Re: X memory problem
On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 11:47:57AM +0200, Marc Leeman wrote:
> The problem: When I am starting my X server with the nvidia module (not
> nv, there I have no problem), I get a green rectangle on my screen. It
> covers everything at that place except my mouse cursor. I log in (KDE
> 2.1.1) and start aviplay (0.53.5) with some movie. The window swallows the
> rectangle and when I stop the player, the rectangle is gone. To my
> experience, I have l lower FPS rate in Quake3 and I am no longer able to
> play avi (DiVX ;-) ) movies anymore using aviplay (I get enormous frame
> losses). This is possible though with the nv module (but no Quake3 of
> course).
I bashed my head against the green rectangle for a few hours (TNT card),
and finally found the answer in a troubleshooting document I found on
irc.openprojects.net, in the #nvidia group from a bot there. Basically,
if you have the nvidia fbconsole compiled into your kernel, bad things
happen.
I don't know about generic vga fbcon; once I discovered this, I just
removed fbcon from my kernel and it works fine (except I have an SMP
machine, and nvidia seems fundamentally incapable of writing a working
non-NT SMP driver).
The stock debian kernel has vga fbcon compiled in, IIRC.
HTH.
> I think it must have something to do with the nvidia driver. This is in
> two parts actually: either there is a bug in the software that only
> happens in a very limited number of cases (distribution/hardware), I and
> just happened to have this, OR the nvidia module uses hardware features
> the nv module doesn't use (hence no problem there).
That's the point of the nvidia corp driver: it does all kinds of funky
undocumented direct hardware access that makes it use less CPU resources
than nv.o, and lets it do 3D acceleration.
--
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Change is inevitable. | A n d r e j M a r j a n
Progress is not. | amarjan@pobox.com
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