shadowbearer's Journal: Help :(

This is more really a random sampling of my notes, with embellishments, rather than a article of any kind. Forgive me lol :)

  I have an AMD64 machine I just can't get long term stable. The kernel seems stable, but xorg just isn't. I get random video corruption and (more frequent as of late) xorg 98.6% cpu (in 'top') lockups.

  The system is using the kernel agp module and not nvidia's, but I'm not sure how to force that in Fedora short of compiling a kernel (and I haven't had time to screw around with figuring out how to do that in Fedora, dangit in gentoo it's much easier :)

  Any ideas how to disable the kernel agpgart in FC3/4 and force the nvidia's? I'm not sure that's what is causing the problem - from some experiences in gentoo it's a possibility - but I haven't found an easy way to do that in Fedora. I feel like I'm missing something there!

^^

  I can ssh into the machine and kill X and restart it when it pukes, but of course I lose what I am doing.

  I've replaced the ram and the video card. The video corruption looks like vid memory corruption, but it's not hardware*. With the usual library link tweaks required in a lot of distros for x86_64, I've managed to get openGL gaming working almost flawlessly. The desktop is another matter, I've had to ssh in and restart X 8 times in the last couple days, and I've had it with this. Most of the other problems I've run across have been 64bit/32bit library problems, and I'd almost bet this is related, but I can't find it here.

  EDIT: Problems have been fairly consistent across linux distributions with installed nvidia drivers, which made me think it was nvidia's drivers. But I updated xorg and things just broke, badly - in gentoo first, then in FC3. Different problems here in FC4. Lib/Lib64 symlinks aren't the only problem.

  HW details
8KDA series Epox with raid
all IDE HDs at this point
Jaton 5700fx *(also a tested true gf mx 400, same problem, jaton tested in my duron machine didn't exhibit problems)
crucial ram(thought that might be the prob, upgraded, but no)

  SW details
  Fedora Core 4 Test 1 (note, system also exhibited similar behavior with FC3; and I was never able to make gentoo stable)
nvidia 7174 drivers seemed to make a small improvement over the last version when I installed them today...?
xorg 6.8 vers 7 and 27

  Note: with this install if I run gdm it jumps to 99%+ cpu usage as soon as I'm past the login screen, I wonder if this is related?

  The fact that I can ssh in and restart things suggests the kernel isn't the problem.

  Also I'm wondering, does anyone know how to resolve the dependancy hell inherent with the FC4 test releases?

  I hate to say it, but as much fun as this new system has been, I need to make it totally stable all the way around, and soon, as I'm trying to make an end of summer going into business deadline, and I need this online and working as well as my older gentoo system (which is enjoying it's 18xth day of ~0maint uptime :)

  I'd love to hear from other FC3/4 users on similar h/w, please... :)

  EDIT: I suspect the problem is in between nvidia's drivers and xorg & x86_64 somewhere, but I don't know enough to track it down. Anyone? I might be relying on google too much nowadays, as I'm time-pressed.

Cheers all
SB

release candidate

[zogger]

you are running a release, so I *bet* the doods at fedora that take the bug reports would love this one. It's exactly the stuff they want to get. They'll proly want all sorts of esoteric core dumps and whatnot though...

Besides that, no idea, I stay on the bleeding edge of pentium 2 meselfs and like 2 meg vid cards.

Besides that, hiyas!

I'm not a Fedora user, but...

[TrekkieGod]

I do have a amd64 system running pretty stable with xorg, so I don't think there's an instability with that combination.

When you say that it is using the kernel agpgart, is fedora loading the agpgart module at bootup or is it statically compiled into the kernel? If it's statically compiled, you'll have to recompile the kernel and remove it, you can't load nvidia's module while the kernel module is loaded.

Check with lsmod to see if agpgart is a module. If it is, check to see if using the nvidia's inter

Re:I'm not a Fedora user, but...

[shadowbearer]

So basically there's no way to trick it?. Sigh. (yeah, it's in the kernel) - I have other bad issues with the install and I don't want to take the time to do the FC kernel song and dance (why is gentoo so easy and most others such a pain?)

I got fed up with fedora this morning. I know it's a test release, but besides the lockups there are several issues with updating+. I had a good FC3 install on this machine with only minor issues (after a long fight) and the hard drive it was on failed catastrophicall

Re:I'm not a Fedora user, but...

[TrekkieGod]

I share your feelings. I used to run Mandrake, and I was always really happy with how easy it was to set things up, but it was just never stable. I run gentoo on my amd64 machine now and I'm very happy with everything. Portage is great in that it handles dependencies well, and in that it has just about any software I even think of installing available. Gentoo has a great configuration setup with every file in a logical place and very modular so that config files don't get in each other's way.

However,

Re:I'm not a Fedora user, but...

[shadowbearer]

Yup. I love my Gentoo machine - too bad it's a 1200 duron.

Another thing nice about other distros on laptops is they take up a lot less space if you're not planning on doing development or something similar :)

Well, I have this more or less pinned down - with nvidia drivers loaded, both distros go bye-bye in less than two hours. with 'nv' driver loaded, stable as a rock. I don't know if it's specifically the driver - it may be bad accel hw on the video card - but I'm gonna try some older driver versio