[nvidia, 7300, 7400] display freeze when using unity desktop

[Nizar Kerkeni]

Upstream bug: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=160115

when logging to unity desktop only the mouse cursor moves but no action can be done (opening a window and so).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: unity 3.6.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
.proc.driver.nvidia.gpus.0: Error: [Errno 21] est un dossier: '/proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/0'
.proc.driver.nvidia.registry: Binary: ""
.proc.driver.nvidia.version:
 NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 270.29 Wed Feb 23 16:16:53 PST 2011
 GCC version: gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-3ubuntu3)
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,mousepoll,vpswitch,regex,animation,snap,expo,move,compiztoolbox,place,grid,imgpng,gnomecompat,wall,ezoom,workarounds,staticswitcher,resize,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,scale,session,unityshell]
CompositorRunning: None
Date: Thu Mar 3 23:32:40 2011
DistUpgraded: Log time: 2010-12-17 12:33:27.813978
DistroCodename: natty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus:
 nvidia-current, 270.29, 2.6.38-5-generic, i686: installed
 vboxhost, 4.0.4, 2.6.38-5-generic, i686: installed
GraphicsCard:
 nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device [104d:81ef]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
InstallationMedia_: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
InstallationMedia__: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
InstallationMedia___: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
MachineType: Sony Corporation VGN-FE31H
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=fr_FR.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-5-generic root=UUID=6af38058-c7c3-4680-8f1b-9fedc3d89d2f ro single
ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
ProcVersionSignature__: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
ProcVersionSignature___: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
Renderer: Unknown
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-02-24 (6 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 08/17/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
dmi.bios.version: R0170J3
dmi.board.asset.tag: N/A
dmi.board.name: VAIO
dmi.board.vendor: Sony Corporation
dmi.board.version: N/A
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 7R2M000000003d0b2f3d48aa3a3f
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Sony Corporation
dmi.chassis.version: C3LMPW7F
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologiesLTD:bvrR0170J3:bd08/17/2006:svnSonyCorporation:pnVGN-FE31H:pvrC3LMPW7F:rvnSonyCorporation:rnVAIO:rvrN/A:cvnSonyCorporation:ct10:cvrC3LMPW7F:
dmi.product.name: VGN-FE31H
dmi.product.version: C3LMPW7F
dmi.sys.vendor: Sony Corporation
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.4-0ubuntu3
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.23-1ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.10.1~git20110215.cc1636b6-0ubuntu2
version.nvidia-graphics-drivers: nvidia-graphics-drivers N/A
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6~3ubuntu11
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.0-0ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.14.0-4ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau N/A

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

Does unity show up, or do you have a blank desktop?

[Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus)]

I don't have a blank screen : my background photo is displayed, unity launcher too. The top deskbar is also displayed but without the notification applets and menus.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

Ok, would you be comfortable following these steps to obtain a stack trace for us?

Switch to tty1 (ctrl+alt+f1)
attach to it with gdb $ sudo gdb --attach `pgrep compiz`
at the gdb prompt $ set logging file compiz.txt
$ set logging on
$ bt
(ctrl+d) to exit gdb
now if you run $ export DISPLAY=:0
then $ metacity --replace
and change back to tty7 (ctrl+alt+f7) you should have metacity running and can give us the file compiz.txt that should be in your homefolder containing the backtrace.

[Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus)]

can you confirm that the firs command is
$ sudo gdb attach `pgrep compiz`
and not --attach ?
?field.comment=can you confirm that the firs command is
$ sudo gdb attach `pgrep compiz`
and not --attach ?
The result file is on attach.

[Miguel Branco (arlanthir)]

My display hangs whenever I run compiz too.
Same graphics card, Natty Beta. I think I already have driver version 270.30, from the repos.

[Otacon1987 (orfeo18)]

Same bug here: upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 x64 using nvidia-current package.
My graphic card is nVidia Geforce Go 7300. After login Unity bar and Panel works, but the screen is not refreshed:
the system allows me to interact with the bar and windows, but i can't see a visual feedback.
Steps to analyze this behaviour:
1. Login without visual effects
2. Open a new terminal window
3. run unity --reset (and wait for finishing loading)
4. move the mouse cursor over window's borders to resize and resize the window.
5. move the mouse cursor over previous (actually shown) window's border - the mouse cursor doesn't change in "resize mode"
6. move the mouse cursor over new (you have to remember where you put your window's border in step 4) window border and the mouse cursor will change in "resize mode".

...Looks like a video refresh bug...

[Zephcom (gmackenr)]

Same bug here too. I get the same situation as Otacon1987. Video card is a GeForce 7300 GS.

Additional information.

My computer locked up during the upgrade and I had to cut the power to get it back. Rebooting resulted in mount errors and no GUI. I finished the upgrade with a live disk. GNOME desktop works fine.

[Zephcom (gmackenr)]

I changed the video drivers from the proprietary NVIDIA drivers to the experimental open source drivers. Unity is now working.

[Otacon1987 (orfeo18)]

Yep, Nuoveau fixes here too... (thx to Zephcom for the hint).

[megathon (megathon)]

Switching to noveau solved the issue for me too.

[Koen Verweij (kfverweij)]

I have the same issue with a nvidia 7300 LE card.

[Lorenzo De Liso (blackz)]

I'm having a similar problem: Unity doesn't run completely and the session freezes. I don't think this is related to unity, it happens in the Ubuntu classic desktop session as well. It also happens in the session without any effect if I run compiz. With the nouveau driver all works good. My video card is a nvidia 7500 LE.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could the users having that issue copy their lspci -v infos in the bug or their video card pci ids? those will be set in the list of cards that can't run unity so users will get classic GNOME rather than a broken unity

[Otacon1987 (orfeo18)]

Here is mine, but now i'm using Nuoveau and Unity works well. With nvidia-current drivers unity gets broken!

[Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus)]

@Sebastien : We can run unity but with the nouveau driver and not with the nvidia-current driver.
My lspci file is in the first post.

[Lorenzo De Liso (blackz)]

Sebastien, the problem isn't unity. I get the freeze even with the Ubuntu classic session. To get a working session, I either need to choose the session without any graphic effect or use the nouveau driver. That's what made me think it's a problem in compiz.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

We are currently blacklisting those card to avoid non technical user to get a bad unity experience when upgrading to the nvidia binary driver.
For technical user wanting to use it with nouveau (we don't support nouveau with compiz or unity, be warned that you can get some memory leaks and other glitches depending on your card), you can set UNITY_FORCE_START=1 in /etc/environment to bypass the detection.

Please just report "lspci -nn" and not "lspci -v" as it hides the id we need and we need to dig in the map file to find it back ;). Otacon, I've done that for your case, no need to repost, thanks :)

[Lorenzo De Liso (blackz)]

Didier, like I said above, I get the freeze with the Ubuntu classic session as well. I don't think it has something to do with unity, has it?

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Lorenzo: you're right. However, the detection tool is the same for unity and ubuntu classic session, hence the workaround for blacklisting will work for you :)
Of course, the real fix should be done in the nvidia blob driver where we have unfortunately no way to fix it ourself.

[Otacon1987 (orfeo18)]

@Didier: if you need testing or something else feel free to ask. I am able to write code, but I'm not so good with system logs/debugging. So you have to drive me through the bug-reporting (for me this will be a chance to learn something new).

@Lorenzo: you're right, i think that it's an nVidia + Compiz bug. That's why Unity crashes!!!

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Otacon: the driver source code for nvidia isn't available unfortunately as it's a proprietary driver. So there is little hope for a fix here…

Something I need to know before blacklisting the cards is that, do you get the freeze at start or after a while using it?

[Lorenzo De Liso (blackz)]

Didier, I get the freeze some seconds after the start.

[Otacon1987 (orfeo18)]

@Didier: GDM shows correctly. After login desktop icons are shown after that panel and dock are shown but immediately after that the UI got frozen. As I descripted some comments above looks like there's a wrong UI refresh because mouse pointer changes his shape when over a window border (look @ post #7 for a better description)

[Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus)]

In my case I get the freeze just after connecting to my session (the mouse pointer still move) but nothing is displayed on screen.
The lspci -nn is attached.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package nux - 0.9.46-0ubuntu3

---------------
nux (0.9.46-0ubuntu3) natty; urgency=low

  * Cherry-pick blacklisting additional driver + UNITY_FORCE_START env variable
    to bypass unity/compiz testing:
    - Partial screen corruption and poor performance on GeForce 6150
      (LP: #764379)
    - [nvidia, 7300, 7400] display freeze when using unity desktop
      (LP: #728745)
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:08:40 +0200

[Eric Schaffner (eric-ericschaffner)]

Here is the output from lspci on my system. The salient part is:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [Quadro NVS 110M/GeForce Go 7300] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Dell Device 2003
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at ed000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at ee000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at ef000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

I am curious, did the fix work for anyone? The problem is unchanged here.

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30a5
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 Memory at d1000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Mike:
Did you read this comment?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nux/+bug/728745/comments/18

Your hardware should be blacklisted now. If it's not the case, as said in the comment, please post lscpi -nn and not lspci -v.

[paskx (p-amendola89-deactivatedaccount)]

My video card is a nvidia 7300 LE and I get the freeze in unity some seconds after the login.With driver version "270.41.06" nothing is displayed on screen, I'm able to move the mouse pointer but I can't do anything else...with driver version "173.14.30" it seems to me that everything works out perfectly with unity.Has anyone tried the 173 driver?

[Lorenzo De Liso (blackz)]

With the nvidia-173 package all works properly for me too.

[Baptiste (baptiste-schieberlein)]

I have the exact same problem here with a 7500 LE card.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7500 LE] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at fc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 [virtual] Expansion ROM at fe9e0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

Thanks Didier, I haven't bothered looking over all the comments, as I had thought that fixed meant it should be working.

[Baptiste (baptiste-schieberlein)]

I've just tested the nvidia-173 driver instead of the 270 one, and I can say unity is working now :)

[Alexandre Jesus (alexandremrj)]

I have now the nvidia-173 driver and unity works great. Had the previous freeze described.

Because it is blacklisted now I have to start unity manually but it works

[Craig Kempson (ckempo)]

Adding UNITY_FORCE_START=1 to /etc/environment as Didier suggests in #18, along with rolling back to the 17 driver, means my laptop's 7300 Go is now happily running Unity. Thanks to everyone, glad I found this bug.

[Chad Godfirnon (chad-godfirnon)]

Just upgraded to 11.04 this evening (about 1 hour ago) and experienced this error, so it appears that my card is not black listed. Please find lspci output attached.

[Chad Godfirnon (chad-godfirnon)]

I can also confirm that using the nvidia driver version 173 instead of current resolves the issue.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Chad: thanks, I'm blacklisting your card as well (different kind of card from the same series, it wasn't blacklisted). Doing now (will be in the next SRU update).

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Baptiste: I need lspci --nn, not lspci -v as it was proposed before to blacklist the card.
Thanks :)

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

I have a GeForce 7300 LE and have exactly the same issue. I also get random black and white blocks and garbled characters during boot up. I tried the nvidia-173 driver, but this was worse for me. With the 173 driver I get the same black and white garbled stuff on the login screen too. Also, a restart does not help. It remains garbled and black and white until the PC is cold booted (powered off for a few seconds), so it seems to mess up the card so bad it cannot even hard reset!

[Jamie Clifton (jamieclifton88)]

@John, is your system fully updated? I have the same card as you but for me the problem solved by installation of the nvidia-173 driver.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

Ok, yes it was updated but it took several update attempts as it kept complaining about missing dependencies. Maybe something got borked by the beta updates. Anyway I started from scratch using the 11.04 release version, which I am writing from. Here is my experience:-

Fresh install on single partition, letting the installer format as Ext4.

On first boot after install, vertical black and white stripes on upsplash with some garbles text/chars in the middle

Then at login (which now looks normal) a message box pops up to say I do not have suitable hardware for Unity deskop, and to use Ubuntu classic.

I then activated the suggested "Current" driver (270 presumably but it does not say), 173 is offered also.

On 2nd boot with this driver (Unity desktop), I can see the unity side bar, but nothing else, mouse moves but no functionality. I use Alt+Sys req+k to kill the x server.

Login to Ubuntu Classic, that just gives me wallpaper. But I found by experimenting the menus are there, you just cant see them!
Restarted and activated the 173 driver (Experimental 3D Nouv driver no longer on the list oddly).

On 3rd boot, login (now on the 173 driver) to Unity and its working fine so far. Effects working ok, nice and crisp response. Stable so far.

When I was on the beta 2 install, the 3D Nouv driver actually seemed to work very well, and I ran unity using that. But it is not on the hardware driver list now, even though synaptic/software centre shows it as installed.

I guess from this it may be possible to launch stuff via keys with the 270 driver, in order to run debug stuff. Although I may not be able to see it! If anyone want me to try this, please let me know what commands to run.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

Just found out some bad on the 173 driver: Using Ctrl+Alt+F1-7 to get console gives white screen plus garbled black text/chars. Then returning to X screen on F8, the screen is badly corrupted. The sidebar and notification area is ok, but the main wallpaper is random pixels. Application windows are still ok though.

[Pedro Gauna (lapega)]

I have the exact problem that #45 (John Cottier )... My card is a GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

adding the nvidia-current task as the issue seems be impacted only with this driver and not with nvidia 173

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

@all
Make sure you're still using the Nvidia driver and you can reproduce the problem, then please open a terminal and type the following command:

sudo nvidia-bug-report.sh

This will create an nvidia-bug-report.log (or nvidia-bug-report.log.gz) file in your user directory. Please attach the file to the report.

Thanks

[discont (discont)]

Confirm this bug too.

Nvidia GeForce Go 7300

[Gone fishing (humpmihk-msn)]

I'm having the same problem with a GeForce 7300 LE graphics card.

This is with both the 64 and 32bit versions of 11.04. Not only is Unity not working but also classic with desktop effects enabled, tty is also scrambled. I've tried the 173 Driver with the 32 bit of 11.04 version but it's just as bad

[gkornelson (gkornelson)]

I can confirm the same problem here on a GeForce FX Go 5200 using the 173 driver.

[HX_unbanned (linards-liepins)]

Happening same X freeze on RADEON HD 5750 video card.

Please fix this ASAP asn I really start to regret upgrading to this Natty-crap :(

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

Attaching the log,
the card is as follows:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1)

[savebart (savebart)]

I have exactly the same problem, with the same card (GeForce 7300 LE). Using 173 driver solves the problem, but this driver has some bugs in managing the dual screen configuration. So, please, fix the but with current-driver ASAP!

[Dan Ch (sp1urge0la)]

well...i have the same problem on my ASUS laptop, but I don't have nVidia graphics card, I use Intel GMA 4500.

[John (jharitos)]

I have a GeForce 7300 LE and none of the nvidia drivers work for me. I have to change my xorg.conf drivers to nv to get my system to boot otherwise it just hangs after I enter my password.

[Jon Anderson (jbander)]

So were is the fix

[Phil Reilander (philreilander)]

Here's mine. I hope it helps.

[anibal-sanchez (anibal-sanchez-oquma)]

Same problem here, since I don't know how to go back to noveau, I'm staying with the latest Desktop (Gnome) and Nvidia driver.

Please, please, please I want Unity!

Regards,
Anibal

[anibal-sanchez (anibal-sanchez-oquma)]

One more tip, machine is not dead, when you click on an icon, it opens the program... but the display is not showing anything.

[Andrew (andrew-rw-robinson)]

Note that the nvidia-173 has a nasty side effect that the x11 VNC support has no support for xdamage. This has apparently been fixed in the never nvidia drivers (after 173). Just a note that you will have issues with vnc (like vino-server in gnome) with the 173. With x11vnc you can use -noxdamage as a work-around to this.

[Andrew (andrew-rw-robinson)]

Has anyone tried installing drivers right from nvidia that are > 173 but < 270.41.06?

For example:
260.19.44
270.18
260.19.36
260.19.29
260.19.21

To see when this regression took place?

Thanks

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

Hi Andrew,

I tried porting 260 from maverick but the driver complained about the XOrg ABI version. No luck yet.

[Arnaud Floquet (finladrik)]

As a possessor of a 7400, I confirm the bug not only on the Unity interface, but also on the Ubuntu classic with effects. It seems that the problem is coming from Compiz, doesn't it?

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

Here is my nvidia bug report for the 270 (current) nvidia driver. You can do this bug report even thought the display is apparently frozen, but you will see no feedback at all (which is really weird).
To do this, press Ctrl+Alt+t (which invisibly open a terminal window), and wait a few seconds.
Type carefully (as there is no feedback) sudo nvidia-bug-report (enter), wait a few seconds
Type your password and enter

If you want to check the report has been created successfully, type Alt+Print screen+k to kill the x server. The login using Ububtu Classic (no effect) and you should see it in the home folder.

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

The proprietary 270 driver seems to break composition of 7300 and 7200 series. That's why the screen seems to be freezed but the mouse pointer is still movable and programs are running. It is reported by users of other distributions (Gentoo) and XServer version 1.9 as well:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=160115

I guess we'll have to wait for nVidia to fix it (if they will). That's why we're all warned about proprietary drivers ...
While waiting for this I'll try to get the 260 working. Maybe they will, maybe not.

The symptoms with composition also explain why some cards are working with 173 (mine as well). I don't have some composite effects like alpha blur.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

I just want a working PC, proprietary drivers or open source, anything that works will do me. At the moment there is not a complete solution for anything except the Classic desktop with no effects, which is being phased out on the next release anyway. Guess I will stick with 10.04 for a while yet!

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

John,

Have you tried the open source Nouveau drivers? They have been (mostly) working for me with Ubuntu 11.04 amd64 desktop with a nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 LE] (rev a1). unity is working, so "effects" are working.

I had difficulty installing the Nouveau drivers, because the gui "Additional Drivers" program only listed nVidia drivers and merely installing the Nouveau drivers from synaptic or apt-get does not enable them.

Here's what worked for me, mostly from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1423210:

1. Install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental. (You need this.)

I also added ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates to my repositories and updated my system. I'm not sure that this is necessary.

Open the terminal and type the following commands:
Code:

sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf

(and select the alternative provided by mesa)

(Here's what I see on my machine:

mikey@hatshepsut:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf
[sudo] password for mikey:
There are 3 choices for the alternative gl_conf (providing /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf).

  Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 auto mode
* 1 /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf 500 manual mode
  2 /usr/lib/nvidia-173/ld.so.conf 9620 manual mode
  3 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf 9700 manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: )

Code:

sudo ldconfig
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_old

and restart your computer.

After running update-alternatives -- config gl_conf, the open source drivers now appear in "Additonal Drivers". they are listed as " Experimental 3D support for nVidia Cards".

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

Sorry. I left this out from #73 above. You also need to install the Nouveau drivers.

[Ofer (oferfrid-gmail)]

#73 suggestion did solve the "stop responding" issue" on GF7300 but the text terminals (and text boot screen) are still broken....
this persist in the also in the 173 driver version.

[Lapse of Reason (lapseofreason0)]

I'm really impressed by the nouveau driver, most things are actually working now, even hardware acceleration. The only problem I have with it though that performance is not that great, at least not compared to the nvidia driver, which on this older laptop does make a big difference.

I also tried the 173 driver and it works, but performance is not so good either. Moreover if I suspend or switch to text terminals and then back to xorg it only shows garbage until I somehow force a redraw (which is not always possible).

That's why I'm still hoping for nvidia to fix their current driver, at least until the performance of the nouveau driver is better.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

There is a bug in Jockey in that once a proprietary driver has been installed, then the Nouveau driver (Listed as Experimental 3D) disappears never to return!. Apparently you have to uninstall and purge the nvidia drivers and reset xorg.conf to get the Nouveau one back in the list, so it can be activated. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1046504.

I am not using natty myself, just test driving it (to try out Unity mainly). So I am happy to run debug stuff and fixes, but only with a view to help Canonical to get natty working properly.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

BTW I cannot try the above, because the console screens are corrupted!

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

On my system every other bootup had corrupted console screens with the nVidia drivers. The first bootup, gui or command line, would be trashed, while the next one would be OK, the one after trashed, etc. I the Noveau drivers seem to always work, once installed.

[Ofer (oferfrid-gmail)]

After applying the suggested in #73 and updating the system (apt-get upgrade) the text terminals, reboot and everything looks ok!

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

I managed to get the Nouveau experimental 3D driver back after a few attempts. It seems to run the Unity desktop well, but if you try to run a 3D program (I always use tux racer as a test), then it locks up the PC solid!

[anibal-sanchez (anibal-sanchez-oquma)]

I was in way to setup the Nouveau experimental 3D driver (#73) ..... but I've found unity-2d is working OK with NVIDIA recommended drivers.

sudo apt-get install unity-2d

unity-2d is not so fancy, but it works, it has lower reqs, and games also work.

Thanks,
Anibal

[Timmie (timmie)]

Hello,
please be extremly careful with applying suggestion #73.

IMHO, this is not the solution.

I tried and is had screwed up my graphics. Cost me some hours to find the solution because I thought the problem came from the bootloader.

I hope that the hibernate/suspend problems with these card are fixed soon.

The card on my laptop is already > 4 years old.

[Geelo (geelo-ubuntu)]

Synopsis: NVIDIA FX 5200 8x AGP card, 256 MB.

1) When doing a clean install, resolution is set to 640x480 and the card "not" be set to a higher resolution. NVIDIA 173 driver is installed for acceleration, but is "not active", uninstalling the driver fixes the resolution problem, but then new "Unity" toolbar goes away, as acceleration is not on.

2) This same "bug" was in Ubuntu 10.10 when many NVIDIA "legacy" driver would not work because of the new XORG server, I would think that our so called "legacy" NVIDIA cards would work with this new happy release of 11.04 but this bug has yet to be fixed. If I install 10.04.1 LTS (or 10.04.2 LTS) Acceleration works as the driver is there.

3) How about bringing the team in for the big win here? I keep reading on many Linux boards about how this issue is affecting the Ubuntu user base. I love using Ubuntu, but if you keep dropping support for "working hardware" in your earlier releases, that hurt everyone in the long run.

[Geelo (geelo-ubuntu)]

Synopsis: NVIDIA FX 5200 8x AGP card, 256 MB.
1) When doing a clean install, resolution is set to 640x480 and the card "not" be set to a higher resolution. NVIDIA 173 driver is installed for acceleration, but is "not active", uninstalling the driver fixes the resolution problem, but then new "Unity" toolbar goes away, as acceleration is not on.

2) This same "bug" was in Ubuntu 10.10 when many NVIDIA "legacy" driver would not work because of the new XORG server, I would think that our so called "legacy" NVIDIA cards would work with this new happy release of 11.04 but this bug has yet to be fixed. If I install 10.04 LTS Acceleration works as the driver is there.

3) How about bringing the team in for the big win here? I keep reading on many Linux boards about how this issue is affecting the Ubuntu user base. I love using Ubuntu, but if you keep dropping support for "working hardware" in your earlier releases, that hurt everyone in the long run.

[kyleabaker (kyleabaker)]

Has anyone tested the new Nvidia-current 275.09 beta drivers?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1766506

I have a nvidia 7300 LE card with this issue, but haven't tested the beta drivers yet.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

Also with the Nouveau experimental 3D driver, the console (Ctrl+alt+f1 etc) does not work. You just get a non responsive screen. Ctrl+alt+f7 brings it to life again. Also plymouth still gives random black and white stripes etc. This is not quite the most buggy Ubuntu yet (Gutsy just dumped into a console with no X at all). But I am sick of the what nVidia users are put through. It just goes on for years!

[Von (daaxix)]

@ #86

Just installed the 275.09 drivers on Ubuntu 10.04, still has the compiz freezing issue.

What I did to get around it (because it is just a display issue) was hit "Alt+F2" and then type (blindly) "metacity --replace" which gave me back my desktop.

I can't downgrade because I write and compile CUDA code on this machine for GTX 400 and 500 series and need all the machines to be synced on CUDA SDK, driver, etc. (I have a 7300 GS as my display card, the other cards are GPU computing cards).

Nvidia this sucks!

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

Timmie from #83: sorry my advice from #73 trashed your video. Unity works OK on my system (x86_64; nVidia 7300 LE) with the Nouveau drivers, but some programs such as Extreme Tux Racer and 0 AD do not work well at all. (Tux racer gets only 2-3 fps and the mouse hesitates constantly in 0 AD, making it unusable. Gamers beware!) Sites that use flash, Like Hulu, have some strange quirks as well.

I've been playing with nVidia driver installations. I installed the xorg-edgers fresh X crack PPA (ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa) from http://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa (RTFM & be careful!), which installed the nvidia-graphics-drivers package (version is 275.09-0ubuntu1~edgers~natty.) These drivers do not work with Unity on my system, either.

nVidia knows about this problem (see: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162819). At this point in time, it might be better for us to send error reports directly to nVidia instead of here. Read http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678 for a HOWTO on generating what nVidia wants in an error report.

Strangely, after installing the nVidia 275.09 drivers things seem somewhat better, even though neither Unity nor Ubuntu classic (with effects) work. Even though "Additional Drivers" (jockey-gtk) says nvidia-current is installed but not enabled, more things seem to work. Go figure. The Ubuntu classic with no effects works well. Extreme Tux Racer and 0 AD are both useable.

[Ronald Koster (ronald-ronaldkoster)]

I think the bug is still present in latest release. For after my upgarde from 10.10 (in which Compiz worked fine) I had to major issues:
1. X did not start. It crashed and I ended up in console 1. Manually setting the general vesa driver in /etc/Xorg worked was a temp solution. Final solution is described at the Natty Narwwhal Release Notes ("apt-get install linux-headers-generic-pae". See bug 772226.)
2. Next Unity freezes/hangs. Classic mode with visual effect also. Classic mode without visuals effects worked. At last!

System info:
$ lspci | grep -i vid
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)
$ uname -a
Linux asterix 2.6.38-8-generic-pae #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 05:17:09 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[Ronald Koster (ronald-ronaldkoster)]

This is how I found out Classic mode without visual effects cold be an effective workaround: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1755014

I hope the bug will be fixed soon. Else if Ubuntu 11.10 will no longer support classic mode, I will not be able to upgrade anymore...

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

I guess 11.10 will come with Unity 2D as fallback.
Unity 2D is a QT version of Unity without 3D effects. It can be installed on Natty via PPA: ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily

For install instruction see this post:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/01/unity-2d-qt-now-available-in-ppa-for.html

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

unity-2d can also be installed by sudo apt-get install unity-2d (nothing else ;)

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Axel H. <email address hidden> wrote:
> I guess 11.10 will come with Unity 2D as fallback.
> Unity 2D is a QT version of Unity without 3D effects. It can be installed on Natty via PPA: ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily
>
> For install instruction see this post:
> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/01/unity-2d-qt-now-available-in-ppa-for.html
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to unity.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/728745
>
> Title:
>  [nvidia, 7300, 7400] display freeze when using unity desktop
>
> Status in Nux:
>  Fix Released
> Status in Unity:
>  Fix Released
> Status in “nux” package in Ubuntu:
>  Fix Released
> Status in “nvidia-graphics-drivers” package in Ubuntu:
>  New
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: unity
>
>  when logging to unity desktop only the mouse cursor moves but no
>  action can be done (opening a window and so).
>
>  ProblemType: Bug
>  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
>  Package: unity 3.6.0-0ubuntu2
>  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
>  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-generic i686
>  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
>  .proc.driver.nvidia.gpus.0: Error: [Errno 21] est un dossier: '/proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/0'
>  .proc.driver.nvidia.registry: Binary: ""
>  .proc.driver.nvidia.version:
>   NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module  270.29  Wed Feb 23 16:16:53 PST 2011
>   GCC version:  gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-3ubuntu3)
>  Architecture: i386
>  CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,mousepoll,vpswitch,regex,animation,snap,expo,move,compiztoolbox,place,grid,imgpng,gnomecompat,wall,ezoom,workarounds,staticswitcher,resize,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,scale,session,unityshell]
>  CompositorRunning: None
>  Date: Thu Mar  3 23:32:40 2011
>  DistUpgraded: Log time: 2010-12-17 12:33:27.813978
>  DistroCodename: natty
>  DistroVariant: ubuntu
>  DkmsStatus:
>   nvidia-current, 270.29, 2.6.38-5-generic, i686: installed
>   vboxhost, 4.0.4, 2.6.38-5-generic, i686: installed
>  GraphicsCard:
>   nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
>     Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device [104d:81ef]
>  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
>  InstallationMedia_: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
>  InstallationMedia__: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
>  InstallationMedia___: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101202)
>  MachineType: Sony Corporation VGN-FE31H
>  PccardctlIdent:
>   Socket 0:
>     no product info available
>  PccardctlStatus:
>   Socket 0:
>     no card
>  ProcEnviron:
>   LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_GB:en
>   PATH=(custom, user)
>   LANG=fr_FR.utf8
>   SHELL=/bin/bash
>  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-5-generic root=UUID=6af38058-c7c3-4680-8f1b-9fedc3d89d2f ro single
>  ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
>  ProcVersionSignature__: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
>  ProcVersionSignature___: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
>  Renderer: Unknown
>  So...

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

Maybe downgrading Xorg could be an option to get a stable working system:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1675614&page=11

Haven't tried it yet.

IMHO using xserver 1.10 was an epic fail and damages ubuntus reputation. Causing nothing but trouble.

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

Please be careful about downgrading Xorg, at least as discussed at:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1675614&page=11

I tried it, and it was a huge pain to get video back gain because the screen was garbled and totally unreadable, even in text mode.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Setting to Low priority since we have a Unity workaround. There is nothing more that can be done at the distro level for this issue, but task can remain open until NVIDIA has released a fix.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

So, what is the workaround? Unity-2d?
What about the trashed consoles? and plymouth? Are those an nvidia driver issue too? or are there xorg or other issues too?

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

The "workaround" is blacklisting graphics cards for unity 3d. On these cards ubuntu will fallback to classic mode without desktop effects ...

[Simone Tolotti (simontol)]

Same issue here Nvidia 7300 LE, only working with nouveau drivers.

[Simone Tolotti (simontol)]

I've also tried to upgrade to NVidia 275.09 beta drivers from xorg-edgers ppa but doesn't helped.

[ccompagnon (ccompagnon)]

Same problem here with Geforce 7400 go

[Timmie (timmie)]

I can now contribute this experience:

In Unity (3D): only the 173 driver works but it crashes hibernate & twinview

The recommended driver does not work with unity 3d but let me hibernate and also work with twinview correctly.

I still wonder why this worked well in 10.11 but now is chaotic...

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

@Timmie:

In natty the xserver was upgraded to 1.10 which has a lot of trouble with nvidia cards. Ubuntu is not the only distribution that has these problem but suffers most from it because of unity 3D.
In maverick (10.10) the xserver version was 1.9 which worked very well with nvidia cards.

[Timmie (timmie)]

thanks to Axel H. for clarifications.

I really wonder why this was not carefully tested before the release.

[ccompagnon (ccompagnon)]

Same problem here with ubuntu natty, I've also tested fedora 15 and debian wheezy.
Same problem on a nvidia 7400go ( dell xps m1210).

[awdyson (awdyson)]

I'm experiencing similar problems with an nvidia 8600 gs.

Regards
Alex

[Ahmed Adel (ahmed-adel-j)]

Activating Nvidia 173 resolved the issue here on GeForce 7300 GS.

aadel

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

I found a fix, at least for my system, in the Debian User Forums:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=65539 "Lost 3D after updating nvidia-glx, linux and X".

Someone advised installing/updating the following packages:

libegl1-mesa_7.10.2-3_i386.deb
libglu1-mesa_7.10.2-3_i386.deb
libegl1-mesa-drivers_7.10.2-3_i386.deb
xserver-xephyr_1.10.2-1_i386.deb
libgl1-mesa-dri_7.10.2-3_i386.deb
xserver-xorg-core_1.10.2-1_i386.deb
libgl1-mesa-glx_7.10.2-3_i386.deb

I (re)installed the Ubuntu amd64 equivalents:

libegl1-mesa
libglu1-mesa
libegl1-mesa-driver
xserver-xephyr
libgl1-mesa-dri
xserver-xorg-core
libgl1-mesa-glx

Two of these packages, libegl1-mesa and libegl1-mesa-driver, WERE NOT installed on my system after the upgrade to natty. I don't know why they weren't installed during the upgrade, or if they were there before the upgrade. They seem to be needed.

After banging in these packages, the Unity Desktop Environment works as well as can be expected. (Snarky comments removed.) Of course, I am running the nVidia 275.09.07 drivers instead of the ones in the Ubuntu repository...

A great Father's Day present for me! Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

About my comment #108 -- if a package is missing, don't install it. You don't need it. Just reinstall the packages listed above that you already have installed.

Cheers.

[Andrew (andrew-rw-robinson)]

For comments 108 and 109 --

I tried this work-around with my "GeForce 7300 GS" and the nvidia-current driver (270.41.06-0ubuntu1) and it does not work.

Is there a decent way of upgrading to the 275* drivers without having a pain in the rear method of going back to the ubuntu repository driver once they are updated?

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

1. I just tried the nvidia-current drivers from repository. They don't work for me, either. To install the 275* drivers you have to get rid of the Ubuntu installed nvidia-current package. I used dpkg -P nvidia-current... probably not a good idea.

2. Sorry to report that I am wrong, this isn't really a fix. After all this messing around, all that happens now is Ubuntu silently defaults to unity-2d, which I mistook for regular (3d) unity. While this is an improvement over locking up the system, I don't call this a good fix.

Current unity_support_test -p results:

OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2

Not software rendered: no
Not blacklisted: yes
GLX fbconfig: yes
GLX texture from pixmap: no
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program: yes
GL fragment program: yes
GL vertex buffer object: yes
GL framebuffer object: yes
GL version is 1.4+: yes

Unity supported: no

[Axel H. (staff-pro-unreal)]

Hi everyone,

I created a PPA for building a backport of nvidia drivers 275.09.07 from oneiric:
https://launchpad.net/~staff-pro-unreal/+archive/nvidia-backport

It's currently building and I hope it succeeds.

This should give you the ability to get rid of the trouble rmoving the ubuntu packages and install manually as described in the previous post.
Please let me know if it works for you.

[Simone Tolotti (simontol)]

Tried to re-install packages as said in comment #108, also upgraded to Nvidia 275.09.07, Unity still doesn't works!.

[jayshomebrew (jayshomebrew)]

[SOLVED]
Just installed 11.04 and got this same issue. Just a background, no functionality, no menus, no right clicking, nothing. All <ALT> keys didn't work. Yes, I have an nvidia video card.

remotely connected from another computer:
# ssh myusername@192.168.x.x
# sudo killall Xorg
# sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
# sudo reboot

and the new menus appeared!
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/5015/tmpsqay5.png

[Luis Fernando Planella Gonzalez (luisfpg-gmail)]

@jayshomebrew
Are you sure you are not running Unity 3d? It's probably the Unity 2d version.
This bug (as stated before) is an upstream bug which broke composition in the GF 7200/7300/7400 series.
Unless they fix upstream, nothing will help us.
I'm experiencing this bug using Kubuntu 11.04 as well.

[Lapse of Reason (lapseofreason0)]

Installing the most current nvidia drivers (275.09.07) as suggested in #114 doesn't work for me either.

I have found that the nouveau driver works quite well though, I've been using it for quite a while now and haven't had any problems. As a reminder: Comment #73 explains how to set it up.

It is a sometimes a little slow though, but according to this article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTIzMg this is going to change. I tried the newest version by adding the xorg-edgers ppa and it was indeed a lot faster. The only drawback is that it only works with newer kernels though, so you need to install at least version 2.6.39 (An RC of 3.0 is present in the PPA).

I wouldn't recommend the xorg-edgers ppa and the new kernel to the "average" user, but I still thought some of you might find this useful. Most likely this will be in the next version of Ubuntu too, so we can look forward a fast working open source nvidia driver.

[Timmie (timmie)]

Hello,
could anyone find out whether there is improvement on this with Ubuntu 11.11?

Thanks in advance.

[Jeeks (tanjeekhiumssg)]

The bug is still present in 280.xx drivers apparently, The only way to fix it is to install 260.xx drivers, unfortunately they are not availabe on the PPA (only latest drivers). The only way to fix this is to go to Nouveau or install 173.xx drivers from "Additional Drivers". However, the 173.xx drivers do NOT work on GNOME 3 so you have to use gnome-fallback or Unity itself. I hope someone could create a PPA for 260.xx drivers as the drivers work on Geforce 7 series as Nouveau lacked 3D support and we all run some applications that use 3D rendering.

[Timmie (timmie)]

where can I find 260.xx drivers?

[Nick Alderweireldt (nick-alderweireldt)]

Confirm unity freeze after update to 11.04. Panel was empty. The Dash and the launchers were visible but there was no action visible when clicking on whatever app or file.

Changed nvidia driver to version 173 and it seems to work now.

my lspci :

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Graphics Port 0)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)
02:06.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
02:07.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
02:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
02:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

[Martin Heitzer (martin-heitzer)]

@Timmie:

Nvidia driver version 173 seems to work with Ubuntu 11.10 now.

My lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] (rev a1)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)
08:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
08:06.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
08:06.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
08:06.3 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
08:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection (rev 01)

[Thomas Novin (thomasn80)]

Switched to Linux Mint Debian and the problem went away :)

[Martin Heitzer (martin-heitzer)]

280.13-driver (nvidia-current) seems to work with Ubuntu 11.10 now.

[Jeeks (tanjeekhiumssg)]

#123 What is your driver model and did you do any tweaks to make it work.

[Ray Nichols (ray-rdnichols)]

I'll report my findings after upgrading Maverick Meerkat to Natty in the past two days in case it helps.

My graphics card is:

lspci -nn | grep VGA
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] [10de:01df] (rev a1)

Currently "lspci -v" reports:

<snip>
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Device 2207
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
 Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at fb000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 [virtual] Expansion ROM at fd7e0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia-173, nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb
<snip>

On first boot I went in to Unity with a frozen screen with no usable virtual terminals. So my video card is *not being blacklisted*. By forcing a re-start of my computer I could start Ubuntu Classic /Gnome and change my video driver.

I've chosen in "Additional Drivers" NVIDIA (version 173). After a re-boot it is shown as activated but not currently in use. It is also saying that no proprietary drivers are in use on this system.

From: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9028144&postcount=24 it says that Ubuntu showing the driver as activated but not in use is a known issue.

My boot screen and virtual terminals were still unreadable. I changed them as per:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia
via Startup-Manager
from
Resolution: 640x480 to 1024x768
Color depth: 8 bits to 24 bits

Under advanced I also changed the Bootloader menu resolution to 1024x768.

In the misc section: Show boot splash is unchecked and Show text during boot is checked - this does not seem to be true as I see no text and do get a basic splash screen.

My computer works reasonably now but if I use a virtual terminal (which does now work) e.g. tty1 (CTRL-ALT-F1, BTW It's CTRL-ALT-F7 to get back) I get artefacts on my screen and I need to force a screen re-draw e.g. ALT-TAB to a maximized app.

I guess for an easier life I need to buy a newer card going forward with Unity!

[Bart (dmitriy-murzin)]

This problem on my integrated nvidia 7025 with all binary nvidia drivers.

lspci -nn | grep VGA
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a] [10de:03d6] (rev a2)

[Sevan Elyasian (sevanel)]

Upgrading from Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) to 11.10 (Oneiric), I face the same problem. I have a GeForce Go 7400 graphic card on my Sony VAIO VGN-FE890, and I had problems with it on 11.04, too. On Ubuntu Natty, and after a long series of driver tests, I found that using the experimental 3D driver along forcing the Unity 3D, through adding the UNITY_FORCE_START=1 to /etc/environment to bypass the blacklist, was the best I could have done. It was OK, maybe a little bit slow, but it was the best config, since I got my screen brightness control working too.

On first restart after upgrading, the log-in screen (lightdm) appears and everything was OK, but after log-in, though I could have moved the mouse pointer, but the screen was frozen. The background picture, my desktop icons and the launcher were loaded and shown on the screen but there was no change of state on clicking or hovering over them. The notification area was partly loaded, and there was something interesting happening on the screen in response to pressing keyboard shortcuts. For example, by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T, though no terminal appears on the screen, but my mouse pointer was changing to re-size icon, while moving on certain areas of the screen, like there is a window there.
Using tty1, I tried all of the available drivers, from "nouveau" to NVIDIA accelerated graphics drivers version current, version current-updates, version 173, version 173-updates, version 96, version 96-updates, and here are the results:

Driver: nouveau > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: slow, Brightness Control: OK
Driver: nvidia-96 + nvidia-common> Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: slow, Brightness Control: unavailable
Driver: nvidia-96-updates + nvidia-common > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: slow, Brightness Control: unavailable
Driver: nvidia-173 + nvidia-common > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: OK (maybe a little bit slow), Brightness Control: unavailable
Driver: nvidia-173-updates + nvidia-common > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: OK (maybe a little bit slow), Brightness Control: unavailable
Driver: nvidia-current + nvidia-common > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: screen freezing (as explained above), Brightness Control: unavailable
Driver: nvidia-current-updates + nvidia-common > Ubuntu 2D: OK, Ubuntu 3D: screen freezing (as explained above), Brightness Control: unavailable

Note: All of the above drivers must be installed along with the nvidia-common, since they won't work either by black screen or freezing one.

So, there is no acceptable configuration, except forgetting about Ubuntu 3D, and using nouveau as driver on Ubuntu 2D, to have the brightness control too.
Any Ideas???

[Sevan Elyasian (sevanel)]

BTW:
$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1)

$ sudo lshw -class display
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: G72M [GeForce Go 7400]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:d1000000-d1ffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:d0000000-d0ffffff

[Anarchid (anarchid)]

Happens to me too, on all available nvidia driver versions (current, 185 from x-swat, 176) except the old 96.

With 96 drivers, most stuff works, but dash still causes the freeze, and occasionally alt-tab as well.

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)

$ sudo lshw -class display
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: G71 [GeForce 7300 GS]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:91000000-91ffffff memory:80000000-8fffffff memory:90000000-90ffffff

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

This was my experience with a fresh install of 11.10 release version on GeForce 7300 LE :-
First login was fine, but graphical actions very sluggish (several seconds to move a window). I presume this was the nouveau driver since it was not 2D desktop.

When prompted to install a driver for the video card, I selected the recommended one. After reboot this resulted in the usual garbled black and white boot splash and after login and a blank desktop. So I reboot and logged in with Ubuntu 2D, then selected the latest "Post release" driver. After reboot, the same garbled black and white boot splash, but the 3D desktop works. However the consoles (Ctrl+Alt+F1 etc) still do not work. You just get a blank screen, and returning via Ctrl+Alt+F7 gives a totally corrupted screen.

[Zephcom (gmackenr)]

Okay, I understand the issue about the NVIDA drivers being propriety and
nothing can be done about them. But I fell for the understanding I
picked up somewhere that 11.10 had worked things out. In 11.04 I could
try the NVIDA drivers and then just select the Nouveau driver to get
back ground zero.

That didn't happen in 11.10. I don't have the option of selecting
Nouveau in the Advanced Driver area. And unfortunately 11.10 has moved
things all around and much of the instructions from 11.04 don't work.

Can someone provide step by step instructions on how to return to the
Nouveau drivers in 11.10? I promise I'll never trust an NVIDA driver
again. I'm comfortable using the terminal I just don't remember the
commands or know where to look for anything.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 08:54 +0000, John Cottier wrote:

> This was my experience with a fresh install of 11.10 release version on GeForce 7300 LE :-
> First login was fine, but graphical actions very sluggish (several seconds to move a window). I presume this was the nouveau driver since it was not 2D desktop.
>
> When prompted to install a driver for the video card, I selected the
> recommended one. After reboot this resulted in the usual garbled black
> and white boot splash and after login and a blank desktop. So I reboot
> and logged in with Ubuntu 2D, then selected the latest "Post release"
> driver. After reboot, the same garbled black and white boot splash, but
> the 3D desktop works. However the consoles (Ctrl+Alt+F1 etc) still do
> not work. You just get a blank screen, and returning via Ctrl+Alt+F7
> gives a totally corrupted screen.
>

[Ray Nichols (ray-rdnichols)]

John in #130

> after reboot, the same garbled black and white boot splash, but the 3D desktop works. However the consoles (Ctrl+Alt+F1 etc) still
> do not work. You just get a blank screen, and returning via Ctrl+Alt+F7 gives a totally corrupted screen.

Did you try the instructions I copied in #125 for Startup-Manager (admittedly that was in Natty).

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

@Ray No I have not tried startup manager since it did not work in 10.04. I used the v86d framebuffer method to (sort of) fix that. But the none working console issue is quite disturbing. I wonder if it is related to the boot splash issue. IE some kernel mode that is borking something else. I was hoping this would be sorted out in 11.10 but it looks like maybe its 12.04 now.

[Michał Małecki (michalus)]

lspci -nn | grep VGA
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] [10de:01df] (rev a1)

Change "nvidia-current" to "nvidia-173" have solved problem for me. The "nouveau" didn't working for me properly (some problem with avalible resolution).

[Herco van Brug (hercovanbrug)]

I never had a problem with 11.04. but with 11.10 i get the occasional freeze from nvidia. going to 'additional drivers' and removing the nvidia driver completely solves the freeze.

I have yet to test it but the issue seems to be related to the power saving mode. if you add

      Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x2; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x2"

to the xorg.conf, the system is stable, it will just never run at low or high power, just stick somewhere in the middle.

lspci says i have a 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106 [Quadro 2000M] (rev a1)

i hope nvidia and the 3.0 kernel guys figure out what's going on soon as currently i'm loosing production hours and i'm definitely not used to that from linux.

[kyleabaker (kyleabaker)]

Has anyone tested the new nvidia 290.03 driver?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1867054

[iltony (iltony)]

290.03 nvidia driver presents the same issue as 280.xx branch. I'm tryng to backport 260.xx branch, which shouldn't be affected by the bug, and see if it works. The procedure about backporting is explained here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1779132

[scido (domi-mailing-list)]

Please resolve this bug as soon as you can. I've got the same issue: after log in in LightDM, I get only the unity wallpaper and mouse cursor. Now I use nvidia-173, but it's very buggy (problem with dual monitors configuration, some freeze...). At least provide a nvidia-260 driver package, so we can upgrade it. I tried to installa previous driver versions (from PPA, from Nvidia site), luckless.

Thank You
Scido

Dell Precision M65
Nvidia Quadro FX 350M
Ubuntu 11.10
Nvidia driver 173.14.30

[iltony (iltony)]

Sorry, backporting 260.xx is not possibile since 260.xx branch is compiled against a different xorg ABI version than oneiric has, hence it does not work. Using IgnoreABI crashes x. However, using 173.xx branch (which works) is a huge regression in term of performance. Nouveau works, but it's kind of a regression (comparing to nvidia latest branch) too.

[Dave Vree (hdave)]

I used tried the 290.05 driver by activating the xorg-edgers PPA and am unhappy to report the problem remains. I have cross posted on the nvidia forums, but have had no response yet from nVidia.

[Dave Vree (hdave)]

Using the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates ppa I was able to try out the 290.10 driver. Fedora users have reported success with this driver:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2504236

However, I cannot even start X with this driver. Arch users have also reported this problem with 290.10. Looking at the Xorg.0.log file I see:

[ 15.583] (--) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce Go 7400 at PCI:1:0:0
[ 15.583] (--) NVIDIA(0): none
[ 15.583] (EE) NVIDIA(0): No display devices found for this X screen.
[ 16.020] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
[ 16.020] (II) Unloading nvidia
[ 16.020] (II) UnloadModule: "wfb"
[ 16.020] (II) Unloading wfb
[ 16.020] (II) UnloadModule: "fb"
[ 16.020] (II) Unloading fb
[ 16.020] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
[ 16.020]
Fatal server error:
[ 16.020] no screens found

Which means that with this driver, the adapter cannot detect me internal laptop display. Its been reported already here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=168305

Hope this information helps us get closer to solution. As most people here already know, this bug not only keeps Unity 3D from being used but also the new Gnome3 shell as well. Until this gets fixed our only Desktop solution is Unity 2D.

[pierre5933 (pierre-5933)]

I have red rapidly this bug and it seems to bee the same , wee observe with Suse

with some difference it was more important with kde , but now I observe the same with gnome and kde ,
 it was solved with the driver
260.19.44 for suse 11.4 and kde 4.6

(my graphic cards is 7300 Gs)

The last trial I did was with 290.10 was perfect with gnome abd kde

If my information could help you !

[Matt Hastings (sticky274885)]

I used to have a problem with unity and nvidia, but I went into bios and changed my card's frame buffer size to 128mb and the problem was solved!

[iltony (iltony)]

This fixes the problem:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/275.43/

and for 64 bit users:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/275.43/

They state (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2510957):
* Fixed a regression that caused blank/white windows when exhausting video memory on GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs while using composited desktops.

And that's true: tested and working. Hope for a fast update of nvidia-graphics-driver related package through synaptic. I installed the driver from NVIDIA binaries and am currently running GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.10; my video card is a NVIDIA GO 7300; can confirm nvidia driver 275.43 works properly (on my laptop).

[Andy Lawrence (andy-fossitsolutions)]

I can confirm the driver listed in #144 fixes the issue. I am running Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 32 bit on a Dell Latitude D820 with an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 120M video card.

Anyone attempting to install this driver must blacklist the nouveau module first. You can do this by adding the following lines to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

and then run:
sudo update-initramfs -u

and reboot your computer.

You should then be able to run the NVIDIA driver installers listed in post #144

[Lucien Demeuse (lucien-demeuse)]

Ouf........ I confirm that the driver 275.43 solve the problems for me too

I am running Unity 3D in ubuntu 11.10 32 bits

PC : Dell XPS M1210 graphic card nvidia GO 7400

Thanks to #144 and #145

[Thomas Novin (thomasn80)]

Latest & greatest works (295.09) ! Still in beta but will probably be a stable release out soon..

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2514702

[Yuan Fei (snowhawkyrf-126)]

Thanks to #38 and #145, the driver 275.43 works on my asus a6j laptop. But the newest driver 290.10 on the NVIDIA website didn't work. After I installed it, I couldn't get to the login screen, only black screen with many words left there.

[Ray Nichols (ray-rdnichols)]

I've been using #145 but be aware that when the kernel changes you will need to re-install your Nvidia driver. There is no clear message (on booting) when this has happened but my system booted and stopped at a message:
Checking battery state ... [OK]

Re-install of the driver fixed the problem (the required side effect is to rebuild the kernel module).

BTW If you ever need to stop X in Oneiric, to re-install this driver, the service is now called lightdm.

When Ubuntu includes a driver greater than 275.43 it will be great to avoid this faff.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're up to 290 in precise. Can someone verify this bug no longer occurs in Precise?

humber:~/ubuntu/mesa$ chet version nvidia-graphics-drivers
nvidia-graphics-drivers precise 290.10-0ubuntu2

[Yuan Fei (snowhawkyrf-126)]

I installed 290.10 downloaded from the NVIDIA website and it didn't work well. 275.43 is OK on my 11.10 precise 32bit. And as #149 said, I had to reintall it when the kernel upgraded.

[Dave Vree (hdave)]

Good News! The new nVidia beta driver 295.17 works! I tried it under oneric x86 32 bit with a GE Force 7400 Go card that has been blacklisted for Unity 3D and compiz for some time.

I installed the beta version via the xorg-edgers ppa here:

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa?field.series_filter=oneiric

This is the first driver from nVidia that has worked with 3D in oneric for me.

[Yuan Fei (snowhawkyrf-126)]

Here is another good news:) Just now NVidia website released 295.20 and it fixed the bug with geforce 7 series. I installed it on my x86 32 bit with Geforce go 7300 and it works well.

[Yuan Fei (snowhawkyrf-126)]

So sorry to say that I have switched to GNOME3 and 295.20 still have bugs under this environment. When I search something begins with "vi" the gnome desktop crashes. I installed 275.43 back. I don't know if it can work well in unity.

[Ofer (oferfrid-gmail)]

I have a 7300 and after installing the 275.43 (see #145) the screen rendering was slow and I had to remove it.
Has anyone have a 7300 and can confirm that?

[David Planella (dpm)]

Al 03/02/12 23:32, En/na Bryce Harrington ha escrit:
> We're up to 290 in precise. Can someone verify this bug no longer
> occurs in Precise?
>
> humber:~/ubuntu/mesa$ chet version nvidia-graphics-drivers
> nvidia-graphics-drivers precise 290.10-0ubuntu2
>
>
> ** Changed in: nvidia-graphics-drivers (Ubuntu)
> Status: Triaged => Incomplete
>

This is fixed now for me with 295.20-0ubuntu1 \o/

[Dave Vree (hdave)]

Sorry to report that 295.20 is exhibiting intermittent freezing on Ubuntu 11.10 and Xubuntu 11.10. I am running 32 bit with an nVidia GE Force Go 7400. This is really disappointing as 12.04 is soon to arrive and we have no working driver to run Unity 3D with. I was using the version from ubuntu-x-swat PPA.

By the way, I have found that when experimenting with x-swat or xorg-edgers stuff the "ppa-purge" command is your friend -- resets everything back to normal with one command.

[peterra (peter-rathjens)]

The nvidia driver 295.20 works so far for me on Ubuntu 11.10. I'm using a
nVidia Corporation G72M [Quadro NVS 110M/GeForce Go 7300] (rev a1) in my laptop.
Unfortunately the gtk-window-decorator dies from time to time:

gdb gtk-window-decorator
GNU gdb (Ubuntu/Linaro 7.3-0ubuntu2) 7.3-2011.08
Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i686-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://bugs.launchpad.net/gdb-linaro/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/bin/gtk-window-decorator...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/bin/gtk-window-decorator
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x08056008 in meta_draw_window_decoration ()
(gdb) bt
#0 0x08056008 in meta_draw_window_decoration ()
#1 0x0805cfcb in ?? ()
#2 0xb76b4110 in ?? () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#3 0xb76b825f in g_main_context_dispatch () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#4 0xb76b8990 in ?? () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#5 0xb76b8f9b in g_main_loop_run () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#6 0xb7b03fcf in gtk_main () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
#7 0x0804fb28 in main ()

[Jonathan Olmsted (jpolmsted)]

I thought I would add my experience since I finally got around to trying out the suggestions mentioned in this post.

*Hardware* (relevant output from lspci -v)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7200] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30b7
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 Memory at c7000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at c6000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia_current, nouveau, nvidiafb

*Driver*
nvidia 295.40

*OS*
Ubuntu 11.10 x86_64

*Method*
All I had to do was use the xorg-edgers ppa and everything else was automatic.

Thanks to all who have helped resolve this bug (if you see this). I am thrilled to finally have real Unity with a current driver.

I haven't had any of the segfaults mentioned above, but I have only been running it for a few hours.

[Jonathan Olmsted (jpolmsted)]

As an update, I do indeed experience the gtk-window-decorator bug from #158.

[Mange (em-andersson)]

These are my observations:
Using Unity 2D every once in a while the screen blinks, turns all white for a fraction of a second and then turns back.
Sometimes this is combined with menus, and other areas becomes messed up. (turned all white with individual pixels in other colors, sort of looking like corrupt pictures).

When I use Unity (3D) I noticed the same behavior just before the screen froze.

So my guess is that the problem isn't within Unity 3D but somewhere else.
Unity 2D manages to recover while Unity 3D freezes.

The problem with the blinking screen never occurred when I used Ubuntu 11 (without unity)

Ubuntu 12.04
GeForce Go 7300

[Sergio Torres (sergiotca)]

Sorry guys, can anyone say if this issue it's still relevant or has been already taken care? Ubuntu 12.10 is just around the corner and it will be awesome to have my card running Unity 3D without all the usual hassle.

Thank you!

Ubuntu 12.04
GeForce Go 7300

[Jonathan Olmsted (jpolmsted)]

I currently use Ubuntu 12.04 with the Unity (3D) and I have no problems. I have a GeForce Go 7200 card. I use the NVIDIA driver version 304.43 installed through the precise-proposed repo.

[Ray Nichols (ray-rdnichols)]

I've had no issues just using the supplied driver since switching to Precise. (I used to have to manually install a Nvidia driver.)

nicholsr@ubuntu01:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Release: 12.04
Codename: precise
nicholsr@ubuntu01:~$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] [10de:01df] (rev a1)
nicholsr@ubuntu01:~$ glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
OpenGL version string: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 295.40

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

I've been tesing Unity for several days, with 12.04, Nvidia 295.40, and can also attest that the original problem is not present, and no segfaults either.

Hardware:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1)

Had to disable the blacklisting first by adding UNITY_FORCE_START=1 to /etc/environment.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

There seems to be more going on than just nvidia driver trouble. I have just installed 12.04 64 bit on a third machine with a more modern nvidia card (Geforce 9) and neither nouveau or nvidia driver will run unity. Thats three fails. Just a blank desktop (wallpaper) which seems to be a very common fault (tried most of the fixes). 3D drivers are working fine, excellently in fact. So it seems to be a compiz or unity bug.

[John Cottier (j-cottier)]

Thats with the 173 current and 173 post driver.

[Xavier Verne (xavier-verne)]

Short update in 2013 on this issue.

With :
- Up-to-date precise
- "current-updated" nvidia-drivers
- UNITY_FORCE_START=1 to /etc/environment
- Geforce Go 7400 on a laptop

I experience no freeze anymore (only few hours of use, but it seems to work).

I'm readily available if you need to make me execute some commands to pinpoint exact pb or root cause...You would have to drive me through it though.

I'm now a happy unity user, for this was a blocking issue for me (ubuntu-2d not a long term bet, as for say).

sudo lshw -class display
 *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: G72M [GeForce Go 7400]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:d1000000-d1ffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff(prefetchable) memory:d0000000-d0ffffff

[mikewhatever (mikewhatever)]

Been trying to run Unity with the nvidia-current-updates driver (304.43). Doesn't work!

Hardware:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] [10de:01d8] (rev a1)