Nouveau Nvidia driver makes the system freeze? [Was: Grub menu not displayed]

[Tanguy LE CARROUR <tanguy@bioneland.org>]

Hi David,


Quoting David Lecompte (2022-01-25 12:38:02)
> Le lundi 24 janvier 2022 à 08:46 +0100, Tanguy LE CARROUR a écrit :
> > Everything works as expected on my Thinkpad T200. The problem is with
> > my
> > Viking D8… that uses the nVIDIA driver! Do you think it could be
> > related?
> 
> I am using a Vikings D8 with Trisquel 9 + Guix and Debian 11 + Guix, I
> can see Grub menu but only in text
> mode. https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/kcma-d8.html says only text-
> mode is known to work (my D8 has coreboot but I suppose the problem is
> the same). I have a GeForce GT-710 but I suspect that it isn't used at
> the time Grub is loaded. Vikings told me a non-free blob would be
> needed to have graphical GRUB display.
> 
> In Trisquel, I had set GRUB_TERMINAL=console in /etc/default/grub.
> 
> In Debian, I did not set anything manually, I don't know how text mode
> is selected.

Good to know. Thanks for sharing! Good thing is that I'm perfectly OK living
with GRUB's text mode! :-)


> By the way, with nouveau I have regular system freezes with Trisquel 9
> (logs show issues with stack in nouveau, can happen more than once a
> day), while with Debian 11 and Mate, I only rarely (once a month or
> less) have the Mate session disconnected (apparently, X server was
> restarted).
> 
> Perhaps this wasn't the main question, but in case it could help.

Indeed, it's not related to this question, but it's totally related to
my next one! :-)

[…updating the thread's subject…]

I've had the very same "system freezes" problem since the very beginning
(I'm using Bspwm window manager on a Guix System, btw).
It mostly happens when I'm using graphical applications: Libreoffice, Grisbi and
Icecat on some JS-heavy pages (visiting Gitlab issues, most of the time).

When it freezes, I cannot switch to a different workspace and the
applications on the current workspace stop responding… but the pointer
moves normally and music keeps on playing for a few minutes.

I don't know if it's possible to disable Nouveau entirely or to use the
proprietary/evil driver, just to make sure Nouveau actually causes the issue.

Even if it only happens 2 or 3 times a month, any fix would be welcome!

Regards,

-- 
Tanguy