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I've been having a kind of strange problem, hope someone can help me.
I'm using Kubuntu 10.04. When I have a lot of different application windows open, my system seems to reach some sort of limit. After this limit, when I open a new window, it is blank inside... or sometimes black inside. Or sometimes a window will be "frozen" inside, that is, it shows its current contents but does not update them. There are no error messages displayed that I can see.
Sometimes, if I shrink the problematic window/windows, their contents may become visible or refresh. Sometimes, if I close some of the other windows that are open, I can then open new windows. If I reboot my computer, everything is OK...until I have too many windows open again.
It seems like I am running into some sort of limit on some sort of resource that my computer needs to properly display more windows. But I'm not sure what that resource is, or if there's a particular thing that's hogging it. It doesn't seem to be RAM, when I run the 'top' command there seems to be memory free.
It does seem like this is some sort of bug or leak. I feel like I'm using a fairly decent machine and it should be able to open a lot of windows. Used to be able to in the past.
CPU : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
cpu MHz : 2110.945
cache size : 512 KB
MemTotal: 4057720 kB
Video: nVidia GeForce 7300, I think has 4gig VRAM [correction, 512MB DDR]
So my question is: does anyone know why this is happening and how I can fix it? Does it have to do with my video driver, or compiz, or my hardware?
Any help would be appreciated.
Last edited by monkeyman2000; 01-21-2011 at 06:47 PM.
First of all, what applications are running when this happens? How many applications?
For instance, are you running Firefox, AbiWord, and a terminal shell with vi in it (three applications)? This is a really simple setup here, but I imagine 16 apps, or something more intensive in this case.
What desktop environment are you using? Gnome, Xfce, or Kde?
And thirdly, are these graphic applications (even a 3D chess game) that are causing this?
All these can prove really helpful! (In Gnome, sometimes windows fade out to let the user know that they hung--this wouldn't be blanking out, however.)
First of all, what applications are running when this happens? How many applications?
It varies, but I'd say about 10 windows and the problem starts. Would probably include, say, firefox, konsole, abiword, etc.
Quote:
What desktop environment are you using? Gnome, Xfce, or Kde?
KDE, as I mentioned. Version 4.4.5 which is what runs with Kubuntu 10.04.
Quote:
And thirdly, are these graphic applications (even a 3D chess game) that are causing this?
I'm not running anything that I would consider unusual when this happens (like 3D programs, games, Wine, etc.). Just mostly firefox, konsole, chrome, dolphin, okular, etc, gnumeric, fairly standard desktop apps.
Sorry about not noticing KDE. I should have read that. You had also mentioned "kubuntu", which obviously should have said something, but I thought you might have changed environments.
However, your info is helpful, as it allows a detailed look at what is going on. Since you are not trying anything terribly graphics intensive, like playing a 3D game, it sounds like it's how your graphics card is behaving.
Apparently, you need to check the settings on your graphics card and if any modules or drivers for that card are installed correctly, since you did note you have a nvidia card, which might need non-free drivers. Install these through Software Administration.
It sounds like you have adequate memory on both ends (graphical and physical), so I don't think it's an issue of running out of memory...
Assuming you are running the proprietary driver I would look an see if there is an update. If so update and see if the problem gets better. If not find an older version and try that. Those are about the only two ways to eliminate the driver.
What kind of resoution are you running? I am running 1440x900 on a 6600 without issue, so unless you are running a lot higher resolution I would suspect that you have plenty of video ram.
Take a look a the video card with the machine off and make sure that the cooling is not full of stuff. Could be under heavy load heat starts being an issue.
Other than that it is the same old story. Change one thing at a time until something makes a difference.
Thanks, these replies are helpful for at least pointing me in the right direction. Will fool around with my system over the weekend and get back to this thread with the results...
I haven't solved this, but I do have a bit more information. I'd be interested in seeing if anyone has any ideasor thoughts on the best way to proceed.
I thought I had 512M of memory in my video card, now I'm not totally sure. According to the nvidia-server-settings utility, it does have 512MB. But when I do 'sudo lspci -v -s 05:00.0' , I get
Code:
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 LE] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 0274
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at fa000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at fb000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fcfe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [68] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel <?>
Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nvidiafb, nouveau
First question: Not sure what this means. Do I have 512M or 256M?
My video resolution is actually 3600x1400. That's because I have two monitors, and I think the problem may have started when I added the second monitor.
Even so, that's a lot of video memory, plus I have 4gig of RAM in the computer...I seem to recall having dozens of windows open years ago on machines with just 32 or 64M of ram and less video memory.
Am I incorrect in thinking this?
Its also hard to know if its the nVidia driver that's that problem or something else.
As for the nVidia driver--yes, I'm using the proprietary driver, the most recent one in the ubuntu repositories for my distribution. From dpkg:
On the nVidia website there appears to be a more recent driver, version 260.19.36 . However, I am nervous about installing it without knowing how to safely revert to the current version if the new one fails. Does anyone know how to do this safely?
If anyone has any ideas on what I should do, please let me know.
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(In Gnome, sometimes windows fade out to let the user know that they hung--this wouldn't be blanking out, however.)
