This started happening soon after the x.org/GCC upgrade I believe, and I'm not really sure where to go with it (what I can do) other than downgrade. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Set /etc/X11/xorg.conf to nvidia 2. Restart xdm Actual Results: It works with the plain jane 'nv' driver, but if I go in with 'nvidia' the displays stop working (completely) and I end up having to SSH into my computer with another working computer to restart. Expected Results: Entered X rocket sbh # emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r11 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.4.2, glibc-2.3.4.20040808-r0, 2.6.8.1-ck5) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.8.1-ck5 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ Gentoo Base System version 1.5.3 distcc 2.17 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled] ccache version 2.3 [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/share/config:/usr/kde/3.3/env:/usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache digest sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j5" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aalib acl acpi aim alsa apm arts audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts crypt cups dba dga doc dvd emacs emacs-e3 encode esd flac foomaticdb gd gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 icq imagemagick imlib java jikes joystick jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mozilla mpeg ncurses nls offensive oggvorbis opengl oscar oss pam pcre pdflib perl php png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang speex spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd theora tiff truetype unicode usb videos x86 xinerama xml xml2 xmms xosd xprint xv xvid zlib" The dump from dmesg: NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-6111 Tue Jul 27 07:55:38 PDT 2004 Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000 printing eip: f10cdeb1 *pde = 00000000 Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT Modules linked in: nvidia CPU: 0 EIP: 0060:[<f10cdeb1>] Tainted: P EFLAGS: 00013296 (2.6.8.1-ck5) EIP is at os_string_compare+0x13/0x2d [nvidia] eax: 00000046 ebx: df996e20 ecx: 00000000 edx: df996e00 esi: df996e01 edi: 00000000 ebp: ddf6be30 esp: ddf6be0c ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068 Process X (pid: 6191, threadinfo=ddf6a000 task=ed9fc7d0) Stack: df996e20 eee41400 f0f0d25a df996e00 00000000 b056af08 f0800000 b014d34b b19f77fc ddf6be60 f0f0f1db eee41400 df996e00 00000000 b056af08 00000000 eee41400 00000000 b056af08 f09ff000 00001000 ddf6bea0 f0f12b74 eee41400 Call Trace: [<f0f0d25a>] _nv001530rm+0x16/0x1c [nvidia] [<b014d34b>] map_area_pmd+0x6b/0xa0 [<f0f0f1db>] _nv001618rm+0x33/0x7c [nvidia] [<f0f12b74>] _nv001244rm+0x208/0x2e8 [nvidia] [<f0f13c35>] rm_access_registry+0x75/0x9c [nvidia] [<f0f14134>] _nv001139rm+0x3a4/0x4b8 [nvidia] [<f0f13147>] rm_ioctl+0x23/0x38 [nvidia] [<f10cb6f0>] nv_kern_ioctl+0x387/0x3d3 [nvidia] [<b0166b6d>] sys_ioctl+0x14d/0x290 [<b010421b>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb Code: ae 75 08 84 c0 75 f8 31 c0 eb 04 19 c0 0c 01 8b 34 24 8b 7c
Which version of xorg-x11 are you running? I'd blame gcc 3.4.2 but unless you can downgrade and show that it works again im not totally convinced about that.
Well, I run xorg-x11 6.8.0 at the moment, and I just re-compiled it (with gcc 3.4.2) right before it started this mess. I'll only take action (downgrade or otherwise) on a gentoo dev recommendation.
OK, after much downgrading, upgrading and the like I found the problem. The problem was that for some reason after upgrading nvidia-glx it didn't uninstall the older one, so I had two versions protected by emerge somehow. This is all fixed now though.
This has recently happened to me with kdesdk - I uninstalled it some month ago, and when I installed recent version again, kbabel (the only package I ever used from kdesdk) tended to bail out with strange "undefined symbol" messages on random user actions. I unmerged kdesdk and tried to compile & install kbabel by hand. It did the same. Just after I removed every kdesdk lib, kbabel worked again, even the one from kdesdk package. I suspect some hideous, hard-to-reproduce bug deep in portage...
Its not uncommon for somethings like files to go googoogahgah closing.
