# [SOLVED] Linux kernel >= 3.5 Nouveau causes Xorg to crash

## gemarcano

I have a new machine I've been having problems with on Linux (e.g. I have another thread about audio problems somewhere on these forums), and the newest one to come up is this one. I am not sure that nouveau is the problem, but everything seems to point to it. For background, my computer has a Z77 chipset with an Intel i7 processor, and the graphics card is a Nvidia GTX 560. If I launch Gentoo with the 3.4 set of kernels, I can get to a working desktop, but if I use the 3.5 series, I get a segfault in the Xorg.0.log, and dmesg displays some errors as well. This bug report might be related to my issue, but I'm not sure.

Here are some of the log files I've captured.

dmesg from 3.5 (not working)

dmesg from 3.4 (working)

Xorg.0.log when it works

Edit:Xorg.0.log when it crashes

Also, here are some photos I took showing either symptoms or the crash:

Garbage shown when X tries to load.

The clock cursor remains on the screen after I kill X (/etc/init.d/xdm stop) (of course, it doesn't move, but remains there, forever seemingly).

Notice the gray bar behind the Tuxes on top. This is not there when booting kernels < 3.5.

Also, when X crashes, it goes to the login terminal (with the clock cursor visible), and then tries to load again, of course showing all of the garbage in the first picture, and then looping from there.

Now, things get interesting here, and the following is why I think this is an issue with nouveau. If I give the kernel the parameters nouveau.noaccel=1 nouveau.modeset=1. the kernel seems to hang before it can show anything (the keyboard doesn't show any signs of life, so I can't tell if it is a real panic or not). If I give it  nouveau.noaccel=1 nouveau.modeset=0, it doesn't seem to crash, but the screen fails to update (in my case, it still shows rEFInd booting), but I can ssh into the computer after it loads. I took the following dmesg and Xorg.0.log from it:

Xorg.0.log

dmesg

It seems like Xorg just doesn't find a device with modeset disabled. So, anyone have any idea as to what could be wrong? Any more information that I should post? This is driving me crazy. Thanks for any help.

Edit: Fixed links to images, for some reason they weren't working right the first time.Last edited by gemarcano on Sat Sep 08, 2012 2:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## chithanh

You could try to use x11-base/nouveau-drm instead of in-kernel nouveau. That code is a bit newer that what is in 3.5.0. Or alternatively, a 3.6_rc kernel.

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## irafiral

I have exactly the same issue with my NVIDIA GTX 560 TI (Chipset NVce) for kernel >= 3.5.

Running a 3.6-rc kernel doesn't help.

Adding

Option  "NoAccel" "true"

to my xorg.conf stops crashing X.

Seems it has to do with EXA and that points to nouveau.

My other NVIDIA card (Chipset NVcf), running under identical gentoo installation, are working fine.

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## irafiral

The latest kernel release candidate 3.6-rc4 fixes the issue for me;)

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## gemarcano

Kernel 3.6-rc4 also works for me! Yay. I hope that gentoo-sources gets bumped up to 3.6 when it is launched. I didn't try nouveau-drm, but I probably should... I will try that and see if that works.

Edit: nouveau-drm wants me to change my .config for my kernel, and I don't want to do it (it wants me to enable debugfs, for example). If someone else wants to try this, they're welcome to do so, but I will just stick around and wait for the 3.6 kernel release (and subsequent gentoo-sources package). I guess upstream figured out what broke. I will mark this as solved unless there are any other complications. Thanks to all who participated.

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## MacGyver031

Does anyone have problems with Gentoo-sources 3.6.6? As soon as nouveau gets loaded (does not matter if noaccel is loaded or not), the whole system freezes.

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## Joseph_sys

 *MacGyver031 wrote:*   

> Does anyone have problems with Gentoo-sources 3.6.6? As soon as nouveau gets loaded (does not matter if noaccel is loaded or not), the whole system freezes.

 

I had problem with "nouveau" as well; and switched to "nvidia" everything is working.

I would like to know what package screwed up "nouveau" driver.

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## Gentoo64

I have had a problem for a while now where if I put nouveau.noaccel=1 in the kernel cmd the system freezes/panics as soon as it loads. I think it was somewhere since 3.4/3.5 kernel, tried on both gentoo and hardened sources, as a module and built in. Shame because I like kms and can't really use nouveau on my GTX 460 without the noaccel option or it's too slow.

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## wcg

On an old Geforce 6150SE (nforce 430 embedded gpu), the nouveau driver

in kernel 3.5.7 is still working with xorg 1.12.2. Firefox seemed a little slow

on the new kernel (and re-emerged glibc-2.16, new nss, udev-171-r9, etc;

linux-headers was updated to 3.6 to accomodate that kernel), but the text-mode

nouveau frame buffer is working, xorg loaded up without problems, etc.

So the kernel nouveau driver seems to have no new brokenness when

updating from gentoo-sources-3.3.8 to gentoo-sources-3.5.7 (in fact

the nouveau messages in dmesg look cleaner in the newer kernel), at

least on that hardware.

edit:

Working fine on a PNY nvidia quadro using a G86 chip, too. I have not

updated xorg beyond 12.2 yet, but any nouveau problems seem to

be either new xorg driver problems or much newer gpu hardware.

If the nouveau kernel driver worked with your gpu before the xorg upgrade,

it likely still does.

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