blender crashing system after rotation attempt

TheBodziO · 2007-11-01 01:51:17

I've decided to start this thread because after searching for some time and trying to resolve the issue by myself I coudn't get rid of the problem. I've checked both arch forum, arch bug report system and other distros for solution or even a mention of similar problem but I failed to find anything. I'm posting the question here to avoid adding potentialy trivial bug to bug system.

And the problem is:

after starting blender and trying to rotate view in 3d view pane I'm encountering hard system lockup.

By hard lockup I mean a complete freeze both x'es and console. In this state I'm unable to kill x or switch to vt. Even permament keyboard modifiers like numlock don't work. I haven't tried rescuing situation a bit with sysrq but even if I'll succed I'll be stuck with unusable blender which is totally unsatisfying. Logging from remote machine by ssh gave some results but only as for killing blender but are not solution as well.

Lockup occurs only during rotation -- scene rotates a bit (a couple of degrees) and then freezes. I've checked postmortem logs (system, kernel and x -- created with standard system configuration) after these hangs but they didn't indicated anything unusual.

As far as I remember I haven't observed frequent disk activity suggesting memory swapping or high cpu usage though I maid misremembered something.

hardware:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R200 QL [Radeon 8500 LE]

(excerpt from lspci)

On the very same machine I haven't such problems with GeForce 2MX and proprietary drivers.

software:
My system consists of packages from core, community and extra repositories with small addition of custom packages. I don't use testing repo.
Driver is from package xf86-video-ati 6.6.3-3. I'm running kernel 2.6.23 (same situation repeated itself with previous kernels). xorg-server is 1.2.0-5, libgl-dri is 6.5.2-1. xorg.conf is (with exception of monitor, keyboard, fonts and mouse configs):

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen         0 "screen" 0 0
    InputDevice    "mouse" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "keyboard" "CoreKeyboard"
#    Option         "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/bodzio/type1"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/bodzio/ttf"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/bodzio/otf"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/bodzio/dtp-ce"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "drm"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "xtrap"
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "type1"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "radeon"
    Driver      "radeon"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc."
    BoardName   "Radeon R200 QL [Radeon 8500 LE]"
    Option      "AccelMethod" "XAA"
    Option      "AGPMode" "4"
    Option      "AGPFastWrite" "true"
    Option      "EnablePageFlip" "true"
    Option      "ColorTiling" "true"
    Option      "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen"
    Device     "radeon"
    Monitor    "belinea"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Modes     "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

#Section "Extensions"
#    Option    "Composite"    "true"
#EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Group    "video"
    Mode    0660
EndSection

I've tried different versions of blender and both version 2.44 and 2.45 (also from official blender site) were killing my system.

I've tried different combination of settings proposed for people with some problems with radeon acceleration -- no effect. Now I can't remember which settings this were and I'm willing to repeat testings again if somebody steps forward with reasonable proposition.

I haven't observed lockup problems with other gl apps -- notably foobillard among them which uses rotation too. The acceleration alone works.

I haven't and would like to avoid testing driver from testing repository -- I'd like to not to use testing as a personal prefenrence.

I hope that I didn't forget about anything I've checked or tried but if I did I'll be happy to answer additional questions.

Perhaps somebody had similar problem and solved it or can be so kind to suggest some solution. Please advice .

skottish · 2007-11-01 02:43:46

Sadly ATI and Blender on Linux have a long history of not playing well together. I've heard some reports of people having decent success, but mostly horror stories. I'm guessing that your problem is due to that.

TheBodziO · 2007-11-01 14:36:27

skottish wrote:

Sadly ATI and Blender on Linux have a long history of not playing well together. I've heard some reports of people having decent success, but mostly horror stories. I'm guessing that your problem is due to that.

Thanks for your reply! Information that I'm not alone with my problem is valuable too.

TheBodziO · 2007-11-02 19:41:08

Is somebody running blender with similar card?

mrunion · 2007-11-03 13:25:54

Have you tried a static build of Blender instead of a dynamic build?

TheBodziO · 2007-11-07 14:06:07

mrunion wrote:

Have you tried a static build of Blender instead of a dynamic build?

If you're asking about builds that are accessible on blender.org download section, yes. I've tried both statically and dynamically linked versions of blender 2.44 with no success. I'll try 2.45 today's evening (wednesday, 7 XI).

Yesterday I've updated my system with the latest core and community packages. Among them of course new xorg, open ati drivers (xf86-video-ati) and glibc. I hoped that maybe after these changes blender will work. I thought so because of driver updates especially. Unfortunatelly — no success either. Well... one good thing was that I was able to make view rotation a couple degrees more than previously . That's the progress for me .

mrunion · 2007-11-07 14:28:41

That's really odd. I guess you've also posted questions over at blenderartists.org? Maybe someone there knows?

TheBodziO · 2007-11-10 21:48:54

mrunion wrote:

That's really odd. I guess you've also posted questions over at blenderartists.org? Maybe someone there knows?

Nope… I've started from here. Although I think your tip is good. Thanks!

The situation is really odd indeed. One other explanation that comes into my mind is a bad case of hardware incompatibility but it's on the border between logic and hardware voodoo .

antenna · 2007-11-12 14:40:58

I have a FireGL 8800 (essentially Radeon 8500), and get the same exact thing, and have done for about the past year. Definitely an issue with the open drivers there.

Jacek Poplawski · 2007-11-12 14:42:39

Blender works perfectly on Radeon 9800 with DRI.
But this is r300, not r200.
Please post your bug report on https://bugs.freedesktop.org/index.cgi

TheBodziO · 2007-11-12 19:02:36

antenna wrote:

I have a FireGL 8800 (essentially Radeon 8500), and get the same exact thing, and have done for about the past year. Definitely an issue with the open drivers there.

Most probably, yes… especially since it's able to lock up system completely for us.

Thanks for information about your problems with blender! Now I'm more convinced that the problem is not hardware issue.

TheBodziO · 2007-11-12 19:17:27

Jacek Poplawski wrote:

Blender works perfectly on Radeon 9800 with DRI.
But this is r300, not r200.
Please post your bug report on https://bugs.freedesktop.org/index.cgi

That's valuable info too!

I've refrained from filing a bug to freedesktop, since I haven't tested blender from other distros on my hardware. I mean – if other distro running free driver will lock up too then it's most probable driver bug but if not it can lead me to solution. I hope to do as much testing as I can so the devs don't have to waste time for problem that could be trivial or possibly arch bug.

The problem is that currently I'm lacking time badly and I hate to force some people to wait for my replies for long. Anyway if I'll be describing a bug I'll mention informations from this discussion.

But on the bottom line: I have to have running blender! So I'll have!

ArcSer65 · 2008-01-19 03:32:25

Sorry for my english

I have this problem too, but with radeon 9250.

Try run blender from Knoppix-LiveCD (I've use v 5.1 and download blender 2.45 for python 2.4)

In "Ubuntu Gutsy" and "Arch Linux [Core Dump]" blender hang system
in Knoppix works normally, I think that is bug in xorg ati drivers

I'd tried compile 1.3.0 with mesa 6.5.1 in Arch, but it fails.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-11-01 01:51:17

blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#2 2007-11-01 02:43:46

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#3 2007-11-01 14:36:27

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#4 2007-11-02 19:41:08

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#5 2007-11-03 13:25:54

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#6 2007-11-07 14:06:07

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#7 2007-11-07 14:28:41

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#8 2007-11-10 21:48:54

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#9 2007-11-12 14:40:58

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#10 2007-11-12 14:42:39

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#11 2007-11-12 19:02:36

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#12 2007-11-12 19:17:27

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

#13 2008-01-19 03:32:25

Re: blender crashing system after rotation attempt

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