9755 + 2.6.20 xserver eats all cpu + ram, black screen

[David.Mears]

I ssh-ed to get this bug report, the command line gets less responsive by the second once X is started, even remotely. same driver works okay under 2.6.19 kernels. Keyboard non-responsive instantly, kill -9ing the X server doesn't seem to help. The monitor goes into power savings mode, which I assume just it sitting in the middle of a mode change without actually completing it. Maybe to allocate memory for a graphics buffer...

kernel 2.6.20-gentoo and 2.6.20-beyond
nvidia driver build 9755
xorg-server v1.2.0
xorg-x11 v7.2

[netllama]

Does this problem persist if you are not using the Composite extension?
Does this problem persist if you set NvAGP to 0 in xorg.conf ?
Have you verified that you're using the most recent motherboard BIOS?

Thanks,
Lonni

[David.Mears]

I hadn't checked recently, but the bios was already the most recent. In any case, the most recent BIOS change for that motherboard is in 2003.

I disabled the composite extension and tried setting NvAGP to 0 as suggested. Neither caused any notable change in behavior. Would you like an additional bug report with the changed system values, or is the original sufficient since the behavior is the same, anyway?

actually, I was rather hopeful in regards to the NvAGP.

This version of the Nvidia driver has been working for me quite well with the 2.6.19 so I would speculate that it had something to do with kernel changes between 2.6.19 and 2.6.20, possibly to do with the via (kx333?), the k7, and agp? In any case, the problem appears to be a memory alloc gone horribly, horribly wrong.