10.04 crashes

[dbclinton]

On Wed, 2010-05-12 at 20:00 -0400, Greg Bair wrote:
> On 05/12/2010 07:28 PM, dbclinton wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I'm experiencing serious crashes (three or four a day) on my new
> > edubuntu 10.04 install. This is the third fresh install I've done - on
> > two separate hard drives - and the problem persists. With no clear
> > trigger, the screen will go blank, followed by strange black and white
> > patterns and then the monitor will lose its signal. These will cycle
> > through indefinitely. Interestingly, while my computer (a thin client
> > server) is affected, the thin clients themselves can continue working
> > for half and hour after the crash.
> > Here is the relevant log output:
> >
> > =====================
> > I appreciate your help!
> > David
> >
> >    
> I'm guessing you have an intel i915 chipset on your graphics card.  This 
> is a known issue that I've been dealing with.  My fix was to go back to 
> 9.04, the last version that doesn't do this.  However, the X and kernel 
> team are trying to figure it out.
> 
> It has to do with the way the kernel (or the xserver) is writing to the 
> graphics card.  Something's getting borked.

It is intel, though I don't think it's i915. Here's the lshw output:
===================
description: VGA compatible controller
             product: 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated
Graphics Device
             vendor: Intel Corporation
===================
As it happens, I've connected the crashes to gnome-screensaver. Besides
the fact that the screensaver had been acting very strangely (requiring
passwords when it was set NOT to lock down, offering the whole
user-pulldown menu for login despite being part of one user's session),
I could directly cause the crash by clicking on certain screensavers
(like ant-flashlight) in the gui.
In the meantime, I've uninstalled gnome-screensaver. Hope this works in
the short term.
Thanks!

>