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Fwd: Re: several SIGSEGV bugs in debian 7/AMD64

Hi Adrian,


Thanks for your quick answer,… but (sounds like a pouting little boy, I
know):
Sorry, but I cannot file a bug report against, say, nvidia-glx, because
it is most likely not the cause.  The problem is far more likely kernel
3.x- and/or gcc-related, and I need somebody who knows more intimate
workings of debian 7 before I can file a bug report to the correct
topic/person:

–– newer BIOS for my machine does not exist.  Current/last is from
2009.  And, like I wrote, it works perfectly with debian 6 (kernel 2.6)
or winXP/win7.  *without* *any* problems. And I don't exactly care if
APM/ACPI standards have changed in the meantime.  Debian used to be
backward-compatible to even twenty-years-old hardware and their specs.

–– no capacitor or other hardware related issues.  Cannot be, also,
because things would shred under debian 6 and winXP/win7, too, which
they don't.  Things are a bit older, but tended well to.

–– with NVidia modules tailor-made and compiled for the running kernel
by the installer, the current X screen (the tty "behind" it) shows
SIGSEGV and dump notes with/from/by several system librares.  I'll see
if I can find a way to send you a screendump/log-extract.

–– with kernel *2.6* on debian 6, this does not happen, while I use
exactly the same settings, libraries, modules, and X modules (well, libs
with a smaller sub-version number).  With debian 6 using a 3.x kernel,
*the same* happens as I described here for debian 7.  Debian 6 and 2.6
kernel run perfectly.  Hence, my indirect question if there is an
official 2.6 kernel for debian 7.  I don't want to experiment with the
2.6 sources on an "unknown" and differently behaving operating system
myself, and I don't know if it even would run without compiling the
whole 7 distro from scratch again.

Please do not tell me "heck, just buy a more modern gfx card or a whole
new machine, will you", because that wouldn't accomplish anything.  I
need the old ones.  And debian once was a distribution that ran on
everything from oldest to newest.

Regards,
rekuli




On 28.12.2013 07:56, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

 Hello Rene!

 On 12/28/2013 08:40 AM, René Kuligowski wrote:


 concerning: older AMD64 computers + 3.x kernel,
              X11 + native NVidia drivers + FVWM or WMII,
              and some other SIGSEGV'ing apps


 This is too unspecific, unfortunately. You should file a bug report for
 each machine and each problem you encounter.

 For example, when you see crashes of the nVidia driver with one of your
 machine, file a bug against the "nvidia-glx" package providing the exact
 hardware configuration you have. The tool "reportbug" will allow you to
 create a template to write a bug report and you can find more
 information here [1].



 I am using an older AMD64 AthlonXP Core 2 3800+, accompanied by 8GB DDR2
 RAM, on an Asus M2NPV-VM mainboard, which features a nForce4 430 chipset
 with integrated NV6150 GPU, and use an additional PCIe NV9500GS GPU.


 Before looking closer at the software, have you checked the hardware
 itself? The capacitors on hardware of that age are very prone to
 failure, see [2].



 ––  I have disabled PowerNow in the mainboard's BIOS, and the 3.2 kernel
 complains about missing ACPI ("try with newer BIOS").  The kernel
 doesn't even recognize the power-off button.  In debian 6, ACPI works
 absolutely perfectly.


 Well, did you actually try a newer BIOS? ACPI tables which are part of
 the mainboard BIOS are very often broken or incorrect. There are tools
 which are table to verify the ACPI implementation of your BIOS [3].

 Newer BIOS version often fix or at least improve the ACPI tables.



      When I use the Novula kernel module, things are extremely slow, even
 in 2D mode;


 Speed is very subjective in this regard, but nouveau is certainly slower
 than the binary driver by nVidia. This is known and lies in the nature
 of the way this driver has been developed.



 when I use the native NVidia modules (driver packages 304 or
 295 which support both GPUS, or the recent 331, which only supports the
 9500), KDM, FVWM, WMII and a good host of other programs just SIGSEGV or
 put the CPU in an endless loop and blank the screen by using illegal
 video modes.


 Then you should actually file bug reports against "nvidia-glx" providing
 all necessary information like the output of "lspci", "dmesg" and so
 on. You can, for example, write an installation report [4] which
 will do most of that work for you. You just need to fill in the
 missing information about the hardware and what worked and what not.



 Note: this does *not* happen in the i386 port of debian 7, which runs
 smoothly on my Acer AspireOne netbook with native Intel GPU drivers…


 How is this related to any of the problems above? This is a completely
 different hardware. Please file separate bug reports for each problem
 and machine.



    Since there seems to be no 2.6 kernel available anymore, I'll stick
 with debian 6.0.7 for now (by the way, the 6.0.7 security update and the
 6.0.8 have similar issues…).  Please look into this issues and let me
 know if you can fix it somehow.


 Before we can do that, you need to file proper bug reports so that
 maintainers and developers don't have to search the necessary
 information to pin down the origin of your problems. With the current
 information, it's rather like finding a needle in a hay stack.

 Adrian



 [1] http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
 [3] https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/test-acpi
 [4] http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apas04.html.en
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