startx freezes after splash screen

[ventricle]

GF4Ti4800SE
A7N8X Deluxe
Gentoo
Athlon XP2600

I've compiled gentoo-sources then run the nvidia install program. It had to compile itself, which went fine.
When I startx, the nvidia splash screen shows perfectly, then the gray window is displayed with the mouse cursor as an 'x' in the middle. The whole system now locks up and I have to reboot via the power button on the box!
There doesn't appear to be any errors in the log - see attached.
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"
Load "bitmap"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "blank time" "10"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "no"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "MultiSync V921"
HorizSync 31-96
VertRefresh 55-160
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "GeForce4"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen"
Device "GeForce4"
Monitor "MultiSync V921"
Option "NvAgp" "3"
DefaultDepth 24
DefaultFbBpp 32

SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection

SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Gentoo"
Screen "Screen"
InputDevice "Mouse" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection


-------------

[Andy Mecham]

What window manager are you starting? Does your machine lock if you just run 'X'?

--andy

[ventricle]

Hi,
I am not sure if I was running any wm, I was following the gentoo docs for setting up desktop env, and it said twm should come up. Anyhow, I went to /etc/rc.conf and decided to simply go with Xsession to see if that would help.
So The same thing happened, except this time I have a little window in the screen asking for a choice of widget types I think (I am at work now). Everything however was still frozen. I wasn't able to choose anything because there's no mouse and no keyboard. I still have to hard reset.

[Andy Mecham]

Just typing 'X' will start X without a window manager.

It's not quite clear to me why your machine is locking up - your logs look fine. Is your memory good? Are you overclocking your board/cpu?

--andy

[ventricle]

Memory is good as far as I know (what's the best way to test?) and I'm not overclocking anything. Everything works fine in WinXP anyhow - tested it out with some games.
I'm reinstalling everything from stage 2 in Gentoo, so I'll see how things go this time around. Perhaps something got messed up on the way there before.

[ventricle]

I've just reinstalled everything from scratch and I still get the same problem, there is no response from anything and the only thing I can do is to reset the PC.

[parasew]

same here on a debian/woody with a pci elsa gladiac (geforce2 MX) -kernel 2.4.20 and the latest nvidia drivers.

--> please see my thread here:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10519
seems to be a common problem, huh?

[ventricle]

Yes, there must be something wrong in general with the setup or the driver for this to happen. It is unfortunate - I have this lovely new computer that I can't run linux on ;(

[ventricle]

I actually managed to get this to work somehow (luck, not knowledge).
So I have things working nicely, other than the fact that I can't do a shutdown now -h to switch off the computer. I do have APM options (some of them) in the kernel already, however I have to manually turn it off after it says 'power down'. Assuming this might work if I build ACPI? into the kernel, I rebuild the kernel after adding this option. Then I rebuilt the nvidia drivers. startx causes the 'ascii screen' error you see everywhere here. So, by my calculations, this problem is related to ACPI.
Now, the problem I had in this post, where the screen would show, but would freeze everything, I'm not sure how it got fixed. I changed the USB port my mouse was plugged into and made sure all the modules exist, and it works fine now - other than when I actually switch off the computer, then turn it on again there is no USB mouse detection (the red lights don't show). The only way I get the mouse to work again is to install my redhat install disc and let it boot up to the start of the install, this fixes it somehow.
Pain in the butt, I tell you. Note, this only happens when I actually turn off the computer, a shutdown now -r will not cause the problem :)

[shiftAU]

My X was freezing after showing the splash screen at one point, I got around it by commenting out the DPMS line in my monitor section.

[andyb@b5]

I had exactly that problem, X froze on startup and though apm was correctly set up I had to turn my machine off when the power down prompt appeared. I had smp configured into my kernel and once I removed it both X/nvidia and apm worked fine.

Regards
Andy

[ventricle]

Take me as dumb, but what is 'smp'? (I'm at work and cant' check my machine).

[parasew]

smp means symmetric multi processing.
by default it is compiled in, since linux doesn't use it on a single processor machine.

i had some problems with this before, but i am moving my linux-workstation-harddisk from time to time to a multiprocessor p3, so i had this option set.

sadly removing smp from the kernel didn't change my problems with the latest nvidia drivers...

[ventricle]

Heh,
I tried to remove smp from the kernel, but when compiling got a bunch of errors, so I don't know what else I needed to remove.
Once again, I tried to install ACPI, and this lets me poweroff correctly (which is good), but I'm not able to get the nvidia driver to work with it (I get the ascii characters all over the screen)! I'm convinced there must be a bug here somewhere between the nvidia driver and ACPI.

[kevryn]

I have a similar problem here with a FreeBSD 4.8-stable system (I'm not sure, but I don't think the problem is FreeBSD's fault). I can start X without a window manager just fine, but it locks up if I try to use a window manager. I can't ping the box so I too have to do a hard shutdown. My system info and logs are here (http://webpages.charter.net/nvidia_problem/)