I'm guessing FreeBSD isn't meant for gaming

[SanjuroX]

When I try to play a game like Enemy Territory, I can give it a minute of playing and then it will crash, always. This has happened to me on 4.10 and now on 5.3, could it be xorg-conf? could it be agp? could it be that going back to windows makes for sense?
Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.

Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension

# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection

# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules
Load "type1"
Load "speedo"
Load "freetype"
# Load "xtt"

# This loads the GLX module
Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
# Load "dri"

EndSection

-update
sh!t nevermind, I fixed it

[zander]

Out of curiosity, what was the problem?

[SanjuroX]

Yeah, I am having problems again. Its weird really, the game crashes after about a minute or so back to the desktop. I thought I fixed this when I changed some load options in the xorg.conf, but it is happening again, I am going to try to find any error messages, but here is part of my configuration file the way it is currently:
Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.

Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension

# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection

# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules
Load "type1"
Load "speedo"
Load "freetype"
Load "extmod"
Load "dbe"
Load "bitmap"
# Load "xtt"

# This loads the GLX module
Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
# Load "dri"

do you think it has anything to do with the agp?
ok this is really weird to, when it freezes the sound will keep repeating itself for whatever the last sound effect was, I can get out of the crash eventually by pressing ctrl+alt+backspace and it brings me back to the desktop, however, sometimes the looping sound will keep going even if I exit X-server and go to console...

actually I am wondering about something now, this is something I read in the Readme:
"Also note that if agp.ko is loaded, it could conflict with NVIDIA's AGP
GART driver (NvAGP), resulting in stability problems; for this reason, the
NVIDIA driver will abort NvAGP initialization when it detects agp.ko."

I have agp built into the kernel, and I built the driver for nvidia's agp gart, maybe they are conflicting???

[blueworm]

Have you tried adding this to your devices section of xorg.conf.

Option "NvAGP" "2"

This will force the kernels AGP driver instead of nvidias NvAGP.

[zander]

At this point in time, it isn't recommend to use FreeBSD's AGP GART driver; to solve the conflict and enable NvAGP, you will need to either disable agp.ko (FreeBSD 5.3) or rebuild your kernel without agp.ko (the NVIDIA FreeBSD README has more information on these options).

[SanjuroX]

I have tried putting Option "NvAGP" "2" in the config file, and I built the driver with freebsd agp support. Things are working better but I also changed something else. Is it possible that the game was crashing because my videocard was overheating? Underneath the AGP slot of course was a pci slot that I had put a sound card in yesterday, when I turned off my computer recently I noticed that the fan of the videocard wasn't performing that well with air movement because the other card was blocking it, and also the videocard was really hot, it was burning my hand when I tried touching it. My computer also wasn't getting good air circulation recently because the side door was open, and when it is closed there is a fan in the back that helps push hot air out.

-update
damn, actually both of those things don't seem to make a difference, it seems as if its random whether it crashes or not. Sometimes I'll reboot and then it acts normally, but more often than not it just crashes, or actually sometimes when it does the graphics get all messed up and blocky

[SanjuroX]

Originally Posted by zander

At this point in time, it isn't recommend to use FreeBSD's AGP GART driver; to solve the conflict and enable NvAGP, you will need to either disable agp.ko (FreeBSD 5.3) or rebuild your kernel without agp.ko (the NVIDIA FreeBSD README has more information on these options).

Yeah, and I have tried that too. I have tried both ways. I have tried building the driver for freebsd agp "WITH_FreeBSD_AGP=yes" because I have seen that my kernel has "device agp" in it, and I have also tried putting "agp_load="NO" in the loader.conf"and building the drivers normally with nvidia agp. The strange thing is..this same stuff happened to me when I was using 4.10, and that is why I wanted to use 5.3 because I thought it would make a difference but I just don't know what is happening. I know nothing is wrong hardware wise with the videocard because it worked fine with Windows XP. Also, when you rebuild the driver and install it again, do you first have to delete the existing nvidia files? Because I didn't do that, and I don't know how. Well, in that case, the very first build I did with it on this computer was just a normal "make install".

at least the sound works...

Is it possible tha my USB mouse is having some sort of conflict? Last time the game crashed I rebooted and went into Gnome, the mouse worked fine until I tried playing enemy territory where the mouse went haywire by itself and then it wouldn't respond at all, and then when I quite the game the mouse started working again. I tried getting another mouse to work instead, which is an optical ps/2 mouse, but it just won't work.

I have an attachment of some dmesg output, some of it looks strange actually.

[zajelo3]

Do you have fastwrites enabled? If so you might try to disable it because I've heard that they can cause instability. To find out if you have it enabled do a "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status. At least that's what it is on FC2.

[SanjuroX]

yes I do have it enabled, i'll see what happens when it is off.