Bug#851416: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: CPU cores hang (BUG: soft lockup) until system becomes unusable with Nouveau driver

[Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>]

On 2017-01-14 12:36 -0500, Ethan Blanton wrote:

> Using the nouveau video drivers on a GeForce GT 710 (MSI 1GD3H), my
> system (Xeon e5-2620, x99, 32 GB ECC RAM) will start seeing CPU soft
> lockups until it becomes unusable.  Memtest86+ runs for hours with
> no problems, and I tried using ACPI CPU idle and reducing SATA
> speeds (at the suggestion of a kernel developer) with no effect, but
> switching to the proprietary NVIDIA driver makes the system stable.
> The problem appears to be either in the Nouveau kernel driver or
> Nouveau userspace drivers.

Probably the former.  You could try to disable acceleration (e.g. boot
with nouveau.noaccel=1), but the recommended way is to replace the card
if you want to use free drivers[1].  A Radeon R5 230 should give you
about the same performance (or lack thereof) for the same price as the
GT 710.

Cheers,
       Sven


1. See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98039#c3, for
   instance.