Arch Linux

yossarianuk

Member

Registered: 2007-05-02

Posts: 103

How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

Hi.

Having major issues with the new intel driver.

It crashes randomly  (every day), when it crashes - machine has locked up, I cannot get to console (ctrl+alt+f1, etc), I can see the mouse pointer and move it , but am unable to do anything else.

I have a bug report here

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17123

Does anyone know anything I can do to make it more stable, it is a really important desktop that is our office gateway - crashing is not good.

I have tried nopat and also disabling composite and GLX, still crashes...

The xf86-video-intel-legacy driver was much more stable but it has now gone...

Any one got any ideas ?

Cheers

Miitch

Member

From: Arnhem

Registered: 2009-10-14

Posts: 30

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

You could try the newest intel driver from the aur?
At least that worked for me

---

Thinkpad t400 | t8400 | 4gb ram | 160gb harddisk | x86_64 Arch | Gnome

Ronin-Sage

Member

Registered: 2008-10-24

Posts: 153

Website

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

Ack, I've been having the same problems for about a week now. At first, I thought it was maybe E17(killing X usually worked), but then I noticed another problem: when the crapiness occurs, the input on VCs is...unreliable(only every third or so keystroke is registered).

---

::Personal site::

horgh

Member

Registered: 2009-11-27

Posts: 18

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

You could try the newest intel driver from the aur?
At least that worked for me smile

That seems to work for me too. No crashes yet. Have been using this aur-version for one whole day now.

Edit: A week later now, a few crashes, not nearly as much as it used to happen, but still crashing. Two crashes today. Once the "normal" crash, everthing just suddenly stopped. Another was very strange, screen slowly turned black and that crashed everything. Nothing to do with screensaver I guess, because I was writing all the time when that happened. So, still waiting for better drivers...:/

Last edited by horgh (2009-12-04 11:11:28)

thok

Member

Registered: 2009-02-15

Posts: 8

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

I fear, you will wait in vain for that.

This is my fourth notebook with intel-chipset in about five years and in that whole time I never experienced a driver which was usable. performance has gone from bad to worse with change to UXA acceleration. When I start openarena, it takes about five minutes until whole machine freezes (this is my only way to make the crashes reproducable). On every of my machines for the last years. And every of them had a different chipset.
I get no messages in any log file and the crash is not reproducable but completely random. Sometimes my machine has no crash for two or three weeks and then it crashes about 10 times a day.

Meanwhile I am extremely f*ing annoyed by this f*ing drivers, but there's no alternative, especially not in the segment of subnotebooks.

But, if anyone knows a possibility to get this shitty drivers stable, please let me know.

Btw. on intel GMA945 it worked much better for me with the following lines in your xorg.conf Device section:

Option          "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Option          "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

Give it a try and wait for your next kernel panic

(Sorry for my possibly bad english and also for my cynicism )

Miitch

Member

From: Arnhem

Registered: 2009-10-14

Posts: 30

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

I also use then newest intel driver from the aur.
Works perfectly i have enabled kms maybe that helps you?
And in the newest drivers XAA is disabled so you should try UXA.
Maybe you could read intel-wiki there is a lot of info there

---

Thinkpad t400 | t8400 | 4gb ram | 160gb harddisk | x86_64 Arch | Gnome

Velophile

Member

Registered: 2009-12-15

Posts: 48

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

FWIW I've just started using Arch on my laptop (with intel GMA945) after a year of using Ubuntu on the same machine.  Didn't/don't have any lockup issues in Ubuntu but I do in Arch; I get random lockups and what looks like a crash in xorg, usually I get a warning when the scroll-lock light flashes.

Not been able to spend much time on it but I've got KMS enabled and am using Plymouth during boot, my plan is to try the -ck patched kernel from AUR as there appear to be improvements in the intel code in that kernel.  Failing that, not sure if Ubuntu tweak the driver code so could get the source and build it up.

horgh

Member

Registered: 2009-11-27

Posts: 18

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

I'm still having some problems, not so bad anyway. Now when X crashes it just reloads itself. So some progress is going on with this issue. I'm using newest xorg-server and intel drivers from aur. I also have to enable KMS, that's the only way for me to get the driver to work at all.

Last edited by horgh (2009-12-16 18:38:12)

hokasch

Member

Registered: 2007-09-23

Posts: 1,461

Re: How to make xf86-video-intel Stable (crashing every day now)

While my old laptop with a really dated intel card drove me nuts, I have no stability problems at all with the GMA 4500M HD, Compiz etc enabled. Performance improved with KMS, though. If you have lockup issues with the same chipset, there may as well be other reasons.

Last edited by hokasch (2009-12-16 20:29:40)