nvidia GT 240 has frequent hard locks

[Reed Lipman]

At seemingly random times, my system becomes nonresponsive to keyboard input, but sometimes the mouse can move. I have only been able to Alt+Sysrq restart from this point. I can't find a pattern to the hard locks. Sometimes they happen hours apart, and other times on consecutive reboots. My "fix" for this in karmic was to use the 190 drivers instead of 195, but that package was taken out. I've tried removing plymouth but that hasn't solved it. That and my problem and 'fix' in karmic lead me to suspect the driver.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: f5e32f44c6e48eb43576e12312917e86
CheckboxSystem: 4ed15c40009aa6f7770f606350a390a2
Date: Wed Feb 24 00:43:53 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: nvidia-current 195.36.03-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-11.15-generic
SourcePackage: nvidia-graphics-drivers
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-11-generic x86_64

[Reed Lipman (rmlipman)]

my nvidia-bug-report, the Xorg.0.log.old section has a backtrace

[Reed Lipman (rmlipman)]

The NVnews forums pointed me toward it being a powermizer problem. DIsabling it by setting it to "Prefer Maximum Performance" avoids this issue. It doesn't "stick" on reboot without setting something in xorg.conf. I've added this line but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

        Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x0"

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2196545#post2196545

[Reed Lipman (rmlipman)]

That wasn't the right config setting, but what I need to do is every time xorg restarts is immediately change powermizer from Adaptive to Prefer Maximum Performance in nvidia-settings. If there's an xorg.conf config setting, I still haven't found it. Can someone who knows the right setting chime in so there's a better workaround than remembering to set this option in nvidia-settings every time X starts?

[Wessel Dankers (wsl)]

The answer seems to be to work *with* powermizer, not against it. :)

 Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x1; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"

This enables it and tells it to use one speed only. The default values tell it what speed everything should run at.

I used this document to come up with these values: http://tutanhamon.com.ua/technovodstvo/NVIDIA-UNIX-driver/

YMMV (and it's your mileage, so vary it as you wish).

My Zotac GT240 “ZONE” seems to be stable so far, but I haven't tested it for very long yet. Hard to test with a bug that only shows up once every so often.

cheers,

[dino99 (9d9)]

That version is no more supported; please open a new bug report if the actual archive found version also has the same issue.