Comment 61 for bug 445056

(In reply to comment #18)
> Carl: I tested the issue tonight using the development build of Ubuntu 10.04.
> Unfortunately, the behavior was the same. On the first try, my desktop froze
> within ten seconds of logging in. On the second try, it lasted about two
> minutes. Again, both times, it was only X that froze; I was able to ssh in and
> pull the log files, which I'm attaching here.

Thanks for testing.

> I realize that the Ubuntu 10.04 development kernel (2.6.32) and the Intel video
> driver that ships with Ubuntu 10.04 are not the most up-to-date (even though
> they are considerably newer than what was previously tested). If you have
> reason to believe that the very latest code would solve the problem, let me
> know and I'll compile a new kernel along with the latest version of X, etc.

There are regular bug fixes, so there definitely are advantages to testing the
latest code. You might be able to take advantage of the "xorg-edgers" repository
of packages that exists specifically to help users of Ubuntu test the latest
drivers, etc. (which might be easier than rebuilding everything from scratch).

I don't know if the xorg-edgers repository has a newer kernel or not, but if you
could run with 2.6.34-rc1 then there's a nice feature of the driver where it will
detect a GPU and save the most recent batch-buffer before the error into

/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_error_state

This assumes that debugfs is mounted which, if not, you can do with:

sudo mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug

If you can't run 2.6.34-rc1 then you can try to similarly capture an error-
causing batchbuffer by triggering the error and then running the intel_gpu_dump
tool (from the intel-gpu-tools repository on freedesktop.org---I don't know
if Ubuntu packages it or not).

Let us know if you're able to capture a dump through either of those approaches,
(and please clear the NEEDINFO keyword when you do).

Thanks,

-Carl