System crash on certain operations - Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller

English Hardware
1

Hi.

I’m using a fresh install (from DVD) of opensuse 13.2 KDE (32 bit) on a Dell inspiron 1525. It has the Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller.

I’ve moved the hard drive (with opensuse 13.2 already on it) from a different laptop, over to this one. No problems on the previous laptop other than it having SIS chips so not getting a very good display due to the unsupported graphics chip. When the symptoms appeared I reinstalled the OS just in case that might make a difference, but it hasn’t.

Certain operations result in either a black screen (from which I cannot recover, have to power off) or being kicked out to the login screen. Trying to login results in being kicked straight back to the login screen again and I have to reboot before I can successfully login. Sometimes the machine won’t reboot, it just hangs and I have to power off and start again.

These are the operations that result in the crashes:

Trying to get into yast (at the point of entering root password and clicking ‘ok’).

Running the command xrandr, though on a couple of occasions xrandr has worked without any problem.

Opening a PDF document.

Activate/deactivate desktop effects.

Clicking on ‘Display and Monitor’ in System Settings.

Sometimes when I leave the machine for a while, it has crashed when I return.

Non of this happens from a live install disk.

I am assuming that the problem is something to do with the graphics controller/drivers so I hope the output of these commands will be useful:

hwinfo --gfxcard
09: PCI 02.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)                                                           
  [Created at pci.328]                                                                                       
  Unique ID: _Znp.kIVVn0Xw8t7                                                                                
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0                                                                 
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel 965 GM"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x2a02 "965 GM"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x022f 
  Revision: 0x0c
  Driver: "i915"
  Driver Modules: "drm"
  Memory Range: 0xfea00000-0xfeafffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xe0000000-0xefffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0xeff8-0xefff (rw)
  IRQ: 44 (2061 events)
  I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00002A02sv00001028sd0000022Fbc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    XFree86 v4 Server Module: intel
  Driver Info #1:
    XFree86 v4 Server Module: intel
    3D Support: yes
    Extensions: dri
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

10: PCI 02.1: 0380 Display controller
  [Created at pci.328]
  Unique ID: ruGf.Fls7hspaQUD
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.1
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.1
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary)"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x2a03 "Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary)"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x022f 
  Revision: 0x0c
  Memory Range: 0xfeb00000-0xfebfffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00002A03sv00001028sd0000022Fbc03sc80i00"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

/sbin/lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a00] (rev 0c)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:022f]
        Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) [8086:2a02] (rev 0c)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:022f]
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) [8086:2a03] (rev 0c)

inxi -G             
Resuming in non X mode: xdpyinfo not found. For package install advice run: inxi --recommends
Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) 
           X.org: 1.16.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) tty size: 109x38 Advanced Data: N/A for root

One other thing I’ve noticed is that if I do Ctrl+Alt+F1 (for example) to get to a terminal, I see:

Bug: scheduling while atomic:...

This message continues to print to screen and I have to power off. I’ve no idea if this is in any way related.

Any help/advice would be most appreciated!

2

I get the black screen you’ve described (particularly with video), as well as lots of problems on the desktop (KDE) with my laptop that uses an older series 4 intel adapter (gma 4500 iirc). When I turn rendering (in the desktop effects settings) to XRender, the problems disappear. You may wish to see if similar results occur for you too

3

Yes, I did try that just to see if it would make any difference, but it didn’t. All the other symptoms I describe are with desktop effects turned off because they won’t turn on without causing the crash. I don’t normally use them anyway, was just seeing what worked without a problem and what didn’t. Thanks.

4

I don’t know if it is related to your problems, but the stock kernel has issues with GM965.
Update at least to kernal 3.16.7, then see if newer MESA or X11 stack may also be involved.
I resolved all my problems (so far) by installing Tumbleweed…
Good luck

5

Thanks for reply.

I keep my system updated and my current kernel is: 3.16.7-7 so I assume that I have the most recent bits of the stack to go with it. I’ll see if I can find out what the issues are with GM965. If anyone has any knowledge of this then any pointer would be helpful because I’ve not found anything with my previous searching.

I have come across mention of an Intel Graphics Installer and found this:

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads

but there doesn’t seem to be one for opensuse. There are individual packages, but to try and do anything with them would seem to be rather risky; I don’t want to mess up my system any further.

I’m wondering if the kernel having issues with GM965 means that there’s a bug that’s causing this behaviour? If anyone has any specific knowledge or information about this then please let me know. All I have at the moment is I know what things trigger the unwanted behaviour, I’ve nothing to go on to try and fix things. Oh, another thing I’ve found that triggers the crash is starting Transmission.

After having trouble with my previous laptop which had SIS chips, I did some searching and thought I found that I would be OK with a laptop that used Intel chips. Is Intel generally a good bet to go for or have I misunderstood something? Maybe the GM965 chip is just not supported as much now it’s getting a bit old or is it really just a bug that will be fixed?

Anyway, if anyone else has any ideas, I would be pleased to hear them. In the meantime I will look into Tumbleweed. I am interested in finding out what is causing the problems I’m having though.

Thanks.

6

Hi Lostinspaces, sorry for my first “quick and dirty” reply…
During 2014 Intel released a new version of their graphics stack, and apparently older chips like the GM965 weren’t tested as thoroughly.
The OS 13.2 kernel at release time was affected by bug904097
Kernel 3.16.7-7 fixed that, so your system seems OK on that.
Keeping Xorg updated as well is a wise behaviour.

Before that, disabling “dri” or explicitly loading the “dri2” extension in Xorg seemed a valid workaround, possibly with graphics speed side effects.
If you are willing to play with it, just place a file named, for instance, 49-intel965gm.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d with the following content:


Section "Module"
#    Disable "glx"
#    Disable "dri"
#    Load "dri2"
#    Load "dri3"
EndSection

and try removing the # one at a time, and see what happens…

In Tumbleweed, Kernel 3.18 had a different, related problem (see bug911835)
that was fixed in the current 3.18.3-1 kernel.

A few days ago I saw that the MESA update to version 10.4.3-102.1 mentioned the following

  • i965: Respect the no_8 flag on Gen6, not just Gen7+.
  • i965: Work around mysterious Gen4 GPU hangs with minimal state changes.
    although I didn’t witness those problems myself.

Or… maybe your problems are rooted in Plasma or KDE5 and I’m just wasting time :wink: (GNOME in use here…)

7

Hi OrsoBruno, no need for sorry, I appreciate your help. Thanks for the information about the Intel stack.

Well I upgraded to Tumbleweed this afternoon and everything seems alright so far apart from:

synclient touchpadoff=1

doesn’t turn off my touchpad anymore.

Anyway, I tried what you suggested with the 49-intel965gm.conf file but unfortunately there was no difference. I used launching yast as a test, and each time I tried I got either kicked out to the login screen or a black screen with some error about the kernel and invalid opcode.

I suppose all I can do now is wait and see if things get better when new packages come down the line. Or I can buy yet another laptop and avoid getting one with Intel chips. This one is nice though so I will wait a little while to see if things get fixed.

Thanks a lot!

8

There might be some sort of conflict between synclient and the desktop preference tool.
On my laptop (Tumbleweed), the default is “touchpad on” and “disable when typing” set with the graphic tool, which results in TouchpadOff=2 and the commandline synclient being ineffective.
If I set “touchpad off” in the graphic tool, synclient is able to change TouchpadOff to 1 or 0, but then the graphic tool becomes ineffective…
At the next login, the graphic tool takes over again if it is set to “touchpad on”.
Take your choice, it seems.

9

Ah, I see. I was doing that because synaptics didn’t have a setting to disable the touchpad when a mouse was detected (I know it used to have but for some reason it was removed). Now I have something called kcm-touchpad instead of synaptics, this does have that setting and much more too. I hadn’t looked in there since upgrading to Tumbleweed, I guess Tumbleweed comes with kcm-touchpad instead of synaptics. Much better.

Thanks.

10

Well I’ve moved back to 13.2 as Tumbleweed was too unstable for me - black screen kernel panic and other stuff.

Anyway, The problems I’ve mentioned in this thread are still happening:

Various events trigger a system crash and being kicked out to the login screen. When at the login screen I cannot simply login again from there because that results in being kicked straight back to the login screen again. I have to reboot first anf then the login works.

The events that I’ve found so far that trigger this behaviour are:

Trying to get into yast (at the point of entering root password and clicking ‘ok’).

Running the command xrandr.

Opening a PDF document.

Activate/deactivate desktop effects.

Clicking on ‘Display and Monitor’ in System Settings.

Screen blanking.

Starting knotes.

Starting Calibre.

Starting Transmission.

I think that’s it.

What I’d like to know is should I report this as a bug, and would I have to report each event as a seperate bug?

And should I report it to opensuse or Intel?

Thanks.

11

moved back from tumbleweed?? How?

12

By reinstalling 13.2.

13

Did you do a new install or an upgrade install? A new install formats the partition but an upgrade install does not and leaves configuration files which maybe where the problems is.

14

I did a new install.

This is the sequence of events:

I moved this hard drive (with opensuse 13.2 already on it) from a different laptop, over to this one. No problems on the previous laptop other than it having SIS chips so not getting a very good display due to the unsupported graphics chip. When I found the problems (the crashing) I reinstalled the OS just in case that might make a difference, but it didn’t.

Then I did a load of searching but couldn’t find anything I could use to rectify the problem, so I posted on this forum to try and get some help.

OrsoBruno told me about the problems with the Intel graphics stack and suggested something I could try. I tried what he said but unfortunately it made no difference.

I then installed Tumbleweed in the hope that the newer graphic components might be the answer, but after several large updates (using zypper dup) the situation was no better and Tumbleweed was too unstable for me so I’ve reinstalled 13.2 again. That’s where I am now.

I don’t know if this has any bearing on anything but I’ve kept my (separate) home partition all the way along this path because I always use KDE and of course the home partition has all my stuff on it. So I only format the root partition.

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048  29298922  29296875    14G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2        29300736 382908415 353607680 168.6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3       382908416 390721535   7813120   3.7G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
15

Ok try a different user see if the configs in your home may be the problem

16

Yea, I tried that already, no difference.