Bug#765726: VGA misdetection and freeze

[Beck, Andre]

Hi,

exact same issue here on a HP Elitebook 8540p with NVS 5100M. Seems the
version of the blob which lurks in this package is seriously borked.

Martin, you may actually *have* a working gdm3 login, you just don't
see it. It's been the same here with kdm, the login window of which
is displayed on a nonexisting screen. The reason for that is the blob
seems to misdetect the VGA port (I'm just citing from your mail):

> [   184.150] (--) NVIDIA(0):     LGD (CRT-0) (connected)
> [   184.150] (--) NVIDIA(0):     LGD (DFP-0) (boot, connected)

This results in a bogus metamode:

> [   184.151] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
> [   184.151] (II) NVIDIA(0): "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select,CRT-0:nvidia-auto-select"
> [   184.151] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 3840 x 1080

Given that metamode, the result is an offset nVidia Logo (which you would
have seen hadn't you disabled it ;) - and the login window on the wrong
part of that virtual screen.

I've managed to fix this in xorg.conf by forcing the metamode to the
DFP-0 only:

hopper:~# cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-nvidia.conf 
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "NVS 5100M"
        Driver          "nvidia"
[...]
        Option          "MetaModes"             "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select"
EndSection

Sadly, that isn't the entire issue. When running with this setup, I'm
getting short black screen flashes every some minutes (sometimes
seconds), it looks as if the screen goes dark for some 100ms or 200ms.
After approx. 20min runtime in this annoyingly flickering state, the
X server almost, but not quiet, froze - the mouse pointer was stuck
and screen updates occured only occasionally, with gaps of 10s or more
in complete freeze. Even the mouse pointer jumped every now and then,
and a Ctrl-Alt-F1 finally warped me to tty1 after waiting for several
minutes.

I'm back to 340.32-1 as well, given that has been rock solid for months.

I expect a lot more people being hit by this and nVidia getting notice
of it rather sooner than later. Until that, you better keep your 340.32
packages on hold...

HTH,
Andre.
-- 
                    Cool .signatures are so 90s...

-> Andre Beck    +++ ABP-RIPE +++      IBH IT-Service GmbH, Dresden <-