Video Problems [Re: Old kernel RPMS ]

[Ivan Gyurdiev]

> ... I do not believe I have enough information at this point
> to file a valuable bug report. I wanted to test old kernels
> to determine the point of failure first. I also wanted to know
> whether problems can arise from the interaction between gcc4-compiled
> kernel, and binary kernel modules, and felt that the list was a more
> appropriate place to ask this question.

Okay, I have some more info now. More importantly, I think I have a
reproducible test case. 

Setup
================================================================
I haven't had time to go look for old kernels and test, however
I can confirm the crash I am dealing with occurs on kernels 1171-1177.
I couldn't get 1170 to boot. I am experiencing instability with BOTH
the nv open source driver, and the nvidia closed source driver.
Additionally I am running X with the RENDER extension. I tried
turning that off, and it makes no difference. Given the reproducible
behavior, I think overheating is an unlikely source of the problem. 
It is possible I am dealing with another type of hardware failure, but
I'd like to think not, since the hardware is rather new.

Types of Crashes
===============================
Crash 1: Garbage displayed on screen... diagonal waves or some other
nonsense

Crash 2: Monitor goes to standby (or whatever it's called that it does
when it's switching resolutions, like before starting X).

The above two occur with the nv driver. System does not respond to
sysrq.

Crash 3: Random freeze in the middle of what I'm doing. Screen freezes
to a standstill. System responds to sysrq. Sysrq-p shows X to be active.
I can provide more info if you'd like.

This occurs with the nvidia binary driver. 

Gnome-Terminal
=================================
Gnome-terminal seems to make the system crash in a reproducible fashion.
By crash I mean crash type 1 or 2 (I've abandoned the nvidia driver
for now while resolving this problem).

It crashes most of the time when opening the first terminal. I believe
it crashes <all> the time if the area the first terminal covers overlaps
another application. I'd have to do more testing to be absolutely sure,
but that's what it seems to do. If the terminal manages to open
successfully, I can move it around and do whatever, and it will not
crash. The crash occurs when opening the terminal, and not later. 

Transparency is enabled in the gnome-terminal.

I've also seen Crash 1 or 2 in other contexts, while not opening the
terminal, but those are not very reproducible. I've seen it crash
immediately after the Fedora boot screen, as well as while doing
a cat on a large file in an already-open gnome-terminal. I've also
seen it turn off and on (Crash 2) forever after leaving it on for a 
long time with xscreensaver on.

So - any ideas? Perhaps X is at fault?


-- 
Ivan Gyurdiev <ivg2 at cornell.edu>
Cornell University