Ubuntu 12.04 nouveau lockup with GTX580

[Alexander Karatarakis]

Discussion and workarounds here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/126193/ubuntu-12-04-stuck-at-the-login-screen
specs:
CPU: Intel i7 980x extreme edition, Motherboard: Asus Rampage III extreme, RAM: 6GB, GPUs: 2x NVidia GTX 580 in SLI, HDD: Western digital 1TB green power (20GB for root (/), 6GB for swap, all the rest for /home)

Probably affects GTX590 too.

There are two problems:
1) During installation there is freeze right after the lightdm(?) GUI starts. I see the cog/keyboard/accessibility on the top right, but cannot click them. The Try Ubuntu/Install Ubuntu window with the languages on the left never comes up, or sometimes a distorted and unusable version of it comes up.
[workaround: http://askubuntu.com/a/126416/57256]

2) If you use the workaround or the alternative installer to install (or even an upgrade from a fresh 11.10), then you get a freeze right after the lightdm login screen comes up.
[workaround: http://askubuntu.com/a/126336/57256]
When pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, the following message appears:

[drm] nouveau 0000:03:00.0: GPU lockup-switching to software fbcon

The switch never happens though, I only had the lockup part.

As outlined in the discussion, the problem is fixed with sudo-apt-get update, sudo-apt-get upgrade, and then installing the nvidia driver. I therefore assume there is something wrong in the nouveau driver. Also note that 11.10 does not have this problem. Also, this bug affects both 32-bit and 64-bit.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Blempis (mikko-lempola)]

Core i7 920, Gtx 580 - freeze and can't install

Change Gtx 580 to Gts 250 and Cd update install from 10.04 to 12.04 goes through but with several error messages. After rebooting mouse pointer is there - doesn't move - and disappears after a while.

Computer was connected to the internet via android phone. Now it can't load updates.

[Alexander Karatarakis (alexkaratarakis)]

@Blempis Check the workaround in the 1st post for the GTX580.

[Maarten Lankhorst (mlankhorst)]

The lockup is just confirmation it died. However it doesn't say why. Can you post the result of running the command 'dmesg' after the lockup?

[Blempis (mikko-lempola)]

Alexander, thank you but it didn't solve my problem.

'nvidia package is already the current version'

[Alastair Campbell (chartax)]

As far as I am aware, this is NOT a duplicate of #925048. The problem is not necessarily a problem with logging in specifically - I can't even get it to install with the graphical installer without the aforementioned workaround -- which I wasn't convinced was working correctly either.

@Blemphis Are you using apt-get install nvidia-current?

If that doesn't work, do apt-get purge nvidia* and apt-get purge nouveau*, then apt-get install nvidia-current once you've added the nvidia ppa.