jammy: noveau driver hangs for minutes when Firefox is started (live cd/usb, MacBookPro6,2)

[Mikko Rantalainen]

I tried to use nightly build of Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) on an old MacBook Pro and if I start with failsafe graphics everything seems to work really well. However, if I boot with default livecd configuration the GPU will hang when I try to launch Firefox.

According to journalctl logs it appears that noveau driver or kernel DRM hangs for a long time and the computer appears totally frozen. I can still switch to terminal by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Fn-F3 and waiting a couple of minutes. Waiting for a long time (maybe 10 minutes) the system appears to work correctly again without rebooting the system.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.17-1build1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-19.19-generic 5.13.14
Uname: Linux 5.13.0-19-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu70
Architecture: amd64
BootLog: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/boot.log'
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CasperVersion: 1.465
CompositorRunning: None
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun Nov 7 13:19:38 2021
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: jammy
DistroVariant: ubuntu
ExtraDebuggingInterest: Yes, if not too technical
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 12) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 NVIDIA Corporation GT216M [GeForce GT 330M] [10de:0a29] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Apple Inc. GT216M [GeForce GT 330M] [106b:00c7]
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS "Jammy Jellyfish" - Alpha amd64 (20211105)
MachineType: Apple Inc. MacBookPro6,2
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/username.seed maybe-ubiquity quiet splash ---
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 06/13/2019
dmi.bios.release: 0.1
dmi.bios.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 99.0.0.0.0
dmi.board.asset.tag: Base Board Asset Tag#
dmi.board.name: Mac-F22586C8
dmi.board.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.board.version: MacBookPro6,2
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Apple Inc.
dmi.chassis.version: Mac-F22586C8
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAppleInc.:bvr99.0.0.0.0:bd06/13/2019:br0.1:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro6,2:pvr1.0:skuSystemSKU#:rvnAppleInc.:rnMac-F22586C8:rvrMacBookPro6,2:cvnAppleInc.:ct10:cvrMac-F22586C8:
dmi.product.family: MacBook Pro
dmi.product.name: MacBookPro6,2
dmi.product.sku: System SKU#
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: Apple Inc.
version.compiz: compiz N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.107-8ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 21.2.2-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx N/A
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.20.13-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:19.1.0-2build1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20200714-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.17-1build1

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

Here's the full journalctl log for livecd debugging session I reported above.

It appears that nautilus was totally hanging because I failed to ever open any file manager windows even after waiting for a long time. Firefox did eventually start and started to work until I tried to open file picker to attach a file to this bug - after that Firefox never recovered either.

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

According to Apple Mac OS X info this hardware is as follows:

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
CPU: 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5
RAM: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
GPU: Intel HD Graphics, 288 MB

The hardware *also* has NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M connected (according to OS X self-diagnostics) via 16x PCIe and it has 256 MB of RAM (Mac OS X cannot tell if this is dedicated RAM or part of system RAM like with integrated intel graphics).

I believe that the OS X automaticaly switches between these GPUs according to system needs. I would guess that this is also tried by Jammy livecd and it hangs. I guess for this old hardware, automatically turning off the NVIDIA GPU and using just the Intel Graphics could be a good option if the switching is not stable.

According to /proc/cpuinfo the Linux kernel successfully run the CPU up to 3.1 GHz so CPU frequency control did work absolutely fine.

All the above tests were done with jammy nightly build from date 2021-11-05 obtained here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/daily-live/current/ and I did write the ISO image to USB memory stick using Ubuntu "Startup Disk Creator" software. I know that some newer MacBooks no longer support booting from USB memory simply by holding down ALT while booting the computer but for this hardware that still appears to work just fine.

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M device has vendor id 0x10de and device id 0x0a29 and revision 0x00a2. ROM (/firmware) version is listed as "3560".

[Jacek Urbańczyk (burbon)]

Same problem here.
ubuntu 22.04, Xorg, gnome, driver nouveau, geforce 9600 GT (G94).
No such a problems with openbox. Wayland just hangs after showing wallpaper.
Got "kernel: [2088.040790] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#3 stuck for 26s! [Xorg:12900]" at the console.