I), they will be in directory /var/cache/zypp/packages/nvidia/x86_64 (or i586)

If you decide not to keep these packages anymore, use the same command with an uppercase -K


$ sudo zypper mr **-K**  $(zypper lr -u | awk '/nvidia/{ print $1}')
RPM files caching has been disabled for repository 'nvidia'.

By default, RPM files caching is disabled for all repos.

Thanks for that. Yet another aspect to zypper that I didn’t know!

On 2012-04-20 09:26, please try again wrote:

> By default, RPM files caching is disabled for all repos.

If you have two or more computers, it makes sense to enable it for all
repos, then export the parent directory via nfs, and import it on the rest
of the computers - so that you need download the packages only once.

But you have to remember to run updates only on one computer at a time.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

It means symlinking /var/cache/zypp/packages. You’ll save time as well.

Further, as the package cache is going to grow, you can clear it while keeping only a given number of versions (default is 2) with this script http://forums.opensuse.org/english/other-forums/development/programming-scripting/470592-clearing-rpm-cache.html. I wrote another script in the meantime, which works on Debian based distros, Fedora and ArchLinux. This it the one I’m using now. I could post it eventually.

Same problem. Rolled back to 290.10 version

And I can add Fedora to that list today. So 295.40 definitely breaks Gnome-shell with GeForce 6x on all Linux distros (which is not surprising btw).

If it is the case that Nvidia-driver 290.40 do crash some systems, then it should be removed from the repository until its been fixed. Now many will probebly update Nvidia-driver and end up with huge problems.
OpenSUSE and Linux is not an easy system if you have problems with drivers.
How do i role back to 290.10?

RS

Maybe not removed, since it doesn’t affect all systems, but at least the old packages should be made available along with the new. The nV News forum has a thread explicitly telling people not to use the driver:
Please do not use 295.40 or the security patch with GeForce 6, 7 or 8800GTX/GTS cards - nV News Forums

On 2012-04-23 13:56, dimesio wrote:

> Maybe not removed, since it doesn’t affect all systems, but at least
> the old packages should be made available along with the new.

So, you have to communicate with the openSUSE maintainer of the rpm to do
so. It is not NVidia who makes the rpm, they only host it.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)