[TriLUG] Ubuntu, Nvidia and the Freeze or Black Screen

[Brian Blater]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Brian Blater <brb.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Carl Crider <c.crider at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Boot the box to a terminal, check to see if there are 2 xorg.conf files in
>> place.
>> One of them is the good one. Rename the oldest one to something else;
>> "xorg.confOLD; xorg.confBKP". Don't delete it, as you may need to copy
>> over some details to the new one.
>>
>> Are you using the nvidia control panel to save settings? If so it will
>> give you a parsing error when you try to save and the xorg is wrong.
>>
>> If both of the drivers are installed, this can lead to the same/similar
>> issue.
>>
>> We had these issues with some IBM desktops that used nvidia cards.
>> When a new update would install the new video drivers, we'd get a black
>> screen.
>> And actually, right now I can't remember whether it was the old xorg file
>> that worked versus the new one ... sorry, weird day.
>
> Let me look at the system this weekend with fresh eyes and verify
> which driver is loaded. Could very well be a bad xorg.conf.
>
> I'll keep working at it, but it if others are having similar issues,
> maybe it isn't something I did.
>
> One thing I did recognize, was on Ubuntu Studios website they list
> current release as 10.10, but the recommended release is 10.04. So,
> maybe there are more issues with 10.10. I'm not sure I want to wait
> until 11.04 is released the end of the month.
>

Ok, this has been a couple of weeks, but I've got some things working
better, but other things still are pretty bad.

At this point I at least have a running system with Ubuntu 10.10. I'm
using the 270.41.03 driver from the ubuntu-x-swat ppa and the
2.6.35-28-generic kernel.

At this time the Xwindows locking and having to power off the machine
has stopped, but I now get regular problems where Xwindows will just
restart and send me back to a login prompt. It is pretty bad, such
that if I use the system heavily at all (lots of windows open) it will
restart a couple of times an hour.

I'm now getting a problem where the screen will flicker quite a bit
and I will see various red or blue pixels on the screen in various
places.

I've done several searches in google and haven't found anything that
really fixes the issue.

Anyone have any ideas that might make things more useful? I've put a
copy of my xorg.conf below and will happily post any other config
files to see if this can be remedied.

Thanks for your help.
Brian

xorg.conf
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 270.41.03  (buildd at litembilla)  Mon Apr 11
20:45:06 UTC 2011

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Acer X223W"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8600 GTS"
    Option	   "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevelAC=0x3"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +1280+0,
DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection