Comment 32 for bug 1505409

I got here because my apport-raised bug #1721492 apparently automatically got marked as a duplicate of this. I'm not so sure:

This happened after a kernel upgrade to 4.13.0-14-generic. Yesterday I was happily using this system in a wayland session using nouveau. On reboot with this update, all I saw was a black screen. I had to ssh in from my phone to see in /var/log/syslog a bunch of apparent nouveau-drm failures like this:

Oct 5 10:12:46 fleetfoot kernel: [ 1.304052] [drm] Initialized nouveau 1.3.1 20120801 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
Oct 5 10:12:46 fleetfoot kernel: [ 4.245166] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: EVO timeout
Oct 5 10:12:46 fleetfoot kernel: [ 6.245268] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:46 fleetfoot kernel: [ 8.250984] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:47 fleetfoot kernel: [ 9.292554] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: bus: MMIO read of 00000000 FAULT at 61a804 [ IBUS ]
Oct 5 10:12:47 fleetfoot kernel: [ 9.302375] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: bus: MMIO read of 00000000 FAULT at 61a804 [ IBUS ]
Oct 5 10:12:55 fleetfoot kernel: [ 17.770234] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-0: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:57 fleetfoot kernel: [ 19.770400] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-0: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:57 fleetfoot kernel: [ 19.776398] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:59 fleetfoot kernel: [ 21.776531] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:12:59 fleetfoot kernel: [ 21.807177] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-0: timeout
Oct 5 10:13:01 fleetfoot kernel: [ 23.782358] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:13:03 fleetfoot kernel: [ 25.801765] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-0: timeout
Oct 5 10:13:03 fleetfoot kernel: [ 25.807270] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout
Oct 5 10:13:05 fleetfoot kernel: [ 27.818059] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-0: timeout
Oct 5 10:13:05 fleetfoot kernel: [ 27.823600] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DRM: base-1: timeout

... and so on. It doesn't stop until I reboot (which hangs, although I think after rsyslogd has closed. I need to hit reset).

I had seen this before, on the first kernel 4.13 version in Artful. Reverting then to the last 4.12 let things work for me. But trying that this time, trying to boot kernel 4.13.0.12, didn't help; I just got the same symptoms.

Got the system working again by installing the nvidia-387 proprietary drivers and using them in default configuration in an xorg session. On the previous occasion I saw this, it also affected nvidia-384 (as was current then), with continual panics reported in the nvidia-drm module, until I turned off modeset (at the time I had, with partial success, been running wayland on that). I haven't yet tried modeset on this nvidia driver.

After I got the system working again, and logged in, I was presented with the apport bug report that led to #1721492. I queried in there whether it was the same issue, but on later seeing syslog it looks like those nouveau errors only show up after gnome-shell (in gdm) is launched.

Attached to this comment, the complete syslog of that first session after rebooting from the upgrade. I think those nouveau timeout errors are the thing. Attached to the next comment (as I seem unable to attach more than one file to a comment) is the section from /var/log/apt/history.log showing what was upgraded this morning before that all happened. Other drivers were involved.