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#1 2018-05-20 12:12:46

Flarch
Member
Registered: 2018-05-20
Posts: 4

xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

Hi,

after updating xorg-server, xorg-server-common and xorg-server-xvfb (1.19.6+13+gd0d1a694f-2 => 1.20.0-2) xorg is not usable anymore ending up in an unusable system without GUI. The only chance is to downgrade back to xorg-server prior to 1.20. This case seems to be the actual worst case for many users since a few days. I'm disappointed that there is no hint and help for someone who has to deal with a Linux distro that can't be used after a simple software update of some central packages anymore.

My solution can't be a solution for a long time to keep these packages downgraded always getting this warning of pacman that some packages are ignored. We need either another version of xorg-server or an updated driver for nvidia-340xx users like me having an old but good Geforce 8800GT that only can be used with this legacy 340xx driver since a few years.

Is there any help in sight and/or does someone know anything about planned updates coming too late but perhaps helping not only a few users like me having to use the legacy nvidia-340xx driver?

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#2 2018-05-20 13:40:18

hamelg
Member
From: France
Registered: 2008-06-19
Posts: 128

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

Until nvidia provides an update to fix this issue, block the xserver* packages in your /etc/pacman.conf [1]  or switch to the nouveau driver [2].

[1]
# https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … 3/#5260453
# https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=237045
# https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do … k_id=58660
IgnorePkg    = xorg-server*

[2]
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nouveau

Last edited by hamelg (2018-05-20 16:11:35)

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#3 2018-05-20 13:55:19

Flarch
Member
Registered: 2018-05-20
Posts: 4

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

I won't switch to the nouveau driver and I'm astonished that there was no announcement! There are many users affected and confronted with a system with no usable GUI. The normal Arch Linux way would/should be that there is dropped a notice in the news feed at least. Downgrading and blocking some packages is a short time soulution.

The devtalk doesn't promise that the nvidia-340xx driver gets updated or fixed. In other words: users with an old graphics card like me are kicked out without any alternative, that really is not the Arch way!

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#4 2018-05-20 14:02:33

ua4000
Member
Registered: 2015-10-14
Posts: 402

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

I would liked to have an info at https://www.archlinux.org/news/ before updating to xorg 1.2.

On the other hand, I learned
* how to force grub boot without gui (lxdm.service repeatly sets focus on vt 1, making it impossisble to use vt 2)
* find the xorg logs the first time :-)
* understanding ABI mismatch and try ineffective rollback of nvidia 340 package
* learning xorg is the relevant one ... but nivida company is the f****** one

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#5 2018-05-20 14:04:11

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,425

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

The devtalk says that the glvnd implementation isn't guaranteed to be implemented, they will likely provide a fix down the line even without implementing glvnd. Also that people with old hardware are kicked to the wayside because of modern software stack incompatibilities is normal. Catalyst users have had this "problem" for ages. The alternative is to install nouveau, which has seen many improvements and might be a usable replacement for old cards like these,  or an older xorg for the time being.

I do agree with the notion that it would've been nice to have an announcement, but we haven't had that for similar breakages with the nvidia modules.

Last edited by V1del (2018-05-20 14:04:45)

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#6 2018-05-20 14:09:20

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

What kind of alternative would you imagine?

The driver is ABI incompatible and closed source, so the obvious alternatives are the ones mentioned by hamelg.
Since you seem to be in possession of a more sophisticated alternative, you might want to share it.

Also, and just ftr, Aaron indeed *does* promise that "Yes, we'll get one out eventually." in the devtalk - in reply to "any hope of a 340.xxx release with xorg 1.20 support"
How you come to a deviating conclusion is beyond me.

Edit: typo. Also half-ninja'd by v1del.

Last edited by seth (2018-05-20 14:10:18)

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#7 2018-05-20 16:13:06

julesm
Member
Registered: 2014-07-29
Posts: 70

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

I don't think switching to nouveau is a solution. I use nouveau (not nvidia) and the latest xorg-server update broke my system as well. I downgraded and told pacman to ignore xorg-server updates until a fix is available. I know this is a nvidia thread but wanted to say that this seems to be a wider issue with xorg - and isn't just limited to the nvidia driver...

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#8 2018-05-20 16:22:48

hamelg
Member
From: France
Registered: 2008-06-19
Posts: 128

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

Arch maintainers, please post an announcement on the arch news RSS feeds about this issue.

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#9 2018-05-20 18:23:24

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,425

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

If you have issues with xf86-video-nouveau try removing it to use the modesetting driver, afaik there hasn't yet been a formal release of xf86-video-nouveau yet

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#10 2018-05-20 18:40:34

TheChickenMan
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2015-07-25
Posts: 354

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

For several years I hadn't had any real issues with nvidia drivers causing the system to malfunction like this. Recently though, there have been a number of updates which have caused either major performance regressions or inability to boot to desktop. I'm not sure where this is coming from and what's causing the recent issues but at the very least updates which might cause such severe issues should be cautioned in the news feed so they can be avoided until they're ready for production use.


If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Niels Bohr

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#11 2018-05-20 18:49:36

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

The performance issues - most likely - came from the meltdown/spectre clusterfuck (which "surprisingly" affected GPUs as much as CPUs)
That's much different from the topic of this thread (the legacy driver is ABI incompatible w/ the latest Xorg server).

Other than this, PSA:

Everytime you update something™ that might have some™ consequence unwanted by you™.

If you're not able to deal with this, you're using the wrong distro. Arch is bleeding edge and rolling release. Not debian stable with years of integration tests. (And even they were affected by the meltdown/spectre crap, because it caught everyone, but maybe the NSA, off guard)

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#12 2018-05-20 19:06:03

TheChickenMan
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2015-07-25
Posts: 354

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

seth wrote:

The performance issues - most likely - came from the meltdown/spectre clusterfuck (which "surprisingly" affected GPUs as much as CPUs)
That's much different from the topic of this thread (the legacy driver is ABI incompatible w/ the latest Xorg server).

I'm aware that they were different issues and that things can break. I was just commenting about how it's seemed like there have been more ( video related ) issues in the past 4-5 months than I have had in the past 4-5 years before then in Arch, at least that affected my systems. I use Arch not because things don't break because that happens in every distro but because at least with Arch those breakages are generally easier to fix. If something serious breaks in Debian you might as well wipe it and start again.

Anyway, not to get too much off topic...
Just figured I would post a list of package reversions
which were necessary ( for me ) to get back in business.
In case someone finds it helpful.

warning: gnome-calendar: ignoring package upgrade (3.28.1-1 => 3.28.2-1)
warning: gnome-shell: ignoring package upgrade (3.28.1-1 => 3.28.2-1)
warning: lib32-nvidia-utils: ignoring package upgrade (390.48-1 => 396.24-2)
warning: linux: ignoring package upgrade (4.16.7-1 => 4.16.9-1)
warning: linux-headers: ignoring package upgrade (4.16.7-1 => 4.16.9-1)
warning: linux-lts: ignoring package upgrade (4.14.39-2 => 4.14.41-1)
warning: linux-lts-headers: ignoring package upgrade (4.14.39-2 => 4.14.41-1)
warning: mutter: ignoring package upgrade (3.28.1-1 => 3.28.2-1)
warning: nvidia: ignoring package upgrade (390.48-13 => 396.24-3)
warning: nvidia-lts: ignoring package upgrade (1:390.48-3 => 1:396.24-1)
warning: nvidia-settings: ignoring package upgrade (390.48-1 => 396.24-1)
warning: nvidia-utils: ignoring package upgrade (390.48-1 => 396.24-1)
warning: xorg-server: ignoring package upgrade (1.19.6+13+gd0d1a694f-2 => 1.20.0-2)
warning: xorg-server-common: ignoring package upgrade (1.19.6+13+gd0d1a694f-2 => 1.20.0-2)
warning: xorg-server-xwayland: ignoring package upgrade (1.19.6+13+gd0d1a694f-2 => 1.20.0-2)

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Niels Bohr

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#13 2018-05-20 19:11:22

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,195

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

hamelg wrote:

Arch maintainers, please post an announcement on the arch news RSS feeds about this issue.

Are you sure any of the relevant package maintainers read the forums.  As the packages are now out of testing usual policy is its already done so too late for an announcement.

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#14 2018-05-21 09:31:28

RalphCorderoy
Member
Registered: 2017-01-25
Posts: 27

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

loqs wrote:
hamelg wrote:

Arch maintainers, please post an announcement on the arch news RSS feeds about this issue.

Are you sure any of the relevant package maintainers read the forums.  As the packages are now out of testing usual policy is its already done so too late for an announcement.

It's not too late for an announcement since it would have prevented me breaking this 340xx machine this morning.

Back in February I complained about the lack of announcement when 304xx's change caused similar problems.  https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=234066
Is it nvidia-package maintainers in particular that are shy about making announcements?  I'd have thought this is exactly the kind of thing it's for.

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#15 2018-05-21 10:25:30

Flarch
Member
Registered: 2018-05-20
Posts: 4

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

I can confirm that I'm an Arch user with years of practical experience. The questionis is and remains: what solution exists for someone like me using an GeForce 8800GT and having to use nvidia-340xx? Downgrading and holding these 3 packages away from being updated only is a temporary solution. I tried the nouveau driver some months ago but it really is not comparable for playing videos and using multimedia stuff with the nvidia one, much too slow and poor performance. So let me ask: does this mean being kicked out with such an old graphics chip because nvidia isn't interested in updating the legacy driver? I have to repeat: changing to nouveau is a no go for me!

Thanks!

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#16 2018-05-21 10:32:22

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

Your core assumption is bull... "false", this *is* a temporary condition and your "demand" has been addressed before, see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 6#p1786476
But I'll stress it: you can either stall updates until there's a compatible driver or abandon the nvidia blob. There is no third alternative.

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#17 2018-05-22 05:55:50

zeroflag
Member
From: Europe
Registered: 2012-05-09
Posts: 18

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

seth wrote:

There is no third alternative.

Actually, as said above, there is no alternative at all. The only "solution" is just a workaround of not upgrading to xorg-server 1.20. The nouveau driver (1.0.15-3) is affected in the same way as the nvidia binary blobs.

Flarch wrote:

The normal Arch Linux way would/should be that there is dropped a notice in the news feed at least.

Surely, it may come easy to blame the Arch developers for not testing properly, but to be honest, such expectation is ridiculous considering the fact that there exists such a vast range of hardware available. And I am saying this as the one affected as well.

A side note: Back in the days, I used ATi cards. After the company was acquired by Radeon (now part of AMD), the Linux support became terrible (it is much better now, though). So naturally, I began to buy NVidia cards. Ironically, the time changed... again... Be like water my friend.

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#18 2018-05-22 06:07:11

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

You do not need xf86-video-nouveau (but can use the modesetting driver) and the nouveau kernel module should certainly not be affected by this userspace change.

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#19 2018-05-24 10:55:47

Phoenix.Burns
Member
Registered: 2016-02-27
Posts: 1

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

This is getting ridiculous.  Not long after the Linux/nvida war started this kind of thing is happening all the time.  Is the development of Linux going to start forcing nvidia users out and over to Miserablesoft Winloads?  I've been using Linux for 23 years now and I hate to think that I have to go back.  No, nouveau is not an option for me either.

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#20 2018-05-24 11:07:14

WorMzy
Forum Moderator
From: Scotland
Registered: 2010-06-16
Posts: 11,787
Website

Re: xorg-server 1.20 breaks nvidia-340xx (340.106)

I think we are done here. The options available to affected users have been well documented, and this is descending into little more than rants at this point.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … cs.2Frants

Closing.


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