Firefox + nouveau on fresh -current install freezes system
 

Yesterday I did a fresh install from -current to replace Slackware-14-64 with 32 bit Slackware. Freshly formatted partition scheme, full install except KDEi.

After an initial hiccup of my own making (invalid nameserver) I am running fine. I am using the Nouveau driver for Nvidia GEForce 6150SE, Phenom II CPU.

I have not created an xorg.conf.

Everything seems to work except attempts to start firefox result in a complete system freeze. No remot login, no Ctrl-Alt-Del, no Ctrl-Alt-BS, no Alt-Fx... the only way out is a system reset or power down.

When started from an xterm I get no messages before the freeze and there is nothing in the logs after restart.

If I boot with append=nomodeset firefox starts fine.

FWIW - I will probably install the Nvidia drivers before long, but wanted to see if Nouveau was useable yet, so please do not offer Nvidia drivers as the solution just yet.

I have created an xorg.conf and tried various parameters.

I can make Nouveau work with Firefox as long as I use the NoAccel parameter.

So I can use Nouveau without acceleration - but isn't that the poiint?

So I will mark this solved and plan to try the Nvidia drivers in the next few days.

This started with kernel 3.7 in Arch.
It seems to have continued through 3.8. 3.6.11 was the last kernel that played well with Nouveau.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=156690

And if you turn off hardware acceleration in the Firefox preferences?

To be honest, I was not aware that you could do that. I plan a few more hours installing and configuring that box tonight and will give that a try. (Do you know offhand what to set in about:config?).

I am not much into multi-media use of my computers (although that is now changing significantly), as a result I have not spent much effort in the past with video drivers and such - so this is a learning experience for me too!

FWIW - after quite a few hours of reading and trying things, I am leaning toward Nouveau instead of the Nvidia drivers as my long term answer, so all help to that end is appreciated.

You can do it without about:config.
In Preferences go to the Advanced tab and then General. ;)

Thanks - but I just tried that and it still crashes the whole system.

That would be a big potential stability problem anyway as this box will be used by multiple users - anyone of which could trigger the self-destruct by configuring their browser!

A few questions:
Does a Firefox start immediately crash the system, or is it when you are surfing websites (maybe with flash)?
Is this an old Firefox profile or a brand new one (without any add-ons)?

The crash/freeze is immediate when I attempt to open FF. To be very specific, when I type 'firefox <ENTER>' in a terminal using mouse cursor motion as the indicator, the cursor freezes within 1-2 seconds usually followed by either a blank screen or a scrambled screen like an old TV sync loss (but sometimes just a screen freeze).

This is a brand new FF with no add-ons or pre-existing profile. It happens whether it is the first startup of Firefox (i.e., no ~/.mozilla/...) or if it is started with default profile created by previously running with NoAccel enabled.

During use overnight I found that other video apps such as Xine/DVD play fine with accel enabled - so far Firefox is the only problem.

Thanks

Do the logs leave a clue?
Does is also happen when you start firefox -safe-mode?

No difference with -safe-mode (or --safe-mode).

And as I said in the first post, there is nothing in the logs.

@teckk and adriv:

After being able to spend a bit more time reading and trying things, I think it is a nouveau problem as indicated in the arch thread linked by tteck above (thanks).

I think will try building a newer nouveau over the weekend (not sure what that involves yet...).

Instaed of building Nouveau over the weekend, I wasted a day on the Nvidia drivers. But am getting back to Nouveau tonight.

First a quick note on the Nvidia drivers - for my hardware 304.xx is the end of line (GEForce6150SE). But those won't build on the 3.7 kernel without patching. I was able to understand and patch 304.64 and 304.84 and get them to build... but both result in an X error: ... unsupported input driver ABI version (have 19.1, need <19.0)... then a fatal server error. Using IgnoreABI does not fix this.

Back to Nouveau... I see that Nouveau is now in the kernel tree (last I looked it was freedesktop.org).

So I installed Pats latest 3.8.4 kernel hoping to get a newer Nouveau... but exact same results with firefox.

The Arch forums indicate that using Nouveau from unmerged git solves this particular problem - but I have not yet fgured out how to find that on kernel.org... if I can get the unmerged Nouveau tree then I will build with 3.8.4 or 3.8.5.

The saga continues...

(I have also changed this thread back to unsolved as I continue to look for a complete solution.)

With my nVidia GeForce 7300 LE which has also gone into the legacy classification, the 304.84 driver built on kernel versions 3.7.10 and 3.8.4 without patching and is working well except for the black screen on logout from X or switching to other ttys.
I did get the nouveau driver to work with the 3.7.10 kernel, but the nVidia proprietary driver is much better. I have not bothered trying the nouveau driver with the 3.8.4 kernel.