Ubuntu Dapper screen saver crashes X server

[Matt England]

Ubuntu Dapper screen saver crashes X server. Details here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=250026

[Andrew Ash (ash211)]

From a look through the forums, it looks like whenever gdm starts up, X crashes and the user is back to the GUI login window. A reinstall fixed the problem, so an update to gnome-screensaver is suspect.

One user seems to have connected the bug to running 3d screensavers. Can anybody duplicate this without a 3d screensaver?

It also looks like there are a lot of NVIDIA cards in that thread. Can anybody replicate this bug without an NVIDIA card?

Also, please provide the version of gnome-screensaver you're using, by posting the output of `apt-cache policy gnome-screensaver`

[Matt England (launchpad-net-mengland)]

Check out this latest forum post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2009622&postcount=11

This doesn't seem to narrow a root cause, though; I'd like to know more than just "reload the driver."

Here's my speculation:

I suspect that newer 3D imaging software/drivers have issues with an nvidia driver/hardware. I doubt it's a gnome-screensaver-specific thing.

When I updated my Dapper install with _all_ the newest software, problems arose. When I reloaded a fresh Dapper (6.06.1) install, things worked again.

I have a 7600 GTS.

I realize I didn't answer all your Qs/requests; if you need more let me know, although I'm getting distracted with other work.

-Matt

[Matt England (launchpad-net-mengland)]

I wrote: "I have a 7600 GTS"

What I should have written: I have an nvidia 6700 GTS video card. (I'm not sure how to determine the driver rev; let me know if you're interested.)

Sorry for any confusion.
-Matt

[Andrew Ash (ash211)]

Wilsonag from the forums suggests that reinstalling the nvidia driver fixes things, since any OpenGL activity crashes X. He suggests testing with glxgears.

Could you please let us know if that crashes things? If that does, this would be more likely an nvidia driver error and will be reassigned.

[Christian (christian-gosch)]

I was running Ubuntu 6.06LTS with the nvidia driver
from their package NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9629-pkg1.run.
Xorg 7.0.0 crashed whenever OpenGL was used (e.g. glxgears, glxinfo). Replacing the driver "nvidia" with "nv" in /etc/xorg.conf
fixed the crashes (but of course removed hardware accelerated OpenGL). I'll try a newer driver when there's time ... hope my information helped a little.
The Graphics card is a GeForce 7600GS.

Cheers
Christian

[Matt Chan (talcite-gmail)]

I'm also experiencing this bug, 7600GT here.

I'm currently reinstalling the drivers with Envy, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Matt

[Matt Chan (talcite-gmail)]

Success! Reinstalling the Nvidia drivers solves the problems.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

closing then

[thefrozenpenguin (iain-thefrozenpenguin)]

This is not an Nvidia specific problem from reading other threads and questions it appears to be a 3d screensaver problem with gdm. I have a Intel based graphics card on a dell laptop on Gutsy and if gone-screensaver starts a 3d saver then gdm or X re-starts as if I'd crtl-alt-backspace'd the system.

[Josiah Yoder (yoder2)]

I'm having similar problems after a recent update. It may be related to a recent xorg fix that caused other crashes.

System: Ubuntu Edgy 6.10
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950