Screen "crash" (diagonal screen gibberish)

[Scott Cowles Jacobs]

This is a recurrent problem. For the last few Lubuntu installs, eventually, something that I invoke (one install, it was AbiWord, at least one it was Firefox, this time it is Hugin.
[You may wonder - If this happens, why not install the proprietary driver nvidia-xxx?
I have done so before, but this time for some reason it never gets into the kernel, and the largest screen resolution I have is 1024x768, which is much too small, especially for photo-editing... So I have to use nouveau, but as I say, I cannot now use Hugin.]

Everything seems fine, I do something, and there is a pause... then the screen goes all diagonal gibberish, and the only thing I can do is hard-shutdown.

I paid more attention this time, and can reproduce it on demand (not that I WANT to, but I need Hugin to stitch together some panoramas that I took on my trip, and since installing Lubuntu 16.10, when I go to load in the photos, there is a pause... then the screen crashes and I must hard-shutdown.)

I have tried to simplify the debugging, and I booted from a Live-USB, the same .iso from which I installed Lubuntu 16.10 64-bit.

I did nothing but install the hugin package (that, however, pulls in umpty ump other packages...) and mount my /data partition so I could point Hugin at my photos.

I told Hugin which Images to Load, pressed Open, there was a pause...
and it loaded them...!

However, the upper half of the third image (sky?) was all gibberish, and not the image data.
The globe thingy at the left seemed to have the full picture, so I went ahead and made the
panorama, which was just fine - only that which was displayed on the screen was messed up.
The garbage on the picture replaced itself if I went to a different tab, and then came back
(although I don't guarantee it was the exact same garbage...).

Today, when I reproduced the crash (so I could report the bug), I went to Syslog after hard-shutdown/boot, and copied down the info for the time it crashed...:

Nov 1 21:13:00 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS dbus[680]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher'
Nov 1 21:13:00 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS systemd[1]: Started Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service.
Nov 1 21:13:00 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS nm-dispatcher: req:1 'dhcp4-change' [wlx001f1fd8314a]: new request (1 scripts)
Nov 1 21:13:00 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS nm-dispatcher: req:1 'dhcp4-change' [wlx001f1fd8314a]: start running ordered scripts...
Nov 1 21:17:01 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS CRON[2818]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Nov 1 21:22:34 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [14975.927029] nouveau 0000:00:0d.0: bus: MMIO write of 01620001 FAULT at 00b000
Nov 1 21:22:34 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [14976.243884] nouveau 0000:00:0d.0: bus: MMIO write of 01680001 FAULT at 00b020
Nov 1 21:22:42 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [14983.698742] nouveau 0000:00:0d.0: bus: MMIO write of 091f0001 FAULT at 00b030
Nov 1 21:22:42 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [14983.704355] nouveau 0000:00:0d.0: bus: MMIO write of 01730001 FAULT at 00b000
Nov 1 21:22:42 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [14983.741432] nouveau 0000:00:0d.0: bus: MMIO write of 00000000 FAULT at 00b020
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.16.0" x-pid="720" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] start
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS rsyslogd: rsyslogd's groupid changed to 108
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS rsyslogd: rsyslogd's userid changed to 104
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS rsyslogd-2039: Could not open output pipe '/dev/xconsole':: No such file or directory [v8.16.0 try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ]
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS rsyslogd-2007: action 'action 10' suspended, next retry is Tue Nov 1 21:27:05 2016 [v8.16.0 try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2007 ]
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.8.0-26-generic (buildd@lgw01-58) (gcc version 6.2.0 20161005 (Ubuntu 6.2.0-5ubuntu12) ) #28-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 18 14:39:52 UTC 2016 (Ubuntu 4.8.0-26.28-generic 4.8.0)
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.8.0-26-generic root=UUID=5a40c58b-cb06-4221-8625-ef04379be2be ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus:
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] Intel GenuineIntel
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] AMD AuthenticAMD
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] Centaur CentaurHauls
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] x86/fpu: Legacy x87 FPU detected.
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] x86/fpu: Using 'eager' FPU context switches.
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] e820: BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Nov 1 21:26:35 scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000000009b3ff] usable

Note that the crash happened ~21:22:xx, that there were no entries for about five minutes before the crash, and that the entries after the crash are from when I booted afterwards, about 4 minutes later.

Note also, that the only entries at about the crash are nouveau-related.

---------------------------------------------

scott@scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS:~$ uname -a
Linux scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS 4.8.0-26-generic #28-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 18 14:39:52 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
scott@scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS:~$ lsb_release -dsc
Ubuntu 16.10
yakkety
scott@scott-ASUS-M2N68-AM-PLUS:~$ echo $DESKTOP_SESSION
Lubuntu

xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.12-2

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.10
Package: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.12-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.8.0-26.28-generic 4.8.0
Uname: Linux 4.8.0-26-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.3-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Tue Nov 1 21:37:59 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-10-20 (13 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.1)
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)