Problem with the original NForce

[skiy]

K, I been trying to install graphics drivers for my Fedora 4 box since last year.

NVidia NForce 1 (GF2 MX on-board)

Linux athlon.mshome.net 2.6.16-1.2069_FC4 #1 Tue Mar 28 12:19:10 EST 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

So far: the default "nv" driver works perfectly, while the NVidia supplied "nvidia" driver is too unstable to even survive a logout. It runs GLXGears, but freezes during that sometimes, and it always has an error on logout. Sometimes the error hangs the system, other times it just crashes X. When it just crashes X, a simple "init 3; init 5" does not fix things too well, even If in the middle I change back to the "nv" driver.

I attach the nvidia bug report thing, which I hope will provide all the useful info for this particular bug.


kthx

[netllama]

Have you tried setting different values for the NvAGP parameter?
Have you verified that you're using the latest BIOS for your motherboard?
Can you generate a bug report immediately after X crashes?

Thanks,
Lonni

[skiy]

Um, yes I should also say that the attached bug report occurred after X had crashed, and I then had to Ctrl-Alt-F1 into a console to type nvidia-bug-report.sh.

netllama, I'm very wary of updating motherboard BIOS's, as in my experience they can lead to more problems then they can solve. So I'll only do it if I know it is the problem. Btw, I'm busy trying to find my motherboard model number so I can check if a BIOS exists.

Also, where exactly do I set the "NvAGP" parameter?

[netllama]

There was no crash recorded in the bug report that you posted. What specifically are you seeing when X is crashing?

You set NvAGP in your xorg.conf. Please see the driver README for more details on its usage and parameters.

Thanks,
Lonni

[skiy]

There are three possible scenarios when X "crashes" after my first logout:

1) Horizontal Lines through middle of screen
2) Black screen
3) After re-login, KDE Generates enough SIGSEGV's to sink some sort of (KDE) battleship 8)

But that was all with NvAgp 3 (which is the default, and it turns out 3 was switching to 2 below)...

### Snippet from /etc/X11/xorg.conf ###

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
Option "NvAGP" "1" # 0, 1 WORKS! 2, 3 Breaks
EndSection

### NvAgp 0 ###
### Well this was everything AGP disabled, and everything worked, so I didnt bother investigating further.

### NvAgp 1 ###
### Performance is visibly slow, but still (relatively) smooth.
### Perfectly Stable.
### Following is output from tests I entered in terminal:

[root@athlon ~]# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status: Disabled

AGP initialization failed, please check the ouput
of the 'dmesg' command and/or your system log file
for additional information on this problem.
[root@athlon ~]# dmesg | tail
NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory
NFSD: unable to find recovery directory /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery
NFSD: starting 90-second grace period
nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNK5] enabled at IRQ 12
PCI: setting IRQ 12 as level-triggered
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> Link [LNK5] -> GSI 12 (level, low) -> IRQ 12
NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-8178 Wed Dec 14 16:22:51 PST 2005
NVRM: not using NVAGP, an AGPGART backend is loaded!
NVRM: not using NVAGP, an AGPGART backend is loaded!
[root@athlon ~]#


### NvAgp 2 ###
### Performance is fast.
### Extremely Unstable
### Following is output from tests I entered in terminal:

[root@athlon ~]# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status: Enabled
Driver: AGPGART
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled
[root@athlon ~]#


When I say performance I mean GLX gears and my Euphoria (GL) screensaver.

I could always run it at NvAgp 1, like I'm doing now, but I dont like to waste a good AGP bus

kthx