[TriLUG] Ubuntu, Nvidia and the Freeze or Black Screen

[Neil L. Little]

Im running Ubuntu Intrepid and have a nvidia video card. Im getting that 
same issure and found it was the flash plugin freezing up. I can usually 
wait a bit and it will
resolve itself. If I have other tabs up with some sort of flash on it 
will get real slow after a while and I have to terminate firefox.
It appears from what I have read to be some sort of memory leak in the 
plugin.

Neil, WA4AZL


Brian Blater wrote:
> I've been trying to figure this out for awhile now and I'm getting no where.
>
> I've got a Lenovo desktop that has an Nvidia GeForce 8600GTS card in
> it running two IBM 19" flatpanel monitors. I'm actually running Ubuntu
> Studio 10.10 with the 2.6.38-8-lowlatency kernel.
>
> The problem I'm having is that when running the default nouveau driver
> I am getting random freezing of X windows, usually when in Firefox but
> it has also happened in other apps like synaptics etc. It happens
> often enough the system is basically unusable for much of anything. It
> appears that it is just X windows that has frozen as the mouse still
> moves, but I can't get to another screen with ctrl+alt+F#. I haven't
> tried SSH to the box because of the network setup I'm on right now,
> but I'm pretty sure I could SSH to the box no problem.
>
> So, I try to install the Nvidia proprietary drivers. I've tried the
> one from the repositories and the one from Nvidia's web site and no
> matter what after I install the driver and reboot, I get the Ubuntu
> 10.10 splash screen and then blackness. I can't ctrl+alt+F# to another
> screen, I can't ctrl+alt+del. It is basically a hard shut down to
> bring it back.
>
> I've google all kinds of suggestions and so far I've come up empty
> handed. I'd just stay with the nouveau driver if I could get the
> stability working. I just want to get this working so I can get off my
> old 10.04 workstation and move on to doing things.
>
> You all have any ideas?
>
> I'm to the point of buying a new card if that will be more reliable,
> but I've got this 8600GTS and an 8800GTX just sitting here, so why not
> use them.
>
> Thanks for your help.
> Brian
>