nouveau kernel driver corrupts display on MacBook Pro 5,3 9600M GT

[Jacob Godserv]

My setup is as follows:
 * MacBook Pro 5,3, and the NVidia 9600M GT seems to be selected by default by Linux and X.
 * Installed Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit) Desktop Edition to a USB stick, without persistent storage (to be as closely related to the CD as possible)
 * Booting using rEFIt into the EFI side of Ubuntu.
 * I have not attempted any other setups. Many a GRUB2 boot option has been tried.

I've tried nouveau.modeset=0, nouveau.noaccel=1, nomodeset, video=efifb, acpi=force, with or without "quiet splash". Sometimes I'd get odd results that would repeat, and I realized that my video card's state was actually not getting cleared between reboots, so I needed to do a cold boot for each test.

I think you guys will find that last bit *extremely* important for bug testing. If you review some of the older nouveau bugs involving MacBooks, you might find that some people managed to get something working, but just for one boot. It's my understanding so far that these people may not have been doing cold boots to do their testing, and were accumulating states that somehow managed to get it to work at times. I managed the same thing, and at first thought nouveau.noaccel=1 works. Turns out, that's not the case.

Now I think I've got it. I need to do a few more tests to confirm this is consistent. I had the integrated video card turned on in OSX, because it saves battery life. While this option was selected, all my efforts did not succeed. When I rebooted back into OSX, and selected the discrete card, and then rebooted back to Linux, I got in just fine with nouveau.noaccel=1.

I'm going to test to make sure switching the graphics cards actually makes a difference, and then after see if noaccel also makes a difference.

Whether or not I found a work-around, this bug exists and should be fixed. If there's any way I can help let me know.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic 2.6.38-8.42
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: Cirrus Analog [Cirrus Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0xe7480000 irq 20'
   Mixer name : 'Cirrus Logic CS4206'
   Components : 'HDA:10134206,106b4b00,00100301'
   Controls : 17
   Simple ctrls : 10
Date: Mon May 23 15:58:30 2011
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
MachineType: Apple Inc. MacBookPro5,3
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/hostname.seed boot=casper quiet splash nouveau.noaccel=1 --
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.38-8-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-2.6.38-8-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.52
SourcePackage: linux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 06/15/09
dmi.bios.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.bios.version: MBP53.88Z.00AC.B03.0906151647
dmi.board.asset.tag: Base Board Asset Tag#
dmi.board.name: Mac-F22587C8
dmi.board.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset Tag#
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.chassis.version: Mac-F22587C8
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAppleInc.:bvrMBP53.88Z.00AC.B03.0906151647:bd06/15/09:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro5,3:pvr1.0:rvnAppleInc.:rnMac-F22587C8:rvr:cvnAppleInc.:ct10:cvrMac-F22587C8:
dmi.product.name: MacBookPro5,3
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: Apple Inc.

[Jacob Godserv (fun2program8)]

The integrated card does not work regardless of nouveau.noaccel=1 or OSX's graphics card selection. The discrete card only works when nouveau.noaccel=1 and OSX has the discrete card selected.

(In any of these situations that cause a crash, if "quiet splash" is present, the kernel locks up. Otherwise, the computer continues to boot and GDM will actually load up, but the display will remain corrupted. I think this might be another bug or a side effect of this bug, so I vote to ignore this for now.)

[Jacob Godserv (fun2program8)]

Also, good to note: I made sure to let my computer sit for 10 seconds between any kind of reboot. Waiting this long actually makes rEFIt come up a lot faster, and any OS boot gets past the initial rEFIt logo phase faster as well, so it seems to make a difference.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Jacob Godserv, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]