Mint 17.1 / NVIDIA GEForce 200M goes in 'test-like mode' after install

oslucchi · 04-06-2015, 02:24 PM

Hi there
i-m trying to get my GeForce 210M installed on an ACER Aspire to work with latest NVIDIA drivers
This is what i've done:
- purged nvidia*
- purged nouveau
- blacklisted nouveau
- downloaded and installed 340.76 64 bit

Installation went fine but after i restarted mdm the Xserver performs in test-like mode (eg switching every couple seconds between blank screen, black screen, blue screen and horizontal colored stripes)

I tried with older versions (down to 304) of the driver too but the result is always the same...

Anyone has any idea how to fix it?

Thanks for your help

TobiSGD · 04-07-2015, 07:31 AM

Have you created a config file using nvidia-xconfig after you have installed the driver?
Are there error messages in /var/log/Xorg.0.log?

oslucchi · 04-09-2015, 03:00 AM

Hi TobiSGD, thanks for your post and sorry for the late reply.
Please bare with me if my answers are not as complete as you might like. As a disclaimer I'm not an X expert at all....

Answers:
- Yes, i did run the nvidia-xconfig after the install. I actually tried both ways, with and withouh the xorg.conf file generated. Same behavior.
- No evident errors in Xorg

Having said so, the last run was without the xorg.conf file. I noticed couple of things i might need confirmation on:
- It seems like the NVIDIA driver is found and correctly but i also see nouveau been autoconfigured... I thought it was removed

Code:

[   236.535] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[   236.535] 	compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[   236.535] 	Module class: X.Org Server Extension
[   236.535] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module  340.76  Thu Jan 22 11:24:42 PST 2015
[   236.535] Loading extension GLX
[   236.535] (==) Matched nvidia as autoconfigured driver 0
[   236.535] (==) Matched nouveau as autoconfigured driver 1
[   236.535] (==) Matched nvidia as autoconfigured driver 2
[   236.535] (==) Matched nouveau as autoconfigured driver 3
[   236.535] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 4
[   236.535] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 5
[   236.535] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 6
[   236.535] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout
[   236.535] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[   236.535] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[   236.536] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[   236.536] 	compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[   236.536] 	Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[   236.536] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so
[   236.536] (II) Module nouveau: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   236.536] 	compiled for 1.15.1, module version = 1.0.11
[   236.536] 	Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[   236.536] 	ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 15.0

I'm not entirely sure at this point nouveau is removed. I'll try again to purge it when i got access to the machine at home tonight
Yet another statement soon after about the driver loaded which, btw, doesn't seem to support the suite 200M which is what i need (mine is GE240M)

Code:

[   236.537] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver  340.76  Thu Jan 22 11:03:05 PST 2015
[   236.537] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[   236.537] (II) NOUVEAU driver 
[   236.537] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[   236.537] 	RIVA TNT        (NV04)
[   236.537] 	RIVA TNT2       (NV05)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 256     (NV10)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 2       (NV11, NV15)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 4MX     (NV17, NV18)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 3       (NV20)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 4Ti     (NV25, NV28)
[   236.537] 	GeForce FX      (NV3x)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 6       (NV4x)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 7       (G7x)
[   236.537] 	GeForce 8       (G8x)
[   236.537] 	GeForce GTX 200 (NVA0)
[   236.537] 	GeForce GTX 400 (NVC0)

- This is all that i can see about the NVIDIA drivers activation. Unfortunately I'm not great at reading the goodness in it:

Code:

[   236.543] (II) NVIDIA(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
	"Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[   236.543] (==) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (==) framebuffer bpp 32
[   236.543] (==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888
[   236.543] (==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[   236.543] (==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
[   236.544] (**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
[   236.866] (WW) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Failed to enable display hotplug notification
[   236.866] (WW) NVIDIA(0): The EDID read for display device DFP-0 is invalid: the
[   236.866] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     checksum for EDID version 1 is invalid.
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): Raw EDID bytes:
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00  04 72 d0 01 01 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   13 13 01 03 80 33 1d 78  0a ee 95 a3 54 4c 99 26
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0f 50 54 00 00 00 01 01  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   01 01 01 01 01 01 94 34  80 64 70 38 14 40 32 14
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   85 00 02 1f 21 00 00 18  00 00 00 fe 00 45 4c 38
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  20 20 00 00 00 fe 00 41
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   63 65 72 0a 20 20 20 20  20 20 20 20 00 00 00 fe
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 4c 54 4d 32 33 30 48  54 30 31 0a 20 20 00 eb
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.867] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Found DRM driver nvidia-drm (20150116)
[   236.868] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU GeForce GT 240M (GT216) at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU-0)
[   236.868] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 1048576 kBytes
[   236.868] (--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 70.16.19.00.00
[   236.868] (II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GeForce GT 240M at PCI:1:0:0
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0):     DFP-0 (boot, connected)
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: Internal LVDS
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): DFP-0: 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0): Using HorizSync/VertRefresh ranges from the EDID for display
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0):     device DFP-0 (Using EDID frequencies has been enabled on
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0):     all display devices.)
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): No modes were requested; the default mode "nvidia-auto-select"
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0):     will be used as the requested mode.
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select"
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 800 x 600
[   237.917] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device DFP-0's EDID; cannot compute DPI
[   237.917] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     from DFP-0's EDID.
[   237.917] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default

and finally, for my peace of mind, it seems soon after this that all other drivers are unloaded:

Code:

[   237.917] (II) UnloadModule: "nouveau"
[   237.917] (II) Unloading nouveau
[   237.917] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[   237.917] (II) Unloading modesetting
[   237.917] (II) UnloadModule: "fbdev"
[   237.917] (II) Unloading fbdev
[   237.917] (II) UnloadSubModule: "fbdevhw"
[   237.917] (II) Unloading fbdevhw
[   237.917] (II) UnloadModule: "vesa"
[   237.917] (II) Unloading vesa

I hope this could give you more details.
Please do not hesitate to ask for more if that can help the investigation.
-

TobiSGD · 04-09-2015, 04:17 AM

The nouveau driver indeed can be the problem here. Try to blacklist the kernel module of this driver, usually the Nvidia installer does that, but maybe that failed here:

Code:

echo "blacklist nouveau" > /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf

The restart the system and try again.

oslucchi · 04-13-2015, 03:29 AM

Thanks for your hint.
The Nouveau drivers were already blacklisted (i've done in both blacklist.conf and nvidia.conf).
Trying to be even more aggressive i managed to remove them entirely from the system. The problem is still there, hence i will assume going forward that the blacklist action works. Anyway, no more signs of nouveau in the loaded module list:

Code:

[  3013.148] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[  3013.148] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so
[  3013.164] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[  3013.164] 	compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[  3013.164] 	Module class: X.Org Server Extension
[  3013.164] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module  340.76  Thu Jan 22 11:24:42 PST 2015
[  3013.164] Loading extension GLX
[  3013.164] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[  3013.164] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
[  3013.165] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[  3013.165] 	compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[  3013.165] 	Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  3013.165] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver  340.76  Thu Jan 22 11:03:05 PST 2015
[  3013.165] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[  3013.165] (++) using VT number 7

Now some more meat cooked during the weekend.
For lack of clarity my desktop is an Acer Aspire Z5610. The video board has been changed recently because it went burnt. the one mounted now is a GeForce 240M (GT216)

Looking deeper into the Xorg log i found some complains about the EDID file. Here some more details from the log:

Code:

[   236.866] (WW) NVIDIA(0): The EDID read for display device DFP-0 is invalid: the
[   236.866] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     checksum for EDID version 1 is invalid.
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): Raw EDID bytes:
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00  04 72 d0 01 01 00 00 00
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   13 13 01 03 80 33 1d 78  0a ee 95 a3 54 4c 99 26
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0f 50 54 00 00 00 01 01  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   01 01 01 01 01 01 94 34  80 64 70 38 14 40 32 14
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   85 00 02 1f 21 00 00 18  00 00 00 fe 00 45 4c 38
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  20 20 00 00 00 fe 00 41
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   63 65 72 0a 20 20 20 20  20 20 20 20 00 00 00 fe
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 4c 54 4d 32 33 30 48  54 30 31 0a 20 20 00 eb
[   236.866] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
.....
[   236.867] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.867] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Found DRM driver nvidia-drm (20150116)
[   236.868] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU GeForce GT 240M (GT216) at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU-0)
[   236.868] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 1048576 kBytes
[   236.868] (--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 70.16.19.00.00
[   236.868] (II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GeForce GT 240M at PCI:1:0:0
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0):     DFP-0 (boot, connected)
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-0: Internal LVDS
[   236.870] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): DFP-0: 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0): Using HorizSync/VertRefresh ranges from the EDID for display
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0):     device DFP-0 (Using EDID frequencies has been enabled on
[   236.870] (**) NVIDIA(0):     all display devices.)
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): No modes were requested; the default mode "nvidia-auto-select"
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0):     will be used as the requested mode.
[   236.870] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select"
[   236.870] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 800 x 600
[   237.917] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device DFP-0's EDID; cannot compute DPI
[   237.917] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     from DFP-0's EDID.
[   237.917] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default

2 things here:
- The checksum char (128th char in the hexdump above) is indeed wrong. I recalculated it
- it seems like that also the "nvidia-auto-select" does not provides valid modes to fall back to

Using the hexdump above i generated a new edid.bin file, changing the checksum accordingly. Once done i tested with parse-edit and the result is this

Code:

Checksum Correct

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "�@"
	ModelName "�@"
	VendorName "ACR"
	# Monitor Manufactured week 19 of 2009
	# EDID version 1.3
	# Digital Display
	DisplaySize 510 290
	Gamma 2.20
	Option "DPMS" "false"
	Modeline 	"Mode 0" 134.60 1920 1970 1990 2020 1080 1088 1093 1100 -hsync -vsync 
EndSection

At that point, following this link http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php/Config_EDID_nvidia i generated an xorg.conf file using the new custom EDID file. Here is what the tools mentioned in the link before produced:

Code:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 340.76  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-01)  Thu Jan 22 12:12:24 PST 2015

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "CustomEDID" "/etc/X11/edid.bin"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

to be noticed the option "CustomEDID" "/etc/X11/edid.bin" pointing to the file i generated.

Regardles at the next start....:

Code:

[  3013.175] (**) NVIDIA(0): Option "CustomEDID" "/etc/X11/edid.bin"
[  3013.175] (**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
[  3013.528] (WW) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Failed to enable display hotplug notification
[  3013.529] (WW) NVIDIA(0): The EDID read for display device DFP-0 is invalid: the
[  3013.529] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     checksum for EDID version 1 is invalid.
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0): Raw EDID bytes:
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0): 
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00  04 72 d0 01 01 00 00 00
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   13 13 01 03 80 33 1d 78  0a ee 95 a3 54 4c 99 26
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0f 50 54 00 00 00 01 01  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   01 01 01 01 01 01 94 34  80 64 70 38 14 40 32 14
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   85 00 02 1f 21 00 00 18  00 00 00 fe 00 45 4c 38
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  20 20 00 00 00 fe 00 41
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   63 65 72 0a 20 20 20 20  20 20 20 20 00 00 00 fe
[  3013.529] (--) NVIDIA(0):   00 4c 54 4d 32 33 30 48  54 30 31 0a 20 20 00 eb

... and X keep doing the same flashing from withe to gray to striped to black.....

To be noticed (see the red and blu parts) that:
- Starting up X find a reference to the correct EDID file (blu)
- it still complains about the invalid checksum which parse-edid confirmed to be correct in the custom edid.bin file (red)
- the last hex is still eb whilst in the edid.bin file is F2 (red)

Here is an hexdump of custom EDID file:

Code:

osvaldo@malbeca /tmp/XIssue $ od -x edid.bin 
0000000 ff00 ffff ffff 00ff 7204 01d0 0001 0000
0000020 1313 0301 3380 781d ee0a a395 4c54 2699
0000040 500f 0054 0000 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101
0000060 0101 0101 0101 3494 6480 3870 4014 1432
0000100 0085 1f02 0021 1800 0000 fe00 4500 384c
0000120 200a 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 fe00 4100
0000140 6563 0a72 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 fe00
0000160 4c00 4d54 3332 4830 3054 0a31 2020 f200

Now i'm really lost.... Anyone ready to push through some idea to try? Why is X (de-facto) ignoring my custom EDID file and considering one which is evidently wrong? Where is X getting this file from????