# Nvidia GTX 750 Ti card - GPU lockup with nouvea driver

## devsk

Is there anyone else using this card or newer nvidia cards with the in-kernel nouvea driver in 4.4 kernel?

I get screen trash in certain parts in KDE 5 plasma and a GPU lockup while watching Netflix full screen for 10-15 mins. I upgraded from GT9600 and nouvea driver worked perfect there and I have been watching full screen Netflix for quite a while with that setup.

Any ideas? Is moving to binary drivers the only option? And if so, how well do the binary drivers work? 2016 and things are still ugly with graphics drivers on Linux.

The actual error: The following repeats over and over, and the screen stays frozen solid on the monitor:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Nov 29 22:14:56 localhost kernel: [ 5794.517000] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: DRM: GPU lockup - switching to software fbcon
> 
> Nov 29 22:17:48 localhost kernel: [ 5966.821000] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: X[31476]: failed to idle channel 3 [X[31476]]
> ...

 

----------

## Maxxx

 *devsk wrote:*   

> ...Any ideas? Is moving to binary drivers the only option? And if so, how well do the binary drivers work? 2016 and things are still ugly with graphics drivers on Linux...

 

I have a newer Nvidia GPU (GTX 1070) and i emerged 367.44 Gentoo-Nvidia driver, and it work very fine.

X-plane 10 demo and latest version of Supertuxkart (which require very high graphic performances) work very well with these drivers.

I also had Debian linux, in which i installed binary drivers downloaded directly from Nvidia, but i advice you to emerge Gentoo-Nvidia driver from portage, so that it will be manage from portage in case of updating system.

----------

## saboya

I would suggest you always use the latest kernel / mesa, since nouveau drivers are constantly evolving at this point. Nouveau is in a good state but still experimental in a lot of areas.

----------

## devsk

 *saboya wrote:*   

> I would suggest you always use the latest kernel / mesa, since nouveau drivers are constantly evolving at this point. Nouveau is in a good state but still experimental in a lot of areas.

 I am running 4.4.35 kernel and pretty much ~amd64. So, I have the latest stuff.

Do you mean I should try latest nouvea/mesa from git repos?

----------

## Jaglover

Kernel is up to 4.8.11 in portage.

----------

## nelsonwcf

Are you booting in EFI? Noveau right now doesn't work with many nvidia cards in EFI mode.

----------

## devsk

 *Jaglover wrote:*   

> Kernel is up to 4.8.11 in portage.

 I have been trying to stick with LTS kernels. But I will try 4.8.11 so see if it helps.

----------

## devsk

 *nelsonwcf wrote:*   

> Are you booting in EFI? Noveau right now doesn't work with many nvidia cards in EFI mode.

 No EFI in this setup.

----------

## nelsonwcf

I was looking for answers for my problem and ended finding a possible solution for yours:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1061869

----------

## devsk

 *nelsonwcf wrote:*   

> I was looking for answers for my problem and ended finding a possible solution for yours:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1061869

 But I am not seeing "rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks". But I will try that runpm thing because I don't care about conserving power on my desktop.

----------

## nelsonwcf

 *devsk wrote:*   

>  *nelsonwcf wrote:*   I was looking for answers for my problem and ended finding a possible solution for yours:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1061869 But I am not seeing "rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks". But I will try that runpm thing because I don't care about conserving power on my desktop.

 

If this doesn't work, the simplest solution would be to skip noveau and move to proprietary nvidia. I had a notebook with two 980SLI and could never boot in EFI with noveau turned on, which was a problem because practically all distros come with noveau compiled as a module. I was able to solve the problem by setting my BIOS from UEFI to BIOS mode, boot and then install linux without noveau.

Same problem happened in my new desktop with 2x1080SLI. Can't boot Gentoo LiveCD nor Linux mint unless I plug the monitor in the onboard intel video card and install from there removing noveau in the process.

Also, the problem you were having was in gentoo video card guides (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVidia/nvidia-drivers and nouveau). An excerpt says:

"For (U)EFI systems, uvesafb will not work. Be warned that enabling efifb support in kernel (CONFIG_FB_EFI=y) causes intermittent problems with the initialization of the nvidia drivers. There is no known alternative framebuffer for (U)EFI systems." - In my experience this true ONLY for nouveau. The current proprietary drivers from NVIDIA work. (Worked in my both computers). 

Finally, I discussed this issue with Anthony Basile, the udev main developer and seems like it is a problem in the kernel driver nouveau.

Anthony G. Basile

to Nelson

May 24

…

On 5/24/16 7:27 PM, Nelson Corrocher wrote:

> Hi Anthony,

>

> Just contacting again to tell you what was the problem. After loading and

> loading every single driver and module available, I found out that the

> noveau (Nvidia Open Source) driver was the cause of the hanging up. I don't

> if it is a problem with eudev or with the kernel (I can still boot if I

> skip udev). After switching to the proprietary driver, the issue was fixed.

kernel issue

Bottom line, if it doesn't work, get rid of nouveau and use nvidia proprietary. It should solve your problems.

Best,

Nelson

----------

## devsk

I tried to move to nvidia drivers and its even a bigger disaster. Here are the key findings:

1. kernel modeset does not work at all. The VTs are 80x25.

2. there is no switching between the VTs when X is active. Stop xdm and you can switch between 80x25 VTs

3. stopping xdm can panic the kernel sometimes while it tries to provide access to VT. Hard reset!! I haven't hard reset my system in ages since the days when I used to use nvidia drivers and they used to hang like this.

4. locking the screen will hang the KDE plasma session and you can't get back in. The mouse shows but no unlock screen. And you can't switch VT because of 2 and you are left with ssh and reboot.

Nouveau is still locking up with Chrome doing Netflix with latest kernel 4.8.12 and runpm=0. I can disable 2D acceleration in chrome://flags and get by but the CPU usage and the screen tearing is horrible without the acceleration. The fast moving scenes are an atrocity.

What a nightmare!!

----------

