Reply from SUSE on bug report:
Stefan Dirsch
GeForce GT520 is only supported in legacy G04 driver. Not sure what you’ve tested when installing G05/G06 drivers with nouveau drivers disabled. Probably unaccelerated fbdev driver. GeForce GT520 has been released in 2011.
Please make sure that all G04 driver packages of the nVidia repository are installed, not only x11-video-nvidiaG04 package. Please provide the output of ‘inxi -aG’ command and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log when having this driver installed.
Then possibly I can see something obvious, which could be addressed.
Unfortunately neither nVidia themselves nor the driver community around nouveau are still looking into issues with such old graphics cards, so chances are low, that this issue can still be fixed.
It was a big help knowing which was the correct driver to use! I followed Stefan’s advice and installed the G04 driver. It installed without any problems.
steven@localhost:~> zypper se -ir NVIDIA
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Summary | Type
---+---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
i | nvidia-computeG04 | NVIDIA driver for computing with GPGPU | package
i | nvidia-gfxG04-kmp-default | NVIDIA graphics driver kernel module for GeForce 400 series and newer | package
i | nvidia-glG04 | NVIDIA OpenGL libraries for OpenGL acceleration | package
i+ | x11-video-nvidiaG04 | NVIDIA graphics driver for GeForce 400 series and newer | package
Then, I rebooted. I expected the same problem that I had with the G04 driver when I first installed it, but this time, it booted right into KDE, no problem!
Regarding Stefan’s suggestion that I make sure all four drivers were installed, I am pretty sure that’s what I did the first time around, because I used the YaST Software Management tool, and that would have installed all of the dependencies. But, what I recall doing is selecting the G04 driver, which marked the G06 driver for uninstallation when I did that, in the same transaction. So, maybe, the package manager didn’t do a clean rollback of the G06 driver.
What I also recall doing when I was removing the G04 driver from the TTY session, was deleting the 50-nvidia-default.conf file from /etc/modprobe.d/, and reverting back by copying from the 50-nvidia-default.conf.rpmsave file, before I ran mkinitrd.
The nVidia G04 driver seems to be a lot faster than the Nouveau one, but, with this driver, I was still sometimes, but not always, getting the exactly the same problem that I had with the Nouveau driver, where after a sleep and screen lock, I can get back to the lock screen, but I can’t get the lock screen to show my profile or the password entry field!
So, I can only think that this is a new bug caused by the more recent version of KDE.
After the reboot I followed Stefan’s instructions, see below:
steven@localhost:~> inxi -aG
Graphics: Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI
driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0116 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: NVIDIA GF108M [GeForce GT 520M] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: nvidia v: 390.147
alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0df7 class-ID: 0300
Device-3: Suyin 1.3M HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.3:3 chip-ID: 064e:d250 class-ID: 0e02
serial: HF1316-A821-HN01-VA-R01.00.02
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.3 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
alternate: intel display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.2x8.0") s-diag: 414mm (16.3")
Monitor-1: LVDS-1 res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 101 size: 344x194mm (13.5x7.6") diag: 395mm (15.5")
OpenGL: renderer: N/A v: N/A direct render: N/A
Another problem I was occasionally getting with this laptop was that I would, after a sleep or hibernate, get the following message:
Message !
from syslogd@localhost at Mar 18 03:45:51 ...
kernel: 225.157158] C1] Disabling IRQ #17
Then, my NetworkManager applet would get disabled, and my Wi-Fi connection would be deactivated!
From the Info Centre application, PCI devices section, the following devices use IRQ 17 on this laptop:
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
I/O behind bridge: None
Memory behind bridge: 9fb00000-9fbfffff [size=1]
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d1800000-00000000d18fffff [size=1]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
02:00.1 SD Host controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM57765/57785 SDXC/MMC Card Reader (rev 10) (prog-if 01)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0504
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at d1800000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci
Kernel modules: sdhci_pci
03:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. T77H167.00
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at d1900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Kernel modules: ath9k, wl
From my research, it is not possible to change the interrupt settings from the operating system. My laptop’s BIOS also doesn’t have this capability. And, because this is a laptop with a lot of integrated circuits, it’s not a simple matter of changing the jumper on the network card either!
I am not sure if it’s the nVidia card causing this behaviour, but note from the above that the main PCI bridge also uses this IRQ, so the nVidia card might be causing this problem.
What I have done to mitigate these problems is to go into the System Settings app, and changed the following settings from the defaults:
- In Workspace Behaviour - Screen Locking: turn off both lock settings.
[/size][/size][/size] - In Energy Saver – AC Power: turn off the suspend session setting.
Everything seems to be working fine now, and I can use the laptop with these new settings. My main concern now is that I won’t really be able to secure my laptop against local access.
I have done some brief testing of the G04 driver by using Kodi. I played some music with the ProjectM visualiser, and I also played a video with Kodi. No problems with either!
A friend of mine, who also as a laptop with an older nVidia card, gave me the following advice:
-
This is definitely nVidia-related.
-
It conflicts with sleep and hibernate.
-
The Nouveau driver causes screen flicker with certain graphical applications like visualisation and video playback. (I never got around to testing that, though.)
-
It is better to use the nVidia drivers.
-
Don’t use sleep/suspend or hibernate! Leave it on or shut it down.
-
My friend also asked me to test the driver with GNOME, that way I would know for certain if it is actually KDE causing these problems. But I still haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.
-
Also, something I noticed from the OpenSUSE documentation is that there is no more CUDA support for the G04 driver, as of 18 January 2022.
In short, this is probably the best I can do with this laptop, if I want to run Linux/ OpenSUSE on it, unless either nVidia or the Nouveau community decides to fix either the GO4 or the Nouveau driver, which seems unlikely, from what Stefan said.
I will be posting this as a comment everywhere I posted the original issue, for anyone else out there that is using the same or similar old hardware, and runs into the same problems.[/size]
