[Nouveau] "Stuttering" display, NVA0 chipset.

[Sam Varshavchik]

Emil Velikov writes:

> On 28/08/13 23:03, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > I'm running xorg-x11-drv-nouveau-1.0.9-1.fc19.x86_64 and
> > xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.14.2-9.fc19.x86_64
> >
> > On the following chipset, the display suffers from "stuttering":
> >
> > 06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT200b [GeForce
> > GTX 285] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
> >        Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device 34c9
> >        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
> > ParErr+ Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
> >        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort-
> > <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
> >        Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 256 bytes
> >        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 24
> >        Region 0: Memory at f7000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
> >        Region 1: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
> >        Region 3: Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
> >        Region 5: I/O ports at dc00 [size=128]
> >        Expansion ROM at f6f80000 [disabled] [size=512K]
> >        Capabilities: <access denied>
> >        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
> >
> > [   531.742] (--) NOUVEAU(0): Chipset: "NVIDIA NVA0"
> >
> > By "stutters" I mean that at random intervals, at least several times a
> > minute, the entire display completely freezes, for an interval ranging
> > between about quarter of a second, to sometimes as long as 5-6 seconds.
> >
> > By "freezes" I mean that it just stops updating. No artifacts, just a
> > frozen display.
> >
> > When the display eventually becomes unstuck, it's completely up to date.
> > Everything that should be rendered, to that point, is rendered. It's as
> > if the framebuffer continues to get updated normally, but the display is
> > not being refreshed. Except for the mouse pointer! When the display is
> > not refreshing, the mouse pointer continues to be responsive.
> >
> > Basically, if I'm playing some video, the audio keeps going, the video
> > stops for 1-6 seconds, then continues running, synchronized with the
> > audio. Or, if I'm typing something on the terminal, after the display
> > unsticks itself, everything that was typed in the interim, is where it
> > should be. That's the best way I can describe it.
> >
> Hello Sam,
>
> To be honest I've experienced something similar although my issue was
> caused by the kernel swapping like crazy. There is a memory leak
> somewhere on my system that causes X to consume ~800MiB of RES memory
> after ~10days.
>
> That said you could try connecting remotely to the system (ssh) and see
> what is causing the issue - htop and perf would be some of the tools you
> can use.

There's no need to connect remotely. The system is running normally. Like I  
described, the display only freezes for a few seconds, at the most, then the  
system resumes running normally.

I does look like it's thrashing, and, now that I look at it, I am not  
swapping, 0 swap used. It does look a bit suspicious that gnome-shell is  
using up almost 3 gigs of RAM, and virt-manager another 1.5gb, but I've got  
16 gigs, and there's no swap being used..

>
> > I see no complaints in /var/log/messages, nor in Xorg.0.log
> >
> When you say "complains" I'm not sure what exactly you are looking for
> or expecting to see. Nouveau kernel Errors and warnings are indicated as
> "nouveau E" and "nouveau W" respectively.
> In general the output of dmesg is more reliable source of information
> than /var/log/messages.

I was looking for complaints about lost hardware interrupts, DMA errors,  
stuff like that.

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