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#1 2012-07-11 22:01:21

punkalert
Member
Registered: 2012-07-11
Posts: 6

Random crashes when running opengl software

Hi. I'm not too sure where to start, as this issue seems to be hard to get at.

Basically, i will be using my computer to browse, play music, watch films etc. It all does this fine with no problems... but whenever i launch a game (something using opengl, it appears) the system will randomly lock up and become unusable requiring a hard shutdown.

The games i have experienced this with:
*minetest
*sauerbraten
*redeclipse
*supertuxkart
*openarena

Sometimes the game will run absolutely fine for several hours before locking up the computer, other times it will happen within 30 seconds. There does not seem to be any logical reason for this. The annoying thing is that i cannot find any problems/messages in any log files (at least were i have looked so far).

Any ideas? I'm completely lost.

I have a feeling it may be something to do with either a kernel update or the nvidia driver, but i'm not entirely sure where to start to find what is causing it. As far as i recall this has been happening for over a month now.

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#2 2012-07-11 22:37:40

Terminator
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2012-05-07
Posts: 265

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Maybe your video card (or cpu) is overheating?

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#3 2012-07-11 23:19:21

punkalert
Member
Registered: 2012-07-11
Posts: 6

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Terminator wrote:

Maybe your video card (or cpu) is overheating?

Hi. I wouldn't have thought so, there isn't any visible dust inside any of the fans or anything.
Although, i can load flash applications in the browser which (typically) generate heat and do other things where the whole computer gets rather hot, but the only time it will crash/lockup is while running one of these games.

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#4 2012-07-15 19:50:36

Snakes
Member
Registered: 2011-02-14
Posts: 9

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I think I'm having a similar issue. It started about a week ago. I'm using the proprietary nvidia driver.

Whenever I play games, my system locks up, and it's very random. It happened with native games and games running in Wine.

It's a very weird behavior. I'm playing a game, and then my input (keyboard and mouse) lock up, and a second later, the sound enters a loop. I can't switch between TTYs, I can't kill the game nor X, all I'm left with is a reboot (I log in through ssh to reboot the machine, so it doesn't completely freeze).

I made a few tests today. I got into QuakeWorld and the GPU barely got to 58*C and the input froze, I was about 40 seconds in the game. I did some benchmarking for the GPU for about 15 minutes, I got it up to 75*C and nothing happened. When playing games, the GPU hardly gets over 62*C, so I don't think the heat is the problem.

I couldn't find a similar issue over bug trackers here on Arch, nvidia or Xorg. I don't even know what to report, the logs show nothing.

Have you tried downgrading xorg, nvidia and/or switch nvidia with nouveau?

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#5 2012-07-18 01:23:37

DimeShake
Member
Registered: 2010-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Snakes, I am having the same issue.  I play a lot of TF2 under Wine, and the same thing is happening.  I'll play for a few minutes, and then input is lost.  Game continues for a few seconds until audio begins looping.  At this point, I'm unable to alt-tab, or do anything to fix the issue with normal windowmanager commands.  No input appears to be accepted by X.

Alt+SysRQ+R and then Alt+SysRq+B kills X, and I can run xinit again, and all seems normal.  I'm not sure what's going on, and nothing shows up in logs.  Just thought you should know that I'm seeing the same thing.

You must echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq for the SysRq key combinations to work.

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#6 2012-07-18 03:06:20

DimeShake
Member
Registered: 2010-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Fixed by adding 'nomodeset' to kernel boot line.  I had it in there for a long time before, but recently removed it.  Go figure.

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#7 2012-07-18 17:04:12

Snakes
Member
Registered: 2011-02-14
Posts: 9

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

DimeShake wrote:

Fixed by adding 'nomodeset' to kernel boot line.  I had it in there for a long time before, but recently removed it.  Go figure.

I played an hour straight without any problems. It sure seems like it's fixed. Thanks, DimeShake!

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#8 2012-07-20 08:57:38

canilol
Member
Registered: 2011-06-16
Posts: 2

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I'm having the same issues using the proprietary nvidia driver. Unfortunately adding 'nomodeset' to the kernel boot line doesn't fix the issue. I also checked the logs for any errors but everything seems ok ;/

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#9 2012-07-23 01:19:02

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Hi,

I just wanted to add that I have the same problem.
Same symptoms as the thread starter.
Normal activities like surfing, chatting, listening to music, programming, watching movies (using vdpau) etc. never cause any problems.
However, games cause my system to lock up.

These are the games I play, that frequently cause this problem:

* Regnum Online
* Red Eclipse

The crashes can in some rare cases occur directly when starting the game (when initializing the OpenGL context?) but mostly I can play for longer periods of times.
It seems like Red Eclipse causes the system to lock up faster than Regnum Online.
In Regnum Online I can in best cases play for hours without any lockup, but in Red Eclipse I am lucky to play 30 min without any lockup.

In both cases the screen freezes, audio loops and the system won't take any input.
I can SSH to the computer and kill the game and init 3 followed by init 5 to get back to normal.
Nothing in logs, no high CPU usage for a certain process, etc.

This is what I've tried in order to troubleshoot the problem:

* Monitoring the temperatures and voltages in realtime using lm_sensors, everything is stable and well below the high thresholds for both CPU and GPU.
* Left Unigine Heaven running for 30 minutes, all maxed, while compiling Qt with -j 12 on the side... temperatures are still stable and no lockups occurs
* Ran memtest86 for 1.5 hours, no errors and no lockups
* I use a dual monitor setup, I have tried plugging out the second monitor but no change
* Installed latest NVidia beta drivers, no change

My RL friend who is also using Arch Linux with an NVidia GPU (although we are using different models) has exactly the same problems as me.
These lockups do not occur for him on Windows while playing Red Eclipse, I don't have Windows installed so I can't test.

I am using "nomodeset" on my kernel line since before, so unfortunately that fix does not work for me.

My specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz
GPU: Zotac GTX 460 AMP!
MEM: G.Skill 8GB 1600MHz CL 6
HDD: Intel 520 SSD 120GB
PSU: Corsair AX750

I'll try to troubleshoot this problem further and post here if I find any clue or solution.

Last edited by Znurre (2012-07-23 01:19:27)

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#10 2012-07-23 01:55:36

DimeShake
Member
Registered: 2010-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I did have another crash, even after re-adding nomodeset to the boot options.  Appears there's something else amiss.

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#11 2012-07-24 13:43:20

Snakes
Member
Registered: 2011-02-14
Posts: 9

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Yep, definitely not fixed. Today, I played some QuakeWorld again and during a duel, the input froze. Only this time the sound didn't loop. I could hear the other player running around the map, he even killed me two times and the scoreboard appeared, so everything was OK except for the input not responding.

Using nvidia driver 302.17-4 with 3.4.6-1-ARCH kernel. The video card model is a 2008 (I think) 9500GT.

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#12 2012-07-24 16:52:43

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Just adding some more observations.

* Tried disabling NX/XD-Bit (NoeXecute/eXecuteDisable) in BIOS, as suggested by the Gentoo Wiki entry for the NVidia driver.
* Installed and tried running the games using linux-lts.

Neither of above steps made any difference.
It also seems as if the freeze I experience in Regnum Online is different from the Red Eclipse one.
Red Eclipse only freezes X, and the computer remains responsive to ping and SSH.
Regnum Online freezes the computer completely.
In both cases nothing is found in logs or dmesg and temperatures and voltages are all stable.

In my old computer build I had a faulty NVidia card.
The symptoms then were fairly similar, however with the difference that the freezes were way more frequent and would occur randomly even when not doing anything graphically heavy.
In those cases, NVRM: Xid followed by an error code would appear in dmesg.

Due to these symptoms being absent this time I rule out faulty hardware being the problem.

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#13 2012-07-24 19:06:05

Morrad
Member
Registered: 2012-01-18
Posts: 54

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I'm not sure if this is the issue you are experiencing, since you don't say that you are having excessive CPU load, but I haven't seen anyone mention checking that compositing is turned off.

With it on, I will occasionally have games crash or slow to an exceedingly low frame rate (something like 1 FPS or less).  The sound would continue as normal, but the game would progress frame by frame (if you would normally get something like 100 FPS, the game is progressing at 1% speed at 1 FPS).  No error logs would be produced, but the CPU usage of X11 would spike.

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#14 2012-07-24 19:41:49

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Compositing is turned off in my case.

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#15 2012-07-24 22:21:50

Snakes
Member
Registered: 2011-02-14
Posts: 9

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I run a very basic Awesome WM setup. No compositing.

Another thing I am noticing is that this input freeze seems to occur only on some games. The first time it happened was when I was playing Portal 2 in Wine. Today I've played half an hour of QuakeWorld (using native Linux client) and it happened again. I then played about 3 consecutive hours of Mass Effect 3 in Wine and it was all fine.
I can't tell for sure if this is really affecting some games, because it's too random.

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#16 2012-07-28 22:16:47

skython
Member
Registered: 2012-03-03
Posts: 5

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Same problem here, tried 'nomodeset' without luck. It happens in many games. First the keyboard & mouse input freezes and then after about 10sec everything else freezes (sound & video) of the game. But not Teamspeak3 running in the background though, i can still keep on talking but I'm blind and keyboard input is ignored.

Those SysRq commands help alot, thanks DimeShake, but its Alt+SysRq+K to kill all processes including X of the current login shell, not Alt+SysRq+B which does reboot instantly. After killing X the screen goes blank, but that's no problem, changing to the first shell with Alt+Ctrl+F1, pressing Ctrl+c and running last command which is startx fixes that and no reboot is needed.

Edit:
These crashes seem to have side-effects to other running X instances. I had another X-Server running with another user when the crash occured. I restarted my X session as mentioned about with the SysRq commands and then realized that the other X instance was still running. I could still switch to the other X session but it was kinda frozen too, I could only move the mouse cursor around but couldn't do interactions or keyboard input. Btw I'm running a simple openbox desktop without any compositing.

Last edited by skython (2012-07-28 22:37:55)

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#17 2012-07-30 17:28:20

Morrad
Member
Registered: 2012-01-18
Posts: 54

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Snakes wrote:

I run a very basic Awesome WM setup. No compositing.

I believe you, but wanted to note that just because you are running a simple WM doesn't mean compositing isn't still on.

I run xmonad myself, but I forgot that I still had compositing turned on to make my urxvt terminals semi-transparent.

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#18 2012-08-19 22:36:12

skython
Member
Registered: 2012-03-03
Posts: 5

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

For some reason the problem in my Archlinux is gone and everything works for about a week or two now.

But a friend of mine is having exactly the same problem with ubuntu right now. Same Nvidia driver version.

Did a kernel or xorg update resolve the problem? I don't know! Let me know if you are still having this issue.


[Update]
Crashed twice today sad I wonder why it worked perfectly for over a week.

Last edited by skython (2012-08-21 15:50:46)

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#19 2012-08-20 18:26:24

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I still have the issue.
It even happened this weekend in Gwenview, which only uses basic OpenGL for fullscreen animations hmm
I haven't had much time to troubleshoot the issue further.

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#20 2012-08-28 00:07:25

Falcata
Member
From: Michiana
Registered: 2008-01-23
Posts: 501
Website

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I have this issue with both bastion and the various different open source clients for Second Life.

What I've determined is that the freeze is, 99% of the time, triggered by mouse movement while the left button is held down.  Bastion uses mouse-directed movement, so it triggers the freeze very quickly.  Second Life clients use something called "alt camming", where you press alt and hold down the mouse to focus the camera on a point and move it around.  Most of the games mentioned above seem to support this, as they involve periods where you are moving the mouse around (like unloading full-auto on your machine gun).

It appears to come and go from time to time, though I notice higher incidents when using a custom kernel that has a different version from the stock kernels.  The fact that graysky likes to use kernel versions ahead of arch's stock kernel in his Linux-CK repository is a point of irritation for me because of this.


As far as what the other variables to this bug are, I'm not sure.  I do recall an incident where I had one OpenGL app open on each screen (running two monitors under nvidia twinview) and when the freeze occured, the one on the secondary monitor kept running like nothing happened (though mouse and keyboard input were still frozen).

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#21 2012-09-01 10:33:11

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

Interesting theory Falcata, I think you might be right about that.

I tried installing the latest beta of Kubuntu 12.10 and I can confirm the issue exists there as well.
However, if all Linux users would experience this problem it would have been more widely known.
I don't find many similar problem descriptions from google searches.

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#22 2012-09-01 19:00:32

vernonrj
Member
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 7

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I have the same problem. I'm running a nvidia Geforce 8400GT with the proprietary driver, and I get these lockups playing redeclipse.
I think that these games take all keyboard and mouse input by default, so input is not frozen, it's just not really going anywhere we can see.
Also, when I freeze, my processors seem to drop to idle speeds, so maybe the game is crashing without giving input and output back to the X server?

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#23 2012-09-01 19:26:15

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

When these freezes occurs and you connect to your computer using SSH you can see that the process (redeclipse in this case) is still running.
Restarting X won't work until the process is killed.

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#24 2012-09-01 22:04:35

Znurre
Member
Registered: 2012-07-23
Posts: 11

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I tried updating my BIOS since there were several updates available, all saying "stability fixes".
No luck, still having the same problem.

What I noticed though is that I got entries in my Xorg log file this time.
Might be due to an Xorg update.

[   243.656] [mi] EQ overflowing.  Additional events will be discarded until existing events are processed.
[   243.656] 
[   243.656] Backtrace:
[   243.657] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x560366]
[   243.658] 1: /usr/bin/X (mieqEnqueue+0x26b) [0x54161b]
[   243.658] 2: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x47f92) [0x447f92]
[   243.658] 3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so (0x7feb11890000+0x5f74) [0x7feb11895f74]
[   243.658] 4: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x6efd7) [0x46efd7]
[   243.658] 5: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x93370) [0x493370]
[   243.658] 6: /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x7feb18824000+0xf170) [0x7feb18833170]
[   243.658] 7: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (nanosleep+0x10) [0x7feb17766dd0]
[   243.658] 8: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (usleep+0x34) [0x7feb1778f7f4]
[   243.658] 9: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4f4d73) [0x7feb128cfd73]
[   243.658] 10: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4f5f46) [0x7feb128d0f46]
[   243.658] 11: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4fad9c) [0x7feb128d5d9c]
[   243.658] 12: /usr/bin/X (_CallCallbacks+0x34) [0x438c84]
[   243.658] 13: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x2f64b) [0x42f64b]
[   243.658] 14: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x34531) [0x434531]
[   243.658] 15: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x23615) [0x423615]
[   243.658] 16: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7feb176d0725]
[   243.658] 17: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x238ed) [0x4238ed]
[   243.658] 
[   243.658] [mi] These backtraces from mieqEnqueue may point to a culprit higher up the stack.
[   243.658] [mi] mieq is *NOT* the cause.  It is a victim.
[   244.238] [mi] EQ overflow continuing.  100 events have been dropped.
[   244.238] 
[   244.238] Backtrace:
[   244.238] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x560366]
[   244.238] 1: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x47f92) [0x447f92]
[   244.238] 2: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so (0x7feb11890000+0x5f74) [0x7feb11895f74]
[   244.238] 3: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x6efd7) [0x46efd7]
[   244.238] 4: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x93370) [0x493370]
[   244.238] 5: /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x7feb18824000+0xf170) [0x7feb18833170]
[   244.238] 6: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (nanosleep+0x10) [0x7feb17766dd0]
[   244.238] 7: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (usleep+0x34) [0x7feb1778f7f4]
[   244.238] 8: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4f4dfa) [0x7feb128cfdfa]
[   244.238] 9: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4f5f46) [0x7feb128d0f46]
[   244.238] 10: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7feb123db000+0x4fad9c) [0x7feb128d5d9c]
[   244.238] 11: /usr/bin/X (_CallCallbacks+0x34) [0x438c84]
[   244.238] 12: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x2f64b) [0x42f64b]
[   244.238] 13: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x34531) [0x434531]
[   244.238] 14: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x23615) [0x423615]
[   244.238] 15: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7feb176d0725]
[   244.238] 16: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x238ed) [0x4238ed]
[   244.238] 
[   244.637] [mi] Increasing EQ size to 512 to prevent dropped events.
[   244.637] [mi] EQ processing has resumed after 197 dropped events.
[   244.637] [mi] This may be caused my a misbehaving driver monopolizing the server's resources.

If this has anything to do with this problem we might have another lead now.
What I also noticed is that my last freeze did not occur while holding any mouse button, I did have a key pressed though.

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#25 2012-09-02 03:12:54

Snakes
Member
Registered: 2011-02-14
Posts: 9

Re: Random crashes when running opengl software

I think it's related to the nvidia driver. I had downgraded to nvidia 295.59 for a month and everything was good. Now, after upgrading to nvidia 304.43-1, I started getting hung-ups again.

To those who are using the SysRQ method described by DimeShake, I recommend that you start the game in its own X server, so that when you kill it, you don't shut down your programs as well: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ga … e_X_server

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