Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and Minefield?

[Kent Fredric]

On 1/10/07, Bruno Lustosa <bruno.lists@×××××.com> wrote:
> Hello, list.
>
> I'm running Gentoo on my box, and got (almost) everything on ~x86,
> with the exception of gcc, glibc and binutils, as these have rendered
> my box completely b0rked in the past.
> (un?)fortunately, this machine has an nvidia graphics display, and we
> all know nvidia linux drivers are very far from perfect. I myself have
> seen all kind of strange behaviour and lockups with them on various
> machines.
> Now, I'm helping test Minefield (a.k.a. Firefox 3). And here comes the problems:
>
> - If I try Minefield with nvidia drivers, I experience X lockup (100%
> cpu and completely unresponsive) as soon as I try to either open a
> message on Gmail or try to compose a new mail. I was going to post
> this message when it locked.
> - Firefox 2 with nvidia drivers seem to be OK (I'm posting this right
> now on it).
> - X with opensource nv drivers eat 80% cpu time even when doing
> nothing. My box becomes very sluggish, and it looks like my old 486
> dx2 :)
>
> I find it very strange that Minefield can bring X down by simply
> opening a message or trying to compose new mail. I have managed to
> reproduce this error here several times. When this happens, I have to
> ssh in, kill -9 X, and then wait a bit for gdm to restart it.
>
> This is very very annoying.
>
> If I could, I would leave nvidia forever, but I guess there are no
> better (or less worse) alternative, so I must stick to these crappy
> drivers.
> Also, this seems to have started after I had to replace nvidia-drivers
> with nvidia-legacy-drivers.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Bruno Lustosa <bruno@×××××××.net>
> http://www.lustosa.net/
> --
> gentoo-user@g.o mailing list
>
Heh, imagine the confusion I was having when nvidia + xcomposite hard
locked my computer :/

If SSH works then you might want to investigate "MAGIC_SYSRQ" hot-keys
as an alternative ( depending on the environment, some say its a
security risk, but i figure if they have access to a keyboard in front
of your box then security is beyond compromised. )

http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/lxr/source/Documentation/sysrq.txt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_Skinny_Elephants_Is_Utterly_Boring

For your problem i reccon a magic K followed by a VT Switch ( K will
often kill X in cases where X's own kill switches fail ) followed by a
gdm restart, if you can't be bothered leaving your seat to find an ssh
box :)

-- 
/<ent Fredric
(aka theJackal)
-- 
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list