xorg with nvidia drivers

[Brad Alexander <storm16@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I had a problem a couple of months ago on my laptop (a Dell Latitude E6500) in which after an upgrade of the nvidia drivers (as far as I was able to determine) from 195.36.31-6 to 270.41.06-1 resulted in a problem in which starting any KDE application would cause a traceback and crashing X. I dug on this and didn't find anything online that helped me figure out the problem...So I rebuilt. Everything worked in squeeze with the older drivers. Then, recently, I upgraded to wheezy, and started experiencing the same issue. 

I determined that the problem was the xorg.conf that was generated by nvidia-settings to accomodate my dual-monitor setup in the office. If I use a generic xorg.conf only to use the nvidia driver:

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Card"
    Driver        "nvidia"
EndSection

...everything works fine, albeit without the external monitor. However, if I use the one generated by nvidia-config:

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (pbuilder@c203)  Tue May 18 07:56:38 UTC 2010

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    FontPath        "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Seiko/Epson"
    HorizSync       49.4 - 74.1
    VertRefresh     40.0 - 60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "ViewSonic VA2223wm"
    HorizSync       24.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro NVS 160M"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro NVS 160M"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Device1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I didn't see anything obtuse that would cause the type of behavior such as I was seeing. However, I stripped it down as far as I could (e.g. removing the options from the screen sections), I still see the same behavior. Can anyone see what could be causing this strange crashiness?

Thanks,
--b