Debian Wheezy, Gnome 3, and nVidia graphics cards

[Mark Fletcher]

Hello the list!

I am running Wheezy on a self-built Intel Core i7 920 with 24GB of RAM and an nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card. I am using the nVidia proprietary driver downloaded from the debian repository along with the kernel module built by the usual Debian installation process.

I am running Gnome launched from GDM3. When I select regular Gnome (ie "new" Gnome with the bells and whistles) it works for a while and then randomly freezes -- often but not exclusively when I am trying to switch desktops, watch a video, or do something like that. Once it freezes, the load on the machine starts going up and up and up until eventually the machine becomes completely unresponsive in all ways and there's no recourse but to reboot. If I am quick, I can log in remotely from another machine, kill GDM3, and the machine recovers to a text terminal, where I can log in and relaunch GDM3. Then everything works for a while, until the cycle repeats.

If, on the other hand, I select "Gnome Classic" at the login prompt, I can log in, do everything I want, and stability is rock-solid -- it will go for weeks on end (no exaggeration) between reboots without any sign of difficulty. But then I don't get the bells and whistles :-)

I tried replacing the nVidia driver with nouveau but couldn't get that to work at all. Probably did something wrong but couldn't work out what.

My Wheezy system is up to date so everything is at version levels you'd expect from Wheezy. I play games like Quake 3 and have also built and play Danger From the Deep, a submarine simulation that makes heavy use of 3D, on my computer with no problems, so I think 3D in the graphics card is generally working.

I'd like to get to the bottom of why regular Gnome is not working but don't know where to start. I used to suspect the nVidia driver, because it worked OK until a driver update, but no one else seems to be having quite the problem I am having at this point so I suspect I have done something stupid, but don't know how to find out what. 

Can anyone help? For example, what are the software component differences between regular Gnome and Gnome Classic? What log files should I be looking in? and so on...

Thanks in advance!

Mark

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 19 nov 13, 22:40:56, Mark Fletcher wrote:
>
> I am running Gnome launched from GDM3. When I select regular Gnome (ie
> "new" Gnome with the bells and whistles) it works for a while and then
> randomly freezes -- often but not exclusively when I am trying to switch
> desktops, watch a video, or do something like that. Once it freezes, the
> load on the machine starts going up and up and up until eventually the
> machine becomes completely unresponsive in all ways and there's no recourse
> but to reboot. If I am quick, I can log in remotely from another machine,
> kill GDM3, and the machine recovers to a text terminal, where I can log in
> and relaunch GDM3. Then everything works for a while, until the cycle
> repeats.

Could you please try to run following command before killing gdm3 and
post the output here?

top -b -n 1

Kind regards,
Andrei
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[Mark Fletcher]

Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
>
> Could you please try to run following command before killing gdm3 and
> post the output here?
>
> top -b -n 1
>
> Kind regards,
> Andrei

Thanks Andrei, I will try this at the weekend, machine is running critical
tasks while the markets are open so I'm in Gnome Classic for now. Thanks for
the tip.

I just ran this just now (not expecting to find anything since the machine
is fine) and I see it produces a detailed process list as a one-off. I will
run when the problem hits as you suggested. Anything in particular you are
looking for? Or you just want to know what is at the top of the list?

Thanks

Mark


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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 19 nov 13, 22:57:41, Mark Fletcher wrote:
>
> I just ran this just now (not expecting to find anything since the machine
> is fine) and I see it produces a detailed process list as a one-off. I will
> run when the problem hits as you suggested. Anything in particular you are
> looking for? Or you just want to know what is at the top of the list?

Since you actually reported freezes due to high load I'm hopping to find
the culprit in the process list.