[Nouveau] [Bug 59069] nouveau E[ DRM] fail ttm_validate

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59069

--- Comment #40 from Matt Whitlock <freedesktop at mattwhitlock.name> ---
(In reply to Ilia Mirkin from comment #39)
> "fail ttm_validate" usually means "you tried to use too much vram at once".
> Unfortunately nouveau's mesa driver isn't particularly good at handling that
> issue, which causes it to get much worse failures down the line.

A failure in Mesa should, at worst, merely cause the offending process to
crash. It shouldn't be possible for an unprivileged user-mode process to bring
the entire system down. If it is, then there's a serious (denial-of-service)
kernel bug.

> Realistically, I doubt the plasma5 use-case fits well with nv30/nv40
> hardware. You're taking a 2015 compositor and running it on 2005 hardware.

In my case it's a GeForce 8600 GT (G84, Tesla microarchitecture) on a PCI-E
card. I realize this is only slightly better (release date in April 2007), but
supposedly Nouveau supports Tesla. Actually, I was digging into the scant
documentation in the Nouveau project, and Tesla seems to be the one
microarchitecture for which Nvidia have provided some documentation, so I
honestly would expect it to be the best supported of all the chipsets.

> You could (correctly) make the argument that nouveau should do a better job
> at this -- and you'd be right. However volunteers aren't falling over
> themselves, rushing to fix these issues.

Okay, fine. I really don't mind buying a newer card. I just need to know what's
going to work. Can you tell me what to get? I don't care about gaming. I do use
a composited desktop. I want to play with Wayland on DRM (no X server). I just
want a card that will give me a stable desktop without needing to run a
proprietary driver. I've been eyeing a GeForce GT 730 (GK208-301-A1, Kepler
microarchitecture) in the hope that switching cards would solve my stability
problems. Would Kepler be more stable on Nouveau than Tesla? I have the general
notion that Nouveau has worse support for the newer cards because they're more
complex and less is known about them. Is this true? What would you recommend
for someone who prioritizes stability above all else? Thanks.

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