I have an HP ZBook 15 G2 with an NVIDIA GK208GLM [Quadro K610M] graphics card. Kernel v4.4.87-25-default. My screen continually freezes after a few hours, but my mouse still works. The screen freezes and I can’t change anything except move my mouse (I see the cursor moving but can’t do anything to windows, they freeze even in mid-animation sometimes). I have to do a hard reset to recover.
I tried installing the NVIDIA drivers but it said it was blacklisting the kernel module and my attempt caused my screen resolution to become horrible so I reverted back to drm-kmp-default (I tried forcing it too but my screen resolution was abysmal no matter what I tried).
Is this a known issue? (My searches keep finding outdated information)
Is there a workaround/fix?
Where can I look to help diagnose and understand the underlying issue better?
Apparently your laptop uses the Optimus architecture, so if you want to use the Nvidia GPU you have to install bumblebee or use other features like dri-prime (possibly not supported by kernel 4.4.x) or suse-prime (not yet ported to 42.3?), unless there is some HW trick in your BIOS to get the Intel integrated graphics out of your way.
For optimal use of integrated graphics with an i7 4xxx processor maybe you have to uninstall the drm-kmp-default package.
Thanks @OrsoBruno! I’m not sold on using the NVIDIA GPU, I just don’t want it to crash/freeze. I’m not a gamer, mostly just some IDEs / nvim is all I need.
Well I tried bumblebee and now I just get a black screen. No GUI, not even a login prompt. I created a btrfs snapshot first so should be able to roll back but looks like I’ll have to try another approach!
Since most of your work can be done on the integrated graphics apparently, try uninstalling drm-kmp-default and see if you get a stable desktop in the first place.
Then you can try something else to engage the Nvidia chip when you need it.
You could try to uninstall the package drm-kmp-default (without installing the nvidia driver or bumblebee).
That contains a backport of kernel graphics drivers from later kernels (4.9).
Its purpose actually is to fix problems with (newer) intel chips, but apparently can cause problems with certain chips too.
I think that uninstalling drm-kmp-default did the trick (fingers crossed). Thanks for all of your help everyone! I also discovered several issues in my xsession log due to modules looking for file names with hyphens where the actual files don’t have hyphens. I added symlinks and that seems to have resolved all of those except for plasma-popupapplet.desktop (I don’t have this file as far as I can tell). So hopefully between all the suggestions here and the few tweaks I’ve done along the way, I’ll now have a stable Plasma desktop experience!
The screen never turns off after inactivity while logged out anymore. Not a critical issue by any means, but it means I’m using more power. The main issue seems to be:
powerdevil: Can't contact ck
I thought it might have had something to do with having Chrome open due to this, but after closing Chrome the behavior persisted. Not a huge deal by any means, but it worked before uninstalling rm-kmp-default. But no crashes!
But then, that update was released in February already.
FWIW, the login screen does blank here, but I am using kdm.
You could try that too, just set DISPLAYMANAGER=“kdm” in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager (and install the package kdm if it is not installed already).
Of course it could just be that it’s somehow lack of support in the older graphics driver in kernel 4.4.x.
(drm-kmp-default contains the graphics stack from kernel 4.9 as mentioned)
I actually can’t adjust my screen brightness at all I found. It still shows the brightness dialog when I use my function keys, but no changes result. I’m afraid I don’t understand this enough to resolve. Anywhere I can learn more? Not just a fix, but something that explains what “kdm” means and gives me an understanding of the architecture and components so I understand. Thanks.
Depending on HW, at times function keys for brightness don’t work unless a specific kernel option is used at boot time; but the controls in your desktop panel should allow you to set the brightness level of your choice.
Re. architecture, you need a “display manager” to manage graphical login and to route graphics for different users to different virtual terminals, or VTs, say VT1 for the first user logged in, VT2 for the second one etc.; the login screen should be on VT7 I think.
You may switch between different VTs with the Ctrl+Alt+Fn key combination (F1 for VT1, F2 for VT2 etc.).
The default display manager for KDE/Plasma is “sddm” and is apparently what you are using; an alternative is “kdm” (what Wolfi323 is using); those display managers perform basically the same functions but may differ in some details.
Once you have logged in as a user, the display manager starts a “window manager” on a VT and routes all graphics output relevant to that user to that VT, where it is “rendered” by the window manager of your choice, showing windows for open applications, panels, menus etc.
You may choose which window manager to use at login with the relevant option, for instance “Plasma” or “IceWM” (or others, if you have installed them).
Long story short, when at the login screen graphics is controlled by “sddm” (or “kdm” for Wolfi323), while inside your user session graphics is controlled by Plasma (or IceWM if you chose that WM at login); so dimming of the login screen might be related to a sddm problem, while dimming of a user desktop might be related to KDE/Plasma or one of its applications like screen saver etc.
I understand that Wolfi323 might be much more specific re. KDE should you need a deeper understanding.
