NVIDIA driver causes kernel freeze

[Steve Morris]

On 26/08/10 00:36, Thomas Olsen wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au
> <mailto:blchupin at iinet.net.au>> wrote:
>
>     On 25/08/2010 22:02, Thomas Olsen wrote:
>     >
>     > Apparently it's a total no-go combo with this card and the binary
>     > drivers. I just spend 2 hrs. trying everything I could think of but
>     > the kernel freezes even before X starts.
>     >
>     > Thanks for all the help guys but I guess I'll have to find some
>     other
>     > card.
>
>     Whoa! Don't be so hasty! :-) .
>
>     If you say that it is the FX5900 card then it is a PCI Express card -
>     and it is not THAT old! :-)
>
> OK I might be a bit hasty.
>  
>
>     According to the nVidia site the driver for it is the 173.14.27 which
>     was only upgraded at the beginning of this month (4 August). The
>     driver
>     is here:
>
>     http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-173.14.27-driver.html
>
>     (assuming that you are using a 32-bit system, otherwise look for the
>     64-bit driver).
>
>     For my money, if you are "freezing" even before X starts then there is
>     some other problem - but I am only guessing.
>
> Well I *think* X tries to start because it writes a new Xorg.0.log but
> it is empty while kern.log says:
> Aug 25 13:32:23 tanghus kernel: [    8.859404] nvidia: module license
> 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
> Aug 25 13:32:23 tanghus kernel: [    8.859414] Disabling lock
> debugging due to kernel taint
> Aug 25 13:32:24 tanghus kernel: [    9.891499]   alloc irq_desc for 16
> on node -1
> Aug 25 13:32:24 tanghus kernel: [    9.891506]   alloc kstat_irqs on
> node -1
> Aug 25 13:32:24 tanghus kernel: [    9.891521] nvidia 0000:01:00.0:
> PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
> Aug 25 13:32:24 tanghus kernel: [    9.894480] NVRM: loading NVIDIA
> UNIX x86 Kernel Module  173.14.22  Sun Nov  8 20:26:31 PST 2009
>
> and the box freezes; Caps-Lock is unresponsive and REISUB doesn't do
> anything.
>  
>
>     And you do know that the kernel was upgraded earlier today? Is your
>     system up-to-date?
>
>
> Yes I keep it updated but I haven't noticed any kernel upgrade. Just
> tried to remove the dk sub-domain from sources.list (I'm in Denmark)
> but still no kernel upgrades.
>
> I've downloaded the driver (thanks for pointing that out) and then
> I'll wait to see if a new kernel arrives within the next days. I
> always use aptitude to update my system but I have forgotten how to
> see the history of the latest installs/updates :-P
>
> Thanks for all the help; I will probably be back with more questions ;-)
>
> BTW: Just for trying something/anything I disabled "Look for AGP
> first" or something like that in the BIOS. I haven't got a clue about
> HW so I don't know what AGP is either ;-)
>
> -- 
> Best regards / Med venlig hilsen
>
> Thomas Olsen
>
Thomas just a thought that I should have woken up to earlier. If you are
using the nvidia binary driver from the ubuntu repositories, that driver
may be set up for a specific version kernel which is why the kernel
taint message (if this is the case then ubuntu have compiled their
kernels with module version compatibility turned off, because by default
if a kernel module has not been compiled for the version of the kernel
you are running the kernel will not load it).
In the repositories there is a dkms environment which will build kernel
modules from source files, there are nvidia packages in the repositories
that are designed to work with that environment, you might be better off
investigating those (this environment works like the drivers you
download from nvidia themselves that compile against the active kernel
at install time). The dkms environment requires you to have the kernel
header package installed as well, but the advantage with this
environment is that because the module is compiled against the kernel
headers it can be guaranteed to be version compatible with the kernel,
plus when you upgrade kernels the nvidia module will be automatically
compiled against the new kernel (assuming you upgrade the headers at the
same time) at kernel upgrade time or on the first boot of ubuntu from
the new kernel.

regards,
Steve

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