Unity 8 freezes on Nouveau

[SB]

I installed Ubuntu 16.10 yesterday and Unity 8 constantly freezes after I do some clicking around the desktop (using Browser, System Settings and the like), I am running it on Nouveau driver for GTX970M, I refrained from installing proprietary drivers to test Unity 8, but it is unusable and after it freezes I can only power off my laptop as nothing works. Is this a known issue? Also Unity 7 does not load at all, but I will post a separate bug for that.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Last time I tried GTX970 (not GTX970M) I hit bug 1575516. But you seem to have got further than that.

With other Nvidia chips I have encountered freezes like you describe. Although I don't think all our nouveau bugs are optimally triaged yet. One issue worth mentioning is nouveau multi-monitor support, which is presently broken due to bug 1553328. It's possible Unity8/Mir experiences instability for the same reason even with a single display.

Are you able to find evidence of a crash or in your kernel log of what happened at the time of freezing?

[SB (emehntehtt)]

It might be related to that bug, I will try logging into Unity 8 again and find some logs when it freezes again, it happened every time so far, for some reason it especially happens if you work with the Ubuntu Browser, but it can freeze while using the Scopes too.

[Emanuele Sorce (tronfortytwo)]

I have a Nvidia GT 730 and also happens to me. Unity 7 works fine

[Gaele Strootman (gaele)]

Same with Nvidia GT750M (on Macbook Pro). The freeze happened while trying to use Browser.

When I returned to Unity 7:
- desktop scaling was screwed. Icons and window contents were too big compared to menu and title bars
- I suddenly had an Amazon icon in the launcher. When clicking on it Browser opened with an Amazon page, and my desktop froze again.

(Ubuntu sent an automatic error report when I logged in again, BTW)

[Gaele Strootman (gaele)]

This really sucks. I can't get the scaling back to a correct state. The window contents are way too big. Should I create a new ticket for this?

[Gaele Strootman (gaele)]

Both kern.log and syslog end with binary

[Hannie Dumoleyn (lafeber-dumoleyn)]

I use Ubuntu 16.10 with GeForce GT 530 (see info below), and nouveau driver. My system freezes when I open the Browser app. As a workaround I have installed Firefox in Unity 8, so I can have access to the internet.

VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 530] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] GF108 [GeForce GT 530]
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 35
 Memory at fa000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
 Memory at d8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
 I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
 Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nouveau
 Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Hannie, you are probably experiencing bug 1553328 if the problems start with the web browser app.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I don't think we're going to get anywhere with Unity8 till bug 1553328 is fixed. And most people here seem to be experiencing that.

So duplicate of bug 1553328 until further notice.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I meant to say "I don't think we're going to get anywhere with Nouveau on Unity8"