Nvidia drivers and X usage

[Guardian Bob]

I used the installer to install the new nvidia drivers on RH9 (kernel 2.4.20-9.)

Now, what's happening, is after leaving my box running for a while, especially raising and lowering window in the wm, at random points X usage will go to 99.9% (as reported by top, from an external machine, sshing in) and the system will be frozen. The only way to get at it, is to ssh in from another box and kill X. Now this did happen with the 4xxx versions of the nvidia driver in RH 8, but not the 3xxx version. So I strongly suspect it is the driver. Any suggestions?

--GB

[added]
BTW, I have an AMD Athalon machine, 512 ram, 1.3 ghz, and GeForce2 MX.

[wizdom]

This is probably unrelated, but I experience the same thing on a distroless machine (XF 4.3) when using:

Option "RenderAccel" "1"

In my XF86Config. NVIDIA mark this off by default and say it's experimental, but it used to work prior to the 4xxx series on this GF2Ti, now it's broken.

If you have RenderAccel set, try removing that line.

Cheers,
Alistair Strachan.

[bwkaz]

I've got RenderAccel set, with no problems at all. Of course, the longest I've ever run X was approx. 3 days, but I didn't see a problem then. Normal usage is boot it up around 7 or 8 AM, and shut it down around 10 or 11 PM, so anywhere from 14 to 16 hours a day, it's running.

[Guardian Bob]

I have this in my XF86Config:

Section "Device"

# no known options
# Driver "nvidia" #using nv right now to keep from crashing
Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX (generic)"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX (generic)"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX (generic)"
Option "CursorShadow" "on"
Option "HWCursor" "on"
Option "NoLogo" "on"
Option "NoRenderAccel" "off"
Option "NvAGP" "3"
EndSection

--GB

[Edited: added code tags]

[bwkaz]

None of those Options will take effect, you're using the wrong Driver. Those are not options for the XFree86 "nv" driver, only for the nVidia-provided "nvidia" driver. Did you edit the config file like the README says to?

[Guardian Bob]

If you read the comment you would realize that I switched to the NV driver so that X won't crash. I realize that if I want the options to take affect, I need to load the nvidia driver.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Guardian Bob
If you read the comment you would realize that I switched to the NV driver so that X won't crash. Hmm, I don't see where you said that -- am I blind? Entirely possible... Could you quote it for me? Thanks...

If you do "NoRenderAccel" "on" (and obviously switch back to "nvidia"), does that work?

[Guardian Bob]

Yes, setting the norenderaccel to on seems to have fixed my problems.

--GB

[wizdom]

NVIDIA, if you're listening, this adds another person to those experiencing problems with RenderAccel on GF2 (or newer?) hardware.

I can confirm this bug was not present in the 3xxx series. The performance boost from having RenderAccel flagged is considerable, could you look into this?

Cheers,
Alistair Strachan.

[Andy Mecham]

Thanks for your reports - it would also be helpful to let linux-bugs@nvidia.com know.

--andy