Very slow X startup

[Jeremy]

I recently installed the NVIDIA Linux drivers on a Red Hat 7.3 system with a PII 450 Mhz and a RIVA TNT 16 MB, and they work fine, except for one problem. The X server startup is incredibly slow when I log out to when gdm is and when I boot my computer to the gdm display. Before it only took 1 or 2 seconds to start up, but now it's taking 30 seconds to a minute each time. I know my computer is slow, but I'm not sure that it would be that much of a performance difference. I've tried Option "NoLogo" "true" but it doesn't seem to help. I would very much appreciate anyone who can help with this problem. Thanks in advance.

[moltenstrait]

I'm having same kind of problems. When I used nvidia driver that was supplied with X-Free there was no delay. The problem seems to get worse with every new driver release from nvidia. The version I used before this latest 2960 only had a delay of about 10 seconds which was bearable. Now with 2960 the delay is close to a minute and this is getting very annoying. Unfortunately I don't have older driverset anymore and nvidia doesn't seem to provide it on their downloadpage either.

My card is an old TNT (Diamond Viper V550). So: For the lack of better solution, if anyone has older drivers left (I believe the version I used before was something like 2513?), please do us old TNT owners a great big favor and make them available :)

-Vazi-

[Prometheus]

Each driver from NVIDIA has gotten a little larger. How much ram do your systems have?

the openGL screen hacks run ok?

[Jeremy]

I've got 128 MB of RAM.

What OpenGL hacks are you referring to?

[Soul-Crusher]

Make sure you can ping your hostname.

[moltenstrait]

I have 320 MB memory and OpenGL works just fine. Pinging also works.

[Prometheus]

screen hacks ( screensavers , sorry )

nothing in the log files? Is there a lot of disk activity durring this waiting time?

[Nigel_Tufnel]

I'm having the same problem on my Slack 8.1 box (512 meg memory & TNT Riva2 - 16 meg video card). I've checked the /var/log and there don't seem to be any warning or error messages. glxgears runs very slow! I checked my symlinks and everything seems to run o.k. On my old HD I have Slack 8.0 with about a year old NVidia driver that runs like a champ. I'll investigate further and see what I come up with.

[Prometheus]

I have the same problem with gears and the other opengl screen hacks .. I have not been able to figure it out yet.

Did you read through the XFree log?? anything there ... can you open up a shell durring the X start and watch top to see if anything is spiking?

[moltenstrait]

Nothing special on logs and there is no disk activity at all during this delay. Switching to another vt is not possible since the macnihe seems to be completely jammed during X startup, so no top :(

Some people on other threads on this group are telling that their machine does a lot of mode switching when they start X. I think this might also be the case in at least my situation. I'm not sure though, my screen doesn't really make any visible "effects" when changing modes.

[XSS]

Well umh, you can always try to turn off 'AGP Turbo Mode' in BIOS.

It helped me when my graphics were all slow and/or jammed.

[Prometheus]

can you ssh in from another machine and watch top .... are you doing a startx from runlevel 3 or a switch to runlevel 5 ?

[moltenstrait]

My bios doesn't have "AGP turbo mode" option, could it be called something else? The graphics are actually not slow or jammed at all. After starting X everything works fine, it's just X startup that takes forever, so I doubt that that would help.

The delay is the same in both cases, when X is started by going to runlevel 5 or started with startx command from runlevel 3. Unfortunately I'm not able to use other machines to ssh to my own, so top really is pretty much out of the question. Unless ofcourse there is some kind of "logging" variant of top that shows what processes were run during X startup and how much they consumed time.

[XSS]

Well if that didnt work.....try:

startx -- -verbose 5 -logverbose 5

And then check the /var/log/XFree86.0.log

If there is something wrong you will find it there.

Oh yes, if there is an option about AGP Turbo you will find it.

[moltenstrait]

In my opinion everything in logfile seems pretty much normal. The whole log is attached, maybe someone's wiser with it than I am ;) ?

[XSS]

Well i maybe out on thin ice here but....you seem to load some modules that i don't think is necessary.

DBE, try to remove thar one, check in the 'Module' section in your XF86Config file and try to remove one and try.

I got these loaded:

type1 <- fonts
freetype <- fonts
glx <- gl
extmod <- gl extensions

afaik these are the only ones you need =)

More than that i cannot help you....i can't see any faults in the logs so.

Oh yes, if you want to try older versions of the NVIDIA drivers try this adress, if it's not that one they have an archive, i've been there:

ftp://download1.nvidia.com/XFree86_40/

[moltenstrait]

Removing dbe didn't help. I also removed v4l extension (I always thought that I'd need that for my tv-card, but obviously not?) but that didn't help either.

[moltenstrait]

After downloading older drivers and trying several of them I found that version 1514 has practically no delay at all.

After a quick testing OpenGL programs seem to be working beautifully as well as mplayer and awtv. 1541 version doesn't even seem to be visibly slower on TNT than newer drivers.

Versions 2313 and 2880 cause a delay of about 10 seconds and 2960 nearly a minute.

For me this is a solution enough, though it would ofcourse be interesting to know what causes this delay in newer drivers. :)

[XSS]

Probably some minor stuff, like he said it's bigger and such.

Anyway im glad it worked =)

[Nigel_Tufnel]

I'm going to download nvcheck to see if theres a conflict with the GL libraries. I find it hard to believe that the older version of the drivers actually run better especially if they're reusing old code. Who's knows maybe the developers went back and rewrote the code of the existing video cards and mucked it up!
Thanks.

[XSS]

np

and u got that right....the 'slack' thing! =)

[Jeremy]

I've noticed something interesting in my XFree86.0.log file, clip follows:

----------------------------------------------------
(II) NVIDIA(0): Monitor0: Using hsync range of 30.00-95.00 kHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Monitor0: Using vrefresh range of 50.00-150.00 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Clock range: 12.00 to 215.00 MHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1792x1344" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "896x672" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1856x1392" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1856x1392" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "928x696" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1440" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1440" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "960x720" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1200" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(**) NVIDIA(0): Validated modes for Display Device 0:
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "1024x768": 94.5 MHz, 68.7 kHz, 85.0 Hz
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "1024x768": 78.8 MHz, 60.1 kHz, 75.1 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 1024 x 768
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display dimensions: (370, 280) mm
(--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (70, 69)
----------------------------------------------------

Do you think all of the "Not using default mode" messages might have something to do with it? Can anyone with the older drivers that seem to work better confirm or deny the presence of those messages there?

[Thunderbird]

What the drivers do during X startup is detecting what resolutions your monitor supports and then it checks the resolutions and modelines you have in your XF86Config(-4) file. In your case it seems there are a lot of strange resolutions and perhaps unused resolutions in your XF86Config(-4) file.

If you want to remove those errors, remove those wrong resolutions and modelines. (atleast the drivers think they are wrong)

You can also play with the following two options:
Option "IgnoreEdid" <-- Disable probing of your monitor specs
Option "UseEdidFreqs" <-- Forces the drivers to use the horizontal and vertical refresh rates from the monitor section.

These options can make X startup much faster I think.

[Jeremy]

I only want to have one resolution for my computer anyway. Here are the relevant definitions in my XF86Config-4 file:

----------
# -- 1400x1050 --
# 1400x1050 @ 60Hz, 65.8 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 129 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 70Hz, 76.8 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 151 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 75Hz, 82.3 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 162 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 85Hz, 93.2 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 184 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync
----------
----------
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "1024x768"
EndSubsection
----------

Even when I comment out all of the Modelines it still gives me those errors. I'll see what happens when I try the options you mentioned.

[moltenstrait]

I don't those lines have anything to do with the problem. They seem to be present with older, faster starting drivers too.