Beryl with nvidia causes screen flickering.

[last2kn0]

I am having a problem with screen flickering when I am using Beryl with
force nvidia option.

OS: OpenSuse 10.2
Card: GeForce Go 7600

The screen blinked very quick then froze for approx. 15 seconds. After
I could get a response, the screen would flicker every so often. Right
after this happened this is the output of dmesg:

NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 12, COCOD 00000000 01014300 00000043 00001010 000d0d0d
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 6, PE0000 1238 00000000 0000d360 00000000 00406400
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 30, L1 -> L0
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 30, L1 -> L0

This occurs when using Beryl and there are others who have also
experienced this problem. I do not know for sure what the cause is. I
have seen it happen when running a few programs that need a decent
amount of memory like thunderbird, firefox and amarok.

Thank you so much in advance! If anymore information is needed, I will
be more than happy to provide it.

I do not know if this is exactly an Nvidia bug or maybe something in Xorg? It only happens when I use Beryl though. In the Beryl bug-report they said its not a beryl problem but a nvidia problem.

I can attach the nvidia-bug-log if needed.

Thanks again!

[netllama]

How did the Beryl developers determine that this was an nvidia driver bug?

[tmasscool]

Same problem here.

It also happens in compiz. I've tested both beryl and compiz.

My card is also an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 Go. And currently running Gentoo with X.org 7.2 on a suspend2-2.6.19 kernel. But had the same issues with xorg < 7.2 and previous kernels as well.

would be great if this could be fixed...

[calcifer]

Hi,

I had this problem with Gentoo + nvidia-drivers-1.0.9746. My hardware is Acer C2D laptop with GF 7600 Go 128MB. I use laptop LCD screen (AUO - LVDS) and encountered screen flickering after a while. However, when I plug in external DVI monitor, there's no flickering problem.

Today I just upgraded to 9755 driver and it's been an hour on laptop screen, I have yet to see flickering yet Hope nVidia does fixed the problem.

[last2kn0]

I have contacted Nvidia about the problem and I did get a quick reply. The first was three questions:

Did I have the latest BIOS?
Can I reproduce it without Beryl?
Does it happen with the latest drivers (1.0-9755)?

I updated my BIOS and my video driver and did extensive testing and couldn't reproduce it without beryl. Once I did load Beryl though, I could induce the flickering within 20min, even with the new driver.

I made a new write up of my test and sent it back to them and I am now waiting for a response.

I really hope this gets worked out. I'd be really happy.

[netllama]

last2kn0,
It would be preferable if you wouldn't post the same issue into two separate NVIDIA support mechanisms, so that I wasn't spending twice as much time on the same issue (or at the very least you could state as much up front).

The reproduction steps that you provided in your latest email:

> lots of programs. Here is a list of what I ran in order to try to
> induce the bug:
>
> Two instances of Firefox with approx 8 tabs.
> Amarok playing music.
> Kdevelop
> Thunderbird
> Google Earth
> Konquerer
> Gaim
> AMSN
> GlxGears
> Ksysguard
> Vmplayer running windows 2000.
>
> I ran these programs for about 20 minutes and did not encounter a
> problem. I then shut down my computer and let it cool down for approx.
> 15 min. Nest, I turned on my computer and booted into kde with beryl.
> I left the computer idle for about 2 hours. Then I opened the following
> programs:
>
> Thunderbird
> Amarok
> Amsn
> Gaim
> Two instances of firefox.
>
> After about 10min, I started to watch a flash video with firefox and
> the screen began to flicker.

seem rather non-deterministic, and non-trivial to replicate. Are you able to consistently reproduce this problem by following those steps multiple times?

If so, please provide specific details on the configuration & setup of each of those applications, as well as the specific flash video that triggers the flickering.

thanks,
Lonni

[last2kn0]

And to netllama:

I believe this is where Beryl dev decided it was a Nvidia problem:
http://bugs.beryl-project.org/ticket/21

[netllama]

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the only comment from the Beryl developers there is "This is clearly a driver bug" even though there are people reporting the problem in that bug who don't have NVIDIA graphics cards.

[last2kn0]

My apologies for posting in two mechanisms. I guess I wasn't aware the forums were under Nvidia (I thought it was just a community thing.)

As for reproducing the problem: Usually its not too hard to get it to happen with that setup, but as of this morning I wasn't able to get it to happen again.

I'm still unsure as to why it happens. After I couldn't get that setup to reproduce the results I decided to load down the computer a little more to see if it would happen but it didn't. So its possibly something else thats causing it? I wouldn't know.

I had firefox open with the following tabs:
Torrentspy.com, osnews.com, yahoo.com, endgadget.com, gizmodo.com,
spiked humor video called how to catch a seagull. (playing)

Another firefox with:
linux.com, google.com, desktoplinux.com, osnews and yahoo.

Thunderbird with 5 accounts checking every 10min

Amarok playing 320kbps mp3s

Vmware running windows 2000

Glxgears running

and finally I was playing with google earth by jumping back and forth between the default places they have in the sidebar.

At no point did my screen freeze for a second or begin to flicker. I'm sure it will happen when I least expect it.

[netllama]

Thanks for clarifying. At this point, I'd need a means of reliably reproducing the problem to investigate further.

[calcifer]

The 9755 didn't fix the problem. I eventually encountered flickering and screen freeze when running beryl.

I am using laptop LCD via LVDS interface at the time. Applications that are running includes: firefox, thunderbird, vmware, nautilus, terminals

the dmesg output:

NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 6, PE0000 0d0c 00cccccc 0000f5b4 00ffffff 00ffffff
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 30,  L1 -> L0
BUG: soft lockup detected on CPU#1!
 [<c014cadd>]  [<c01271a8>]  [<c01127c0>]  [<c010393b>]  [<f9f3f4ac>]  [<fa12d9f1>]  [<fa12d9f1>]  [<f9f2c233>]  [<fa223c15>]  [<fa223c2b>]  [<f9f2c2df>]  [<f9f2c42d>]  [<fa22245d>]  [<f9f2c341>]  [<fa22256c>]  [<fa222664>]  [<fa12ff8a>]  [<fa12ffa1>]  [<fa1b6ada>]  [<fa114011>]  [<fa114063>]  [<fa12db30>]  [<fa11447a>]  [<fa0eee9f>]  [<fa12cf4e>]  [<f9f871dd>]  [<f9f871c1>]  [<f9f7997d>]  [<f9f90afe>]  [<f9f7b9db>]  [<f9f911e6>]  [<f9f2c3d6>]  [<f9f790f3>]  [<fa1e6e93>]  [<fa12f461>]  [<fa1e5f2d>]  [<f9f2c3d6>]  [<fa1f258b>]  [<fa1e7929>]  [<fa12d9f1>]  [<fa1e8643>]  [<fa12f3e3>]  [<fa12dbef>]  [<fa1e7f83>]  [<fa1e7f79>]  [<fa222e7c>]  [<fa222e6d>]  [<f9f2c3cd>]  [<fa223008>]  [<fa222ffe>]  [<f9f2c3d6>]  [<fa12f7c9>]  [<fa1b619b>]  [<fa1b618b>]  [<fa12f461>]  [<fa12d948>]  [<fa0754a0>]  [<fa1ac4d0>]  [<f9f2b7fc>]  [<f9f2c3d6>]  [<f9f4195e>]  [<f9f46a3b>]  [<f9f46a59>]  [<c0126888>]  [<fa25aede>]  [<c01234ca>]  [<c012340b>]  [<c010557e>]  [<c014dc0c>]  [<c01233a8>]  [<c0105686>]  [<c02447fe>]  [<c01038aa>]  [<f966d7b8>]  [<f966d5be>]  [<c0101a87>]  =======================
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 8, Channel 00000020
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 30,  L1 -> L0
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 4, Ch 00000002 SC 00000003 M 0000157c Data 00ffffff
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 30,  L0 -> L0
NVRM: Xid (0001:00): 1, Channel 00000000 Method 00000060 Data 0101020c

i have attached bug report.

[BoardDWorld]

It's Fixed! 2 straight days and no glitches!!!

Originally Posted by Zapek
Ok it works here. So there's definitely a problem when dynamic clocks are enabled. And the reason this gets noticed more in compiz than eg. plain 2D or games is because clocks vary a lot while using compiz. In 2D it seems to be low clocks everytime and when gaming it seems to be high clocks.

Anyway, so in ubuntu you'd have to add this:
Code:

options nvidia_new NVreg_Mobile=1 NVreg_RegistryDwords="PerfLevelSrc=0x2222"

in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-kernel-nkc
Mobile is probably not needed but I like having it to check that the arguments actually worked.

Finally I can use my card! Thanks to everyone involved.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...t=96673&page=2