Fedora 18/Gnome-Shell/Nouveau driver issues:
 

Hi all,

I've been having some issues with nouveau drivers.

After everything working fine for a few minutes (sometimes a couple of hours), gnome-shell text and icons become garbled. I need to refresh gnome-shell and sometimes it freezes and I need to restart the environment.

I'm using the latest kernel 3.7.8-202.fc18.x86_64
It worked fine for a couple of days with two previous kernels and then broke again.

I've tried to use NVidia propietary drivers, but they didn't work. I think my card is not supported (I'm not sure of which video card I have, this is a company computer and nobody knows), it is reported as NV50.

So far, I've been able to locate this errors:

Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127081] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TPDMA_RT - TP 0 - Unknown fault at address 0053380000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127087] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TPDMA_RT - TP 0 - e0c: 00000000, e18: 00000000, e1c: 00000004, e20: 00001100, e24: 00030000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127089] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127093] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] ch 4 [0x000fc55000] subc 3 class 0x8397 mthd 0x1b0c data 0x1000f010
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127099] nouveau E[ PFB][0000:03:00.0] trapped write at 0x0053380000 on channel 0x0000fc55 PGRAPH/PROP/RT0 reason: PAGE_NOT_PRESENT
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127127] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] magic set 0:
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127130] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408604: 0x20083005
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127132] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408608: 0x004f3bbe
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127134] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x0040860c: 0x40000432
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127136] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408610: 0x38000000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127138] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TEXTURE - TP0: Unhandled ustatus 0x00000003
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127139] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127142] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] ch 4 [0x000fc55000] subc 3 class 0x8397 mthd 0x1b0c data 0x1000f010
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127148] nouveau E[ PFB][0000:03:00.0] trapped write at 0x00533cd600 on channel 0x0000fc55 PGRAPH/PROP/RT0 reason: PAGE_NOT_PRESENT
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127157] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] magic set 0:
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127159] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408604: 0x2001520a
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127161] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408608: 0x004f3b0f
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127163] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x0040860c: 0x40000432
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127165] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408610: 0x38000000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127166] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TEXTURE - TP0: Unhandled ustatus 0x00000003
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127168] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127171] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] ch 4 [0x000fc55000] subc 3 class 0x8397 mthd 0x1b0c data 0x1000f010
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127176] nouveau E[ PFB][0000:03:00.0] trapped read at 0x004f3aee00 on channel 0x0000fc55 PGRAPH/TEXTURE/00 reason: PAGE_NOT_PRESENT
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127186] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] magic set 0:
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127188] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408604: 0x20082f05
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127190] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408608: 0x004f3a98
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127192] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x0040860c: 0x40000432
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127194] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408610: 0x38000000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127195] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TEXTURE - TP0: Unhandled ustatus 0x00000003
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127197] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127200] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] ch 4 [0x000fc55000] subc 3 class 0x8397 mthd 0x1b0c data 0x1000f010
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127205] nouveau E[ PFB][0000:03:00.0] trapped read at 0x004f3a6a00 on channel 0x0000fc55 PGRAPH/TEXTURE/00 reason: PAGE_NOT_PRESENT
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127215] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] magic set 0:
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127217] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408604: 0x20014f0a
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127219] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408608: 0x004f3a2f
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127221] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x0040860c: 0x40000432
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127223] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] 0x00408610: 0x38000000
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127225] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP_TEXTURE - TP0: Unhandled ustatus 0x00000003
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127226] nouveau [ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] TRAP
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127229] nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:03:00.0] ch 4 [0x000fc55000] subc 3 class 0x8397 mthd 0x1b0c data 0x1000f010
Feb 21 09:39:42 raggar kernel: [ 3461.127234] nouveau E[ PFB][0000:03:00.0] trapped read at 0x004f3a0f00 on channel 0x0000fc55 PGRAPH/TEXTURE/00 reason: PAGE_NOT_PRESENT

any help is welcome.

I have an old laptop on which I installed F-18. On that laptop, the nouveau driver would not work, and I could not get a usable screen with any 3.7 kernel until I switched to the nv driver and abandoned the nouveau one. (Well, setting the kernel options to nomodeset xdriver=vesa gave me a working (all be it distorted) display.)

On the other hand, those messages seem to suggest that the page memory on the nVidia board may be faulty. Do you have have any spare video boards you could use to check the hardware? (Of course a "company computer" is more likely to have an "on board" video chip set, and no option for hardware upgrades.)

You are right about the no option for hardware upgrades. I should mention that I'm using a iMac (10,0).

The odd thing is that it worked fined a couple of kernels upgrades back (3.7.4 or 3.7.3, don't remember) and since then it's broken again (it was broken when I upgraded to FC18 from FC17.