Fedora 15: GNOME3 gnome-shell + nvidia drivers => black windows

[Iñigo Serna]

Hi, I've recently updated my computer from Fedora 14 to 15.
My hardware: AMD64, 6GB RAM, onboard nvidia GeForce 6150.
I use propietary nvidia drivers from rpmfusion.

gdm login screen shows perfectly but once the session is started
a) if nautilus handles desktop => there is a black background, no image shown, no icons, no right-click menu with the mouse
b) if nautilus doesn't handle desktop (default in GNOME 3) => background image is shown, but...

in both cases every window/app I open appears as black rectangles, even no windows decorations. Some times, the first app I open is shown correctly, but no more. I know apps are running, but windows are not drawn on screen and appears as black windows.

Topbar "applets" (calendar, user menu, nm-applet, etc) and their menus work ok, and when I press WINDOWS key it shows the Activities screen with no problems, I can see the background, left dock, workspaces at right, search for apps... NO problems, and it's fast.

But when I come back to normal screen, windows are black rectangles (except maybe the 1 or 2 first ones).

My graphics card is a nvidia GeForce 6150, maybe a bit old, but worked ok and even fast with gnome-shell from F14.

I've tried uninstalling rpmfusion drivers and installing old and new/beta drivers from nvidia website, but same problem. Nouveau doesn't support 3D on my system so I can't verify if it would work with it.
GNOME Fallback mode works perfectly.

I've looked deeply on all logs and configuration files but didn't find anything...

Though I initially thought it was a new bug of gnome-shell / mutter, after googling a lot found some reports from other people regarding xorg v1.10 with nvidia drivers 270.x. Some examples:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162133
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162820


I've attached a couple of screenshots showing the issue and the bug report.

Thanks,
Iñigo

[pijulius]

The same happens to me on Fedora 15 but it seems this has nothing to do with the OS or Xorg you use, it is a problem in the new 7XX drivers.

Video card is: GeForce 7300 LE
Driver: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.19.run
Kernel: 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64

and when you run or compiz, or mutter the windows will start getting blacks or if you have two monitors (like me) you won't even see black windows, simply the screen isn't refreshing at all BUT in the background you can move around windows and open new programs as the mouse works and you can see how the cursor changes when you hover over a terminal window so everything works in the background but nothing gets displayed.

I searched around and it seems this bug doesn't exist in the 260 nvidia drivers but unfortunately that cannot be installed on FC5 but I will try further to see if maybe with an older kernel it could be done.

I really hope the 270 drivers will be updated to fix this bug as otherwise in the future we may loose all possibilities to run the drivers with new OS releases.

I think this is the right topic for this bug:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=160115

[mdeggers]

Environment:

CPU: Intel P4 at 2.60 GHz
Memory: 1.5 GB RDR ram
Disk: 120 GB IDE ext 3
Graphics: NVidia 7600 GS 512 MB overclocked
Driver: NVidia 275.09 (beta)
Display: Samsung SyncMaster 1680x1050 connected on DVI
OS: Fedora 15 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.i686
Xserver: xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.10.2-1.fc15.i686

Yes, this is an old system (Dell 8200) upgraded to within an inch of its life.

This seems to work reasonably well for Gnome 3.

I've not worked extensively with KDE at this point. I'll do that once I work out font rendering for KDE.

. . . . just my two cents.

/mde/

[pijulius]

Ok, I found a fix for this problem, it is not the right way but at least it works and I'm now able to use gnome-shell with the proprietary nvidia driver and it's fast as it should be

NOTE: These steps have been only tested on Fedora 15!

Step 1:
Download the xorg 1.9 rpm packages from here (depending on how you installed the system not all packages may be needed, I only needed xorg-x11-server-Xephyr-1.9.1-2.fc15.x86_64.rpm, xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.9.1-2.fc15.x86_64.rpm, xorg-x11-server-common-1.9.1-2.fc15.x86_64.rpm but if it's not working just install all of them):
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/b...buildID=201709

Step 2:
Download xorg-drv-evdev as this is needed because otherwise nor mouse nor keyboard will work and it will appear like Xorg is frozen (this is because evdev 2.6 is not compatible with xorg 1.9)
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/b...buildID=191476

Step 3:
Download the latest nvidia driver 260 version (IMPORTANT!: use the 260 ver and NOT the 270!) from here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

Step 4:
Now once you have all the packages disable Xorg so when you start linux you will only have a terminal, then login with root go to the directory where you have all the rpm packages downloaded above and run:
rpm -ivh --force xorg-x11-*

Step 5:
Now the only one missing is the nvidia driver but before you install it please first uninstall your old 270 or any other driver you used and then run:
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-260.19.44.run

Once you're done you should re-enable Xorg and it should work just fine as before but now without the black windows and other problems

[sandipt]

NVIDIA internally filed issue to track this issue. Bug ID: 836653

[pijulius]

This is great, thanks Sandipt and nVidia for the update/help! I hope it gets fixed in the next driver release as today I just noticed that Xinerama can be used with composite in Xorg 1.10 but unfortunately I can't run nvidia on Xorg 1.10 only on 1.9 so I'm 1 version away from my haven desktop

[sandipt]

Able to reproduce background corruption :
- startx (gnome-shell desktop) > Alt+Ctrl+f# (go to VT) > Alt+Ctrl+f7 (again come back to GUI) ==> Different Results 1) Full blank screen 2) Background corruption .i.e black Background OR some icons on it.

But unable to reproduce "Black Windows" issue. Can somebody provide reproduction steps ?

[pijulius]

I can't reproduce the black windows neither but I thought it was because I have twinview on and the resolution is 2720x768 so the video card's memory gets full before I can open a terminal and that's why I don't see any black windows.

BUT I can reproduce the problem with the frozen desktop (black desktop once you switch to terminal and back to X), just when you startx (gnome-shell) the desktop (background and the gnome-shell top panel (bar)) gets displayed but after that no updates are displayed, meaning if I mouse over the clock or the "Activities" text on the top bar nothing happens but I can open terminals with shortcuts like CTRL+t (that I defined) and I notice that the terminal has been open because the mouse cursor changes to text input if you hover the terminal but nothing gets updated on the screen so the bottom line is that everything works in the background but nothing gets displayed once the gnome-shell has been launched.

Using the 260 driver with Xorg 1.9 works just fine, I'm using that setup since a few days and no problems at all so it seems it's only affecting the 270 and 275 drivers.

If there is anything I can help you with, more details, testings or anything please let me know, it will be my pleasure to help.

[Iñigo Serna]

Originally Posted by sandipt

Able to reproduce background corruption :
- startx (gnome-shell desktop) > Alt+Ctrl+f# (go to VT) > Alt+Ctrl+f7 (again come back to GUI) ==> Different Results 1) Full blank screen 2) Background corruption .i.e black Background OR some icons on it.

But unable to reproduce "Black Windows" issue. Can somebody provide reproduction steps ?

Hi sandipt,

first of all, thanks for your intereset and support.

I can't even provide the steps, it happens always.
I can only repeat what I see: I've upgrade my x86_64 machine from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15. Every time I start in GNOME 3 gnome-shell mode, I get black windows as the posted images show.
Sometimes the first 1 or 2 windows are shown correctly but after them, the rest are black. Often even the background is black and no window is shown correctly.
Note that top menu bar and their "applets" are shown and work correctly.

My graphics card is a GeForce 6150 embedded on an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with 256MB of memory.

Tell me if I could provide any test results or something.

Thanks,
Iñigo

[Iñigo Serna]

Originally Posted by Iñigo Serna

I can't even provide the steps, it happens always.
I can only repeat what I see: I've upgrade my x86_64 machine from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15. Every time I start in GNOME 3 gnome-shell mode, I get black windows as the posted images show.
Sometimes the first 1 or 2 windows are shown correctly but after them, the rest are black. Often even the background is black and no window is shown correctly.
Note that top menu bar and their "applets" are shown and work correctly.

My graphics card is a GeForce 6150 embedded on an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with 256MB of memory.

Finally, I've managed to get gnome-shell work on my Fedora 15, even with nvidia 270.x drivers from rpmfusion.
Today I've run many more hours of blind testing, changing lots of things... but finally I open BIOS configuration and noted a special setting regarding the amount if memory for the graphics card. It was 32 MB or so. I changed it to the maximum, 256 MB and now gnome-shell works!

Have someone any explanation? Remember that gnome-shell worked in Fedora 14 with same configuration...

Iñigo

[sandipt]

NVIDIA reproduced "Black Windows" issue in gnome-shell . Will keep you posted.

[Iñigo Serna]

Originally Posted by sandipt

NVIDIA reproduced "Black Windows" issue in gnome-shell . Will keep you posted.

I don't know much about it, but I'd bet it's related to memory.

Thanks for your/nvidia efforts
Iñigo