Deadlock on 7.1

[h1web]

Hello!

I recently got myself a new motherboard, CPU and RAM (before that, everything was working fine) and now my system locks when I start X with the nvidia driver.
I have tried pretty much everything, but I couldn't find the problem.
Once I start Xorg, the fan slows down and the screen stays black. Sometimes it reboots after a few seconds, sometimes it just stays like that. I can tell that the kernel is dead, because music stops playing and so do downloads.

Right now I'm using the 'nv' driver.

Some input for you guys:
New hardware:
Intel Core2Quad Q6600
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L
2x2GB DDR2 1066

FreeBSD kiwi.icecap 7.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE #0: Sun Jan 18 13:24:58 CET 2009 root@kiwi.icecap:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/PLUTONIUM i386

~ > sysctl hw.nvidia.
hw.nvidia.version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 180.22 Tue Jan 6 07:54:37 PST 2009
hw.nvidia.registry.EnableVia4x: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.EnableALiAGP: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.NvAGP: 1
hw.nvidia.registry.ReqAGPRate: 15
hw.nvidia.registry.EnableAGPSBA: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.EnableAGPFW: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.Mobile: 4294967295
hw.nvidia.registry.ResmanDebugLevel: 4294967295
hw.nvidia.registry.RmLogonRC: 1
hw.nvidia.registry.ModifyDeviceFiles: 1
hw.nvidia.registry.DeviceFileUID: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.DeviceFileGID: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.DeviceFileMode: 438
hw.nvidia.registry.RemapLimit: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.UpdateMemoryTypes: 4294967295
hw.nvidia.registry.UseVBios: 1
hw.nvidia.registry.RMEdgeIntrCheck: 1
hw.nvidia.registry.UsePageAttributeTable: 4294967295
hw.nvidia.registry.EnableMSI: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.MapRegistersEarly: 0
hw.nvidia.registry.dwords:
hw.nvidia.cards.0.model: GeForce 7600 GT
hw.nvidia.cards.0.irq: 16
hw.nvidia.cards.0.vbios: ??.??.??.??.??
hw.nvidia.cards.0.type: PCI-E

X.Org X Server 1.4.2
Release Date: 11 June 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE i386
Current Operating System: FreeBSD kiwi.icecap 7.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE #0: Sun Jan 18 13:24:58 CET 2009 root@kiwi.icecap:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/PLUTONIUM i386
Build Date: 18 January 2009 06:30:35PM

Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present

[h1web]

I have done some further reading and it seems that this issue is related to "memory remapping". Turning it off, or removing one of the RAM modules is supposed to solve the problem. Neither is really an option
Is there really no other way?

[rnejdl]

I was never able to make that configuration work and I spent months on it. I ended up downgrading memory to 2 x 1GB instead of 2x2GB and have had no issues since. I'm still waiting for either NVIDIA & FreeBSD to solve this or for Intel or ATI to fill this void.

Rusty

[sillium]

Hi,

i experienced similar problems on my box:
Intel X38, 4gig ram, 2x 8600GT

The nvidia drivers refused to work, they eventually locked up my box on starting X.

A possible solution for this seems to remove some RAM (to get below/equal to the 3gig limit on i386) or some other trick i found somewhere on the freebsd mailing list archives:

Put this line in /boot/loader.conf:

machdep.disable_mtrrs=1

I wonder why this is nowhere mentioned in the documentation/readme as it made everything work nicely even with 8gig of ram (despite of not having amd64..)

Hope this is helpful for you.

[h1web]

Originally Posted by sillium

Hi,

i experienced similar problems on my box:
Intel X38, 4gig ram, 2x 8600GT

The nvidia drivers refused to work, they eventually locked up my box on starting X.

A possible solution for this seems to remove some RAM (to get below/equal to the 3gig limit on i386) or some other trick i found somewhere on the freebsd mailing list archives:

Put this line in /boot/loader.conf:

machdep.disable_mtrrs=1

I wonder why this is nowhere mentioned in the documentation/readme as it made everything work nicely even with 8gig of ram (despite of not having amd64..)

Hope this is helpful for you.

Oh wow, indeed it is! Thanks a lot!
Setting machdep.disable_mtrrs to 1 fixed the problem. This has already killed my MBR+partition table due to data loss and now you finally gave me the solution. Thanks!

I agree with you, this should definitely be added to the documentation or someone should at least sticky it.

[ZOleg]

Yes, this works!!!
Thanks!!!

[rnejdl]

I would love to hear some feedback from NVidia on this. I think I read somewhere that you may still run into some issues with OpenGL apps so I just want to confirm that there are no hidden gotchas and that this is indeed the right solution. If so, that's awesome as I would love to have some more memory in server.

Rusty

[sillium]

Originally Posted by rnejdl

I think I read somewhere that you may still run into some issues with OpenGL apps

Some of the OpenGL Xscreensaver do actually make Xorg core dump.
Not every screensaver and not always. It's quite irreproducible.

I always attributed this to my Xinerama setup which seems to have some problems with GL/XRandr/Composite anyway..

Nevertheless i'm glad that it worked for you.