Every time I kill X, my computer locks up and I have to re-start it. I am using xorg 6.8, but the problem also existed when xfree was installed. The graphics card is a geforce2 and the kernel is 2.6.5. I have no idea what might cause this, and google has turned up a lot about X itself freezing but not much about the computer freezing when killing X. I have not been able to try ssh'ing into it after the freeze, but I don't think I would be able to. All hdd activity stops and it just sits there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Are you using the stock video driver or the one from nVidia?

Baldrick

it is the driver from nvidia

You could try using an older or newer driver to see if that works. Apart from that, try disabling some un-needed services one by one to see if that fixes the problem.

After that, I'm out of ideas at the moment.

edit
It could also be the kernel you are using. Do you have another kernel available?
end edit

Baldrick

i'm sure that its not the version of the kernel; do you think that there are any options in the kernel that I could disable/enable that might affect this?

unfortunately I am at work right now so I can't test all these things, but I want to get a good idea of whats going on because I have several problems on that computer that I plan to solve when I get back tonight.

BTW, what are "HCL Entries"

I see them in the short profiles next under our usernames, to the left of the body of the messages

The kernel bit was an after-thought ... better to be safe than sorry. The HCL entries are Hardware Compatibility List entries. Click on the HCL button under my post to see for yourself.

Baldrick

I had the same problem on Gentoo using Kernel 2.6.8.

Make sure your kernel is setup for 4K stacks and that you are using the 6111+ nVidia driver.

"Make sure your kernel is setup for 4K stacks"

i dont think I know what you mean here, do you think you could explain this a little more?

thanks

When choosing your kernel options in Gentoo, you can turn 4K stack support on or off. (at which point 8K stacks will be used) It's in the 'kernel hacking' section when you do a 'make menuconfig'. See the gentoo installation handbook for more information on how to build the kernel. I think 4K stacks are on by default in the 2.6.X kernel, but don't quote me on this.

If you're emerging the nvidia driver, you'll need v6111 or later, which is currently masked by ~x86. Earlier versions of the nvidia driver, including the unmasked nvidia driver, don't support 4K stacks.

HTH

great, thanks. i will try it out when i get home.


and, I compile my kernel regularly, I guess I just dont look into the kernel hacking stuff that much.

thanks for the help, i will post again tonight or tomorrow with how it went

damn, i made the mistake of killing X over ssh, and now I cant mess with it at work anymore. Anyway, the kernel was already set up properly, so I emerged the newer nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx. Hopefully this will take care of it.