Dustpuppy Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Hi, I'm running 10OE and about half the time the computer is hanging at startup, in the blue screen just after the NVIDIA screen and before the KDE one (I automatically boot into my default login). There's nothing I can do then except a hard reset. I've re-installed the drivers but it hasn't helped. My vid. card is a gforce4 - it might not be a problem with this, but that's where it hangs on boot. Please help, I'm having M$ flashbacks! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 1st thing is to stop it booting to X initially when ytou boot and the splash screen comes up select ESC this shows you the kernels and unles you canged something the default will be linux... type linux 3 (this boots to RL 3 not graphical) in RL3 you can use drakconf and selct graphics... you might be able to fix the problem but in either case select options and deslect startx at startup... (once its OK add it back) secondly, when its locked have you tried CTRL+ALT+F1-F6 ?? I doubt this will work in this situaiton but its wortyh a go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 To be clear, are booting OK sometimes and not others? Do you have any onboard stuff, like video or audio? Is plug and gulp turned off in your bios? Are you auto establishing your irq's? Is it a full moon? OK, forget he last question. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 I had the a problem when it'd lock up right at starting at the beginning of the blue line. I figured that changing everything from AUTO to LBA in my bios fixed that. I dunno if its relevant but it couldn't hurt. :D Best of luck, SwiftDeath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 To be clear, are booting OK sometimes and not others? Do you have any onboard stuff, like video or audio? Is plug and gulp turned off in your bios? Are you auto establishing your irq's? Is it a full moon? OK, forget he last question. :P 1) Yes - it's booting OK about half the time, and as far as I can see there's nothing specific in the previous session that makes it hang. 2) No, no periferals apart from printer. 3) Yes, I turned it off in the bios before installing. 4) That sounds painful. 5) I don't know, but it was the transit of Venus yesterday... Swiftdeath - I'll give it a go and report back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 I had the a problem when it'd lock up right at starting at the beginning of the blue line. I figured that changing everything from AUTO to LBA in my bios fixed that. I dunno if its relevant but it couldn't hurt. :D Erm, couldn't see any settings like this, what sort of thing is it? Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Its in the bios/cmos but its different with every computer. Best Of Luck, SwiftDeath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 secondly, when its locked have you tried CTRL+ALT+F1-F6 ?? I doubt this will work in this situaiton but its wortyh a go. I can do ctrl-alt-f1 and get a login promt, but neither startx nor init 5 work once I'm logged in - what should I do there? NB, I'm still puzzled about what to change in the BIOS... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2004 *bump* Anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted June 12, 2004 Report Share Posted June 12, 2004 *bump* Anyone? yeah.....what chipset? Via? One of the buggy ones? Try different agp settings. ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-5336/README __________________________________________________________________________ (app-d) APPENDIX D: XF86CONFIG OPTIONS __________________________________________________________________________ The following driver options are supported by the NVIDIA XFree86 driver: Option "NvAGP" "integer" Configure AGP support. Integer argument can be one of: 0 : disable agp 1 : use NVIDIA's internal AGP support, if possible 2 : use AGPGART, if possible 3 : use any agp support (try AGPGART, then NVIDIA's AGP) Please note that NVIDIA's internal AGP support cannot work if AGPGART is either statically compiled into your kernel or is built as a module, but loaded into your kernel (some distributions load AGPGART into the kernel at boot up). Default: 3 (the default was 1 until after 1.0-1251). __________________________________________________________________________ (app-f) APPENDIX F: CONFIGURING AGP __________________________________________________________________________ There are several choices for configuring the NVIDIA kernel module's use of AGP: you can choose to either use NVIDIA's AGP module (NVAGP), or the AGP module that comes with the linux kernel (AGPGART). This is controlled through the "NvAGP" option in your XF86Config file: Option "NvAgp" "0" ... disables AGP support Option "NvAgp" "1" ... use NVAGP, if possible Option "NvAgp" "2" ... use AGPGART, if possible Option "NvAGP" "3" ... try AGPGART; if that fails, try NVAGP The default is 3 (the default was 1 until after 1.0-1251). You should use the AGP module that works best with your AGP chip set. If you are experiencing problems with stability, you may want to start by disabling AGP and observing if that solves the problems. Then you can experiment with either of the other AGP modules. You can query the current AGP status at any time via the /proc filesystem interface (see APPENDIX O: PROC INTERFACE). To use the Linux AGPGART module, it will need to be compiled with your kernel, either statically linked in, or built as a module. NVIDIA AGP support cannot be used if AGPGART is loaded in the kernel. It is recommended that you compile AGPGART as a module and make sure that it is not loaded when trying to use NVIDIA AGP. Please also note that changing AGP drivers generally requires a reboot before the changes actually take effect. The following AGP chipsets are supported by NVIDIA's AGP; for all other chipsets it is recommended that you use the AGPGART module. o Intel 440LX o Intel 440BX o Intel 440GX o Intel 815 ("Solano") o Intel 820 ("Camino") o Intel 830 o Intel 840 ("Carmel") o Intel 845 ("Brookdale") o Intel 845G o Intel 850 ("Tehama") o Intel 860 ("Colusa") o AMD 751 ("Irongate") o AMD 761 ("IGD4") o AMD 762 ("IGD4 MP") o VIA 8371 o VIA 82C694X o VIA KT133 o VIA KT266 o RCC 6585HE o Micron SAMDDR ("Samurai") o Micron SCIDDR ("Scimitar") o nForce AGP o nForce 2 AGP o ALi 1621 o ALi 1631 o ALi 1647 o ALi 1651 o ALi 1671 o SiS 630 o SiS 633 o SiS 635 o SiS 645 o SiS 730 o SiS 733 o SiS 735 o SiS 745 If you are experiencing AGP stability problems, you should be aware of the following: o Support for the processor's Page Size Extension on Athlon Processors Some linux kernels have a conflicting cache attribute bug that is exposed by advanced speculative caching in newer AMD Athlon family processors (AMD Athlon XP, AMD Athlong 4, AMD Athlon MP, and Models 6 and above AMD Duron). This kernel bug usually shows up under heavy use of accelerated 3D graphics with an AGP graphics card. Linux distributions based on kernel 2.4.19 and later *should* incorporate the bug fix. But, older kernels require help from the user in ensuring that a small portion of advanced speculative caching is disabled (normally done through a kernel patch) and a boot option is specified in order to apply the whole fix. NVIDIA's driver automatically disables the small portion of advanced speculative caching for the affected AMD processors without the need to patch the kernel; it can be used even on kernels which do already incorporate the kernel bug fix. Additionally, for older kernels the user performs the boot option portion of the fix by explicitly disabling 4MB pages. This can be done from the boot command line by specifying: mem=nopentium Or by adding the following line to etc/lilo.conf: append = "mem=nopentium" o AGP drive strength BIOS setting (Via based mainboards) Many Via based mainboards allow adjusting the AGP drive strength in the system BIOS. The setting of this option largely affects system stability, the range between 0xEA and 0xEE seems to work best for NVIDIA hardware. Setting either nibble to 0xF generally restults in severe stability problems. If you decide to experiment with this, you need to be aware of the fact that you are doing so at your own risk and that you may render your system unbootable with improper settings until you reset the setting to a working value (w/ a PCI graphics card or by resetting the BIOS to its default values). o System BIOS version Make sure to have the latest system BIOS provided by the board manufacturer. o AGP Rate You may want to decrease the AGP rate setting if you are seeing lockups with the value you are currently using. You can do so by extracting the .run file: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1.run --extract-only cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1/usr/src/nv/ Then edit os-registry.c, and make the following changes: - static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 7; + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 4; /* force AGP Rate to 4x */ or + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 2; /* force AGP Rate to 2x */ or + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 1; /* force AGP Rate to 1x */ and then remove the two leading underscores: - { "__ReqAGPRate", &NVreg_ReqAGPRate }, + { "ReqAGPRate", &NVreg_ReqAGPRate }, Then recompile and load the new kernel module. On Athlon motherboards with the VIA KX133 or 694X chip set, such as the ASUS K7V motherboard, NVIDIA drivers default to AGP 2x mode to work around insufficient drive strength on one of the signals. You can force AGP 4x by setting NVreg_EnableVia4x to 1. Note that this may cause the system to become unstable. On ALi1541 and ALi1647 chipsets, NVIDIA drivers disable AGP to work around timing issues and signal integrity issues. You can force AGP to be enabled on these chipsets by setting NVreg_EnableALiAGP to 1. Note that this may cause the system to become unstable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pain999 Posted June 12, 2004 Report Share Posted June 12, 2004 (edited) I get exactly the same symptoms. I don't know how to permently fix it, but I do know that if you do a Ctrl-Alt-F5 (or even F3), log in as root, then type poweroff. Start your computer back up and everything should be ok till it randomly does it again BTW, I have a Nforce2 chipset & Ti 4200 Edited June 12, 2004 by Pain999 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 (edited) Thanks for pointing that out, bvc. I tried " Option "NvAgp" "0" ", but it's still doing it with the same frequency :( How do I find out what chipset I've got? I've got an off-the-shelf system so I didn't select it myself - P4, with a gforce 4. Also, the strange thing is that it worked fine with 9.2, no problems there Edited June 14, 2004 by Dustpuppy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted June 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 Okaaaay... Hardrake sayeth I have a Brookdale AGP chipset, so I've set nvagp to "1". A few reboots later, it hasn't locked up, so hopefully... (where's that cross-fingers smilie?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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