xorg Digest, Vol 13, Issue 71 - Message 1 - Lock-ups with Proprietary Drivers

[JB Developers]

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:13:12 -0500
> From: Michel D?nzer <michel at daenzer.net>
> Subject: Re: XOrg freeze that affects a lot of people
> To: Anton Markov <anton at truxtar.com>
> Cc: xorg at lists.freedesktop.org
> Message-ID: <1111349592.29880.26.camel at localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 14:53 -0500, Anton Markov wrote:
> > 
> > Once again, it is weird that the keyboard can not be used to kill the 
> > Xorg server; often not even Alt-SysRq works. Would a driver problem lock 
> > the Xorg server so badly that it doesn't let the kernel see the 
> > keyboard? Or is it the CPU usage that prevents keyboard events from 
> > being read?
> 
> If Alt-SysRq doesn't work, the machine is probably either spinning in
> kernel mode or dead at the hardware level.
> 
> 
> > >> The problem is in fact driver related.  It afflicted me when I upgraded
> > >> to the most recent (7167) proprietary nvidia drivers, and downgrading
> > >> fixed things for my desktop.  Many of the sufferers use Ati cards and
> > >> there appears to be no standard version of the Ati drivers that works,
> > >> much more problematic than the nvidia drivers where version prior to
> > >> 7167 seem to have generally been stable for the majority of users.
> > 
> > Yes, the ATI drivers have been suffering from this problem to a varing 
> > degree since at least Xorg 6.8 (that's when I started using Xorg).
> 
> It's very unlikely the same issue in both drivers though. And as has
> been pointed out several times already in this thread, issues that are
> specific to drivers that don't ship with X.org are off topic here.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Earthling Michel Dnzer      |     Debian (powerpc), X and DRI developer
> Libre software enthusiast    |   http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer
> 
> 

I hope this is the right way to reply - correct me if not!

If anyone is interested I've managed to get a much more stable system
with the proprietary ATI RADEON 9700 Pro drivers under Gentoo Linux
version 2.6.11-r4. I've tried rebuilding several times since I moved
over to Gentoo and X11 with no success but my stability problems seemed
to disappear all of a sudden when I downloaded and installed the latest
version of the kernel. There are still a few "funnies" that need looking
into but at least the system is stable and I can use it confidently
without fear of lock-ups.

Best regards,
Jim Bannon
(When in doubt, try honesty!)