Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 14:03:53 -0500
goli...@dyne.org wrote:

> On 2018-04-26 13:05, Lars Noodén wrote:
> > On 04/26/2018 08:34 PM, KatolaZ wrote:  
> > [snip]> the drivers you get from Debian Stretch repos are exactly
> > the same  
> >> drivers (bit-by-bit) that you get through Devuan ASCII repos. And I
> >> mean it. Whatever it is, it's indeed the very same package, really,
> >> *the* *very* *same* *package*.  
> > [snip]
> > 
> > Ok  Thanks for confirming that.  I'll read up on things at
> > bugs.debian.org and dev1galaxy.org now as you suggest.
> > 
> > /Lars
> > ___
> >   
> 
> I haven't had proprietary graphics for quite a few years.  But when I 
> did, my go-to installer was sgfxi.  It never failed to find the
> correct driver and clean up the cruft.  You can read about it here 
> https://smxi.org/ and here https://github.com/smxi/sgfxi .  I know
> that MX Linux packages smxi and for good reason.
> 
> golinux

Almost every email in this thread assumes this intermittent problem is
video related. I must have missed the evidence: I have no idea what
might be causing this, I think the cause could be almost anything, and
personally I'd cast a wide net so as not to run around testing in an
area ultimately not containing the root cause.

This is an intermittent problem first reported as "locks up switching
between console and X", and some log output mentioning Nouveau and
DRM, which might point somewhat of an accusing finger, but in my
opinion not enough to limit focus to the video. It was later
mentioned that qemu almost always is soon followed by a hang: It's just
as likely a problem with the hardware emulated VM software, but we've
been nowhere near an indication that's it either.

IIRC the machine also has an Intel video card: Why not just use that,
disable the Nvidia, and see whether it still happens. If it doesn't,
that would be more powerful evidence that it *is* the Nvidia or its
drivers.

First thing I'd do is test the RAM and the disk. Easy to do, and it
would be  real shame to chase your video driver tail for a month when
it was bad RAM. I'm pretty sure bad RAM can cause almost anything: Why
not rule it out early.

The lshw output mentioned there were two video cards: One Intel and one
Nvidia. Why not turn one off in the bios,  use the other for a couple
days, and see if the problem goes away. Then switch to the other video
card.

Not mentioned is which WM/DE is being used. Some WM/DEs are a crash
waiting to happen. Why not temporarily use LXDE, and see whether that
effects the frequency of the hang. If so, determine what about your
former WM/DE was causing the problem.

I'd just be careful about reducing focus too early, or the root cause
might escape you for a long, long time.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Adam Borowski]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 07:56:52PM +0200, J. Fahrner wrote:
> I can second this. I have long years of experience with Nvidia and Amd
> graphic cards under Linux, and I can say: the "free" drivers for these cards
> (made by reverse engeneering) can drive you mad. Use the proprietary drivers
> for those cards, or forget them. I learned: buy only pc with intel gma,
> these are the only one with linux drivers that don't make you mad.
> 
> In short: free drivers for Nvidia or Amd graphics are full of bugs,
> proprietary drivers work well, but not with every linux kernel.

Proprietary drivers don't work with newest kernels, thus are useless if you
even occasionally mess with kernel development.  As for stability, it mostly
depends on the particular card model.

I had three different Nvidia cards in this very same machine:
* one where nouveau locked up ~hourly, proprietary worked
upgraded that to
* one where nouveau worked perfectly, proprietary randomly crashed
which went into flames (literally!), emergency-replaced with
* one where nouveau produces visual artifacts, proprietary dropped support


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Re: [DNG] Two packages I miss in ascii/stretch

[Irrwahn]

lpb+dev...@kandl.houston.tx.us wrote on 26.04.2018 21:09:
> I'm putting off an upgrade to ascii because it doesn't include two
> packages I (still?) use: nagios3 and twinkle.
> 
> * how can I find out why they're not moving forward?
> * what would you suggest as a replacement for nagios or twinkle (SIP
> client)?
> 
> Thanks, Luigi

Re twinkle: version 1:1.10.1+dfsg-2 is in Devuan ASCII.

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Re: [DNG] Two packages I miss in ascii/stretch

[lpb+devuan]

Thank you Aldemir for the recommendation, I will start moving over to
icinga.

On 04/26/2018 02:16 PM, Aldemir Akpinar wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 22:09,  > wrote:
> 
> I'm putting off an upgrade to ascii because it doesn't include two
> packages I (still?) use: nagios3 and twinkle.
> 
> * how can I find out why they're not moving forward?
> * what would you suggest as a replacement for nagios or twinkle (SIP
> client)?
> 
> Thanks, Luigi
> 
> 
> 
> Don’t know about twinkle but in stretch/ascii there is icinga instead of
> nagios. Icinga is a fork of nagios so you can use  your existing
> configuration with it. 
> —
> aldemir
> 
> -- 
> Sent from Gmail Mobile

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Re: [DNG] Two packages I miss in ascii/stretch

[Aldemir Akpinar]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 22:09,  wrote:

> I'm putting off an upgrade to ascii because it doesn't include two
> packages I (still?) use: nagios3 and twinkle.
>
> * how can I find out why they're not moving forward?
> * what would you suggest as a replacement for nagios or twinkle (SIP
> client)?
>
> Thanks, Luigi
> 


Don’t know about twinkle but in stretch/ascii there is icinga instead of
nagios. Icinga is a fork of nagios so you can use  your existing
configuration with it.
—
aldemir

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[DNG] Two packages I miss in ascii/stretch

[lpb+devuan]

I'm putting off an upgrade to ascii because it doesn't include two
packages I (still?) use: nagios3 and twinkle.

* how can I find out why they're not moving forward?
* what would you suggest as a replacement for nagios or twinkle (SIP
client)?

Thanks, Luigi
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[golinux]

On 2018-04-26 13:05, Lars Noodén wrote:

On 04/26/2018 08:34 PM, KatolaZ wrote:
[snip]> the drivers you get from Debian Stretch repos are exactly the 
same

drivers (bit-by-bit) that you get through Devuan ASCII repos. And I
mean it. Whatever it is, it's indeed the very same package, really,
*the* *very* *same* *package*.

[snip]

Ok  Thanks for confirming that.  I'll read up on things at
bugs.debian.org and dev1galaxy.org now as you suggest.

/Lars
___



I haven't had proprietary graphics for quite a few years.  But when I 
did, my go-to installer was sgfxi.  It never failed to find the correct 
driver and clean up the cruft.  You can read about it here 
https://smxi.org/ and here https://github.com/smxi/sgfxi .  I know that 
MX Linux packages smxi and for good reason.


golinux
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[KatolaZ]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 09:05:41PM +0300, Lars Noodén wrote:
> On 04/26/2018 08:42 PM, Florian Zieboll wrote:
> [snip]
> > in one of your previous mails you pasted the output of your attempt to
> > install the "nvidia-driver" package. If you follow down the dependency
> > chain by manually trying to install the "not installable" predepends,
> > sooner or later you'll reach the package, which is the root of this
> > problem; apt will give you a more detailed error message for it. [snip]
> 
> Thanks.  Following one dependency chain from nvidia-driver-bin, it
> arrives at 'nvidia-installer-cleanup' which has no installation candidate.

That's because the package is in "contrib":

$ apt-cache policy nvidia-installer-cleanup
 nvidia-installer-cleanup:
   Installed: (none)
   Candidate: 20151021+4
   Version table:
  20151021+4 500
 500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/contrib amd64 Packages

and you probably need to add the "contrib" component to your
sources.list. I guess you might also need to add "non-free" for the
non-free drivers.

HTH

KatolaZ

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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Lars Noodén]

On 04/26/2018 08:42 PM, Florian Zieboll wrote:
[snip]
> in one of your previous mails you pasted the output of your attempt to
> install the "nvidia-driver" package. If you follow down the dependency
> chain by manually trying to install the "not installable" predepends,
> sooner or later you'll reach the package, which is the root of this
> problem; apt will give you a more detailed error message for it. [snip]

Thanks.  Following one dependency chain from nvidia-driver-bin, it
arrives at 'nvidia-installer-cleanup' which has no installation candidate.

Looking at the Nvidia site, it looks like the right driver for the
GM108M (GeForce 940MX) might be 390 which should be provided by
nvidia-driver-bin in Devuan.

# apt-cache show nvidia-driver-bin | head -n 3
Package: nvidia-driver-bin
Source: nvidia-graphics-drivers
Version: 390.48-2~bpo9+1

/Lars

# apt-get install nvidia-driver-bin nvidia-alternative
nvidia-legacy-check nvidia-installer-cleanup
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package nvidia-installer-cleanup is not available, but is referred to by
another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'nvidia-installer-cleanup' has no installation candidate
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Lars Noodén]

On 04/26/2018 08:34 PM, KatolaZ wrote:
[snip]> the drivers you get from Debian Stretch repos are exactly the same
> drivers (bit-by-bit) that you get through Devuan ASCII repos. And I
> mean it. Whatever it is, it's indeed the very same package, really,
> *the* *very* *same* *package*. 
[snip]

Ok  Thanks for confirming that.  I'll read up on things at
bugs.debian.org and dev1galaxy.org now as you suggest.

/Lars
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[J. Fahrner]

Am 2018-04-26 19:34, schrieb KatolaZ:

the drivers you get from Debian Stretch repos are exactly the same
drivers (bit-by-bit) that you get through Devuan ASCII repos. And I
mean it. Whatever it is, it's indeed the very same package, really,
*the* *very* *same* *package*.

Your problem looks like a faulty xorg or kernel driver, and we haven't
forked any xorg or kernel package. I am not following the whole nvidia
driver business, but I understand it is somehow messy. You probably
are not the first De??an user experiencing these problems, so having a
look at bugs.debian.org and/or on dev1galaxy.org might be a good idea
at this point.


I can second this. I have long years of experience with Nvidia and Amd 
graphic cards under Linux, and I can say: the "free" drivers for these 
cards (made by reverse engeneering) can drive you mad. Use the 
proprietary drivers for those cards, or forget them. I learned: buy only 
pc with intel gma, these are the only one with linux drivers that don't 
make you mad.


In short: free drivers for Nvidia or Amd graphics are full of bugs, 
proprietary drivers work well, but not with every linux kernel.


Jochen
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Florian Zieboll]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:51:47 +0300
Lars Noodén  wrote:

> I suspect that if I could figure out 1) the appropriate drivers, and
> 2) how to get them from Debian, that would be the solution.


Hallo Lars,

in one of your previous mails you pasted the output of your attempt to
install the "nvidia-driver" package. If you follow down the dependency
chain by manually trying to install the "not installable" predepends,
sooner or later you'll reach the package, which is the root of this
problem; apt will give you a more detailed error message for it. 

NB: I just did an "apt-rdepends nvidia-driver | grep systemd" on my
Ascii desktop, which returned only "libsystemd0", so it's probably no
Devuan specific thing - as long as you didn't change the default apt
configuration.

hth & libre Grüße,

Florian



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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[KatolaZ]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 07:51:47PM +0300, Lars Noodén wrote:
> On 04/26/2018 06:37 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:36:14 +0300
> > Lars Noodén  wrote:
> [snip]
> >> Looking at the task manager in XCFE and top in the shell, the RAM and
> >> swap usage eventually start to climb more and more rapidly until >99%
> >> of RAM is in use and >99% of swap.  Then the machine locks up, mouse
> >> pointer last.
> > 
> > Well cool, that's a clue. Using top and/or htop, find out who is
> > consumnig all that memory. Also find out the #2 ram consumer: Sometimes
> > a browser can bog down and run X up to 99%.
> [snip]
> 
> I've been watching for a while now and through several reboots.  I can't
> see anything in user space that consumes RAM but over time the memory
> usage creeps upward.  Some things can make it rise rapidly, such as Qemu
> or VLC or Chromium or many others from time to time.  Only Qemu is quite
> consistent, but it itself does not show unreasonable memory usage even
> while the system is running out of memory.  I haven't seen memory usage
> while enabling or disabling a second display, but that often causes a
> freeze.  So I suspect something not in user space, and the display makes
> me think its the graphics card driver.  However, above and beyond being
> an all-around permanoob on most topics, I am especially ignorant about
> hardware.
> 
> I suspect that if I could figure out 1) the appropriate drivers, and 2)
> how to get them from Debian, that would be the solution.
> 


Dear Lars,

the drivers you get from Debian Stretch repos are exactly the same
drivers (bit-by-bit) that you get through Devuan ASCII repos. And I
mean it. Whatever it is, it's indeed the very same package, really,
*the* *very* *same* *package*. 

Your problem looks like a faulty xorg or kernel driver, and we haven't
forked any xorg or kernel package. I am not following the whole nvidia
driver business, but I understand it is somehow messy. You probably
are not the first De??an user experiencing these problems, so having a
look at bugs.debian.org and/or on dev1galaxy.org might be a good idea
at this point.

My2Cents

KatolaZ

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[ "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
[   @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
[ @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Lars Noodén]

On 04/26/2018 06:37 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:36:14 +0300
> Lars Noodén  wrote:
[snip]
>> Looking at the task manager in XCFE and top in the shell, the RAM and
>> swap usage eventually start to climb more and more rapidly until >99%
>> of RAM is in use and >99% of swap.  Then the machine locks up, mouse
>> pointer last.
> 
> Well cool, that's a clue. Using top and/or htop, find out who is
> consumnig all that memory. Also find out the #2 ram consumer: Sometimes
> a browser can bog down and run X up to 99%.
[snip]

I've been watching for a while now and through several reboots.  I can't
see anything in user space that consumes RAM but over time the memory
usage creeps upward.  Some things can make it rise rapidly, such as Qemu
or VLC or Chromium or many others from time to time.  Only Qemu is quite
consistent, but it itself does not show unreasonable memory usage even
while the system is running out of memory.  I haven't seen memory usage
while enabling or disabling a second display, but that often causes a
freeze.  So I suspect something not in user space, and the display makes
me think its the graphics card driver.  However, above and beyond being
an all-around permanoob on most topics, I am especially ignorant about
hardware.

I suspect that if I could figure out 1) the appropriate drivers, and 2)
how to get them from Debian, that would be the solution.

/Lars
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:36:14 +0300
Lars Noodén  wrote:

> On 01/15/2018 06:13 PM, Chillfan wrote:
> [snip]
> > Try with the official NVIDIA drivers and see what happens.
> > 
> > https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers  
> 
> Thanks.  I've been unable to install the driver.  Would I have to get
> that straight from Debian?  See below for the missing dependencies.
> 
> Looking at the task manager in XCFE and top in the shell, the RAM and
> swap usage eventually start to climb more and more rapidly until >99%
> of RAM is in use and >99% of swap.  Then the machine locks up, mouse
> pointer last.

Well cool, that's a clue. Using top and/or htop, find out who is
consumnig all that memory. Also find out the #2 ram consumer: Sometimes
a browser can bog down and run X up to 99%.

> 
> Another way to trigger a lock-up 100% of the time is to run qemu for
> anything.

Again, cool: It gives you a testpoint. Run qemu with both -m 4096 and
with -m 256 to view any changes in symptom between a VM using 4G RAM
and one using 256M.

You using any KDE stuff? I blew off all KDE programs and libraries over
5 years ago because it had the propensity to do just what you're
talking about.

Do you ever take a day off? Boot to GUI, and then run a (home grown)
program that writes RAM usage to a log file every minute. Run no other
programs, and let it sit for over a day,  which your past emails seem
to say is enough time for the symptom to occur most of the time.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
 of the Successful Technologist
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Re: [DNG] machine locks up switching between console and X session

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:36:14 +0300, Lars wrote in message 
<47850509-8a3c-3d51-ed44-f0416e372...@gmail.com>:

> On 01/15/2018 06:13 PM, Chillfan wrote:
> [snip]
> > Try with the official NVIDIA drivers and see what happens.
> > 
> > https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers  

..does your machine work with the nouveau driver?

..you are trying to install a 375 version nvidia driver.

..beware that Nvidea cuts off support of their older hw, and dumps
people with old hw onto their "legacy" drivers, or, onto nouveau.


..all my Nvidea hw has worked right right both on installs, and on
merely swapping out a Radeon HD4890 for a GeForce GTS-250 (thrown in
for free to pad 'n fill up the box) that my powersupply could handle,
on the nouveau driver.  
It has only failed me getting blacklisted on my attempts to try the
nvidia driver. :o)

> Thanks.  I've been unable to install the driver.  Would I have to get
> that straight from Debian?  See below for the missing dependencies.

..does any of these have hidden or undeclared systemd dependencies?
(Such things can happen by accident too.)

> Looking at the task manager in XCFE and top in the shell, the RAM and
> swap usage eventually start to climb more and more rapidly until >99%
> of RAM is in use and >99% of swap.  Then the machine locks up, mouse
> pointer last.
> 
> Another way to trigger a lock-up 100% of the time is to run qemu for
> anything.
> 
> /Lars
> 
> $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.
> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
> 
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  nvidia-driver : PreDepends: nvidia-installer-cleanup but it is not
> installable
>  PreDepends: nvidia-legacy-check (>= 343) but it is
> not going to be installed
>  Depends: nvidia-driver-libs (= 375.82-1~deb9u1) but
> it is not going to be installed
>  Depends: nvidia-driver-bin (= 375.82-1~deb9u1) but it
> is not going to be installed
>  Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (=
> 375.82-1~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
>  Depends: nvidia-vdpau-driver (= 375.82-1~deb9u1) but
> it is not going to be installed
>  Depends: nvidia-alternative (= 375.82-1~deb9u1) but
> it is not going to be installed
>  Depends: nvidia-kernel-dkms (= 375.82-1~deb9u1) but
> it is not going to be installed or
>   nvidia-kernel-375.82
>  Depends: nvidia-support but it is not installable
>  Recommends: nvidia-settings (>= 375) but it is not
> installable
>  Recommends: nvidia-persistenced but it is not
> installable E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken
> packages.


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