Weird 'nouveau' issues.....

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, guys'n'gals.

Having never used a discrete GPU until very recently, I can't really say whether all the following is 'par for the course', or not.

Currently, the kennels contains:-

Bionicpup64 8.0
Xenialpup64 7.5
Tahrpup64 6.0.6 (efi), &
radky's sublime DPup 'Stretch' 7.5

Until I bought the GeForce GT710 the other day, I'd been using the Pentium G5400's 'on-die' UHD 630 GPU.....no issues in any of the Pups.

All the Pups are running bog-standard, with the exception of Tahr64; due to the age of the kernel, and this new HP's hardware being fairly new, Tahr's 3-series kernel wouldn't recognise the audio card, so.....no sound. I got round that by performing a kernel swap, and Tahr64 is now happy with Xenial's 4.9.58 kernel. Sound works again (yay!)

Now; current issues:-

------------------------------------

Running with the GeForce card:-

Bionicpup64

Bionic64 functions fine, with the sole exception, apparently, of DNS resolution. At every boot, I don't get the normal, assigned address on the LAN....I'm getting a strange, 'external' IP address, with the resultant messages in all browsers of having no internet connection. The only workaround I've discovered so far is to disconnect, re-boot the router, then after it's settled down, it'll re-connect correctly. DNS/DHCP then behaves itself like nothing happened....

It gets distinctly annoying to have to do this every single time, because it'll also pull this stunt if I need to restart 'X' for any reason......to my mind, this all points to a problem of some kind with the way the nouveau driver in Bionic64's default kernel is communicating with the 'X' server, etc.

Xenialpu64

Touch wood.....no issues of ANY kind. Yet.

Tahrpup64

Now, this is where it gets weird.....yet, not entirely unexpected. 606's late 3-series kernel (k3.14.79) is obviously not as developed as later 4- and 5-series ones (in other words, not such a usable version of 'nouveau'), and Tahr itself is using distinctly older versions of Mesa3D, OpenGL, Xorg, etc, etc. I would estimate that the underlying infra-structure in Tahr is simply too old to support the GeForce's requirements, because it boots up, and comes to desktop, quite happily.....yet after a few seconds, it literally freezes solid. Nothing - and I mean, nothing; I've tried every trick, and then some - will get things functioning again, and the only answer is a hard power-off.

Remove the GeForce, and use the Pentium's 'on-die' UHD 630 GPU, and Tahr runs as sweet as a nut.

(And before anybody says it, no; I don't wish to use the Nvidia proprietary drivers. It's bad enough trying to get the damn thing working in one Puppy; trying to pull the same stunt in multiple Pups, where each & every single version has to be specifically compiled for the kernel in use.....aughh!! I don't think so....)

Mainly, I'm curious as to whether anyone else has had similar sorts of problems with the 'nouveau' driver & Nvidia cards.

Comments?


Mike.

[rcrsn51]

.I'm getting a strange, 'external' IP address,

Is this address 169.254.x.y?

[don570]

I don't wish to use the Nvidia proprietary drivers

Nouveau isn't a officially sanctioned driver which is why the screen is tearing up
when users use the nouveau driver with a machine with a newly designed processor chip inside.
Nvidia wants you to use their driver.

VESA driver will always work at low screen resolution (hopefully)

Try shinobar's nvidia SFS site. You need the right kernel though.
http://shinobar.server-on.net/puppy/opt/
Don't forget to type 'depmod -a' in terminal before rebooting.

____________________________________________

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, guys. Thanks for the replies.

@ Bill:-

Is this address 169.254.x.y?

Umm....why, yes, it is. Sounds like you've come across this issue before!
Obviously, this means more to you than it does to me.....I freely admit to being "all at sea" on this one.

@ don570:-

Thanks for the links, mate. I'll have a look, and see what I think.....though screen tearing is not something I'm experiencing, strangely enough.

Don't get me wrong. I know darned well Nvidia want me to use their drivers.....but I have it on good authority from folks on other well-known forums (especially LQ.org) that the 'nouveau' drivers have, apparently, improved out of all recognition in recent years. Certainly, they're working to my satisfaction.

Anybody know if it's possible to 'upgrade' Tahr64's OpenGL/Xorg stuff.....or is that asking too much?


Mike.

[rcrsn51]

That bogus IP address occurs when your connection software tries to acquire an IP address via DHCP and something goes wrong.

The usual cause would be a flaky driver for the Ethernet adapter, but that's not the case here.

I'm guessing that it's a timing issue. Because of the separate graphics card, the Ethernet adapter has not properly initialized when the connection process starts. So the process fails and hangs up your router.

As a test, give your machine a static IP address.

[Mike Walsh]

That bogus IP address occurs when your connection software tries to acquire an IP address via DHCP and something goes wrong.

The usual cause would be a flaky driver for the Ethernet adapter, but that's not the case here.

I'm guessing that it's a timing issue. Because of the separate graphics card, the Ethernet adapter has not properly initialized when the connection process starts. So the process fails and hangs up your router.

As a test, give your machine a static IP address.

Ah. Sounds logical, so....okay; worth a try. Now.....could I impose upon you to remind me what goes into each of the fields?

It's been 3 or 4 years since I last set 'static' addresses, and I'm ashamed to admit that I do not remember what goes where..... There's been an awful lot of water under the bridge since then!

(*shrug....*)

Hey!.....nobody's perfect. Least of all me.


Mike.

[rcrsn51]

Every Puppy connection manager tool has its own procedure for static IP. In PWF, it looks like this.

[Mike Walsh]

@ rcrsn51:-

Morning, Bill. Now then; I've just got a static address set up in Bionicpup64, and that's all working fine.

I'll re-install the GeForce card this afternoon, after family have departed. Up till now, Norfolk was the sole English county with no reported cases of Covid-19. We've just found out there's 3 confirmed cases been reported at the local hospital, less than 2 miles away. The hospital's gone into immediate lockdown, and the whole town's quickly going into 'panic' mode, running around like headless chickens......especially given that we have a larger than usual elderly population.

This is probably the last chance my sister and brother-in-law will have to visit for a while, and it was planned weeks ago anyway. That aside, I'll see if that's fixed things - it should have done - and will report back. Watch this space.


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

@ Bill:-

I suspect your prognosis of a timing issue was on the money. Using a static address, booting into Bionicpup64 after re-installing the card was very uneventful.....everything behaving just as I take for granted that it always will.

(I've given up on Tahr64. It's a sweet Puppy, but where all Puppies worked fine with the older Compaq, most of the older 32-bitzers (and the older 64-bit ones) are just finding this very new hardware totally alien. Their kernels don't know about a lot of it, and to do so would require such new kernels that much of the infrastructure would need re-building to suit.....the kind of thing I no longer have as much enthusiasm for as I did at one time.)

Phil B's Bionicpup64 & Xenialpup64, and radky's wonderful DPup 'Stretch', will suffice for now..!

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. 'Twas much appreciated.

Cheers.


Mike.

[rcrsn51]

The remaining question would be how to slow down the networking routines so DHCP acquisition happens later in the boot process.

[Mike Walsh]

The remaining question would be how to slow down the networking routines so DHCP acquisition happens later in the boot process.

May take a little while to figure that one out, Bill. We've just re-negotiated our phone contract; the old one was 3 years 'out of contract', and the price was just steadily creeping up and up. Top & bottom, we have another new router coming, so it'll take me a wee while to figure out how well - or otherwise - this new one works.

I don't know much about scripting, but maybe put a 'sleep' clause into the process somewhere? I mean, it doesn't have to acquire it the instant the PC boots, does it? I can't see as how a short delay would hurt anything.....but hey! what do I know?


Mike.

[williams2]

The remaining question would be how to slow down the networking routines so DHCP acquisition happens later in the boot process.

using Frisbee in BionicPup64 8.0
there is a file /etc/init.d/frisbee.sh

To pause the entire wifi start process
putting a sleep instruction near the top might work.

To pause only dhcp,
maybe replacing this:
start_dhcp&
with this:
(sleep 30;start_dhcp)&

You could try this:
/etc/init.d/frisbee.sh restart

[bigpup]

For very new computers.
Tahrpup is just to old a version of Puppy.
How is it going to know what to do with hardware, that was not even around, when it was developed.
Will not work on my very new computer.

Bionicpup64 8.0 and Nvidia drivers.
First run Quickpet->Info->Bionicpup updates
Make sure changes are saved.

Quickpet->Drivers will list several Nvidia drivers already compiled for Bionicpup64 8.0.
Simply click on a listed driver to download and install.
Go here to see what driver Nvidia recommends.
https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx

[Mike Walsh]

Well, I've finally taken 'the plunge'.

I've now got Bionicpup64 and the GeForce GT710 running with the NVidia 440.36 driver from Quickpet. That was the easiest process imaginable, and I'm very impressed with Phil and all the other contributors for making things so simple.

Thanks especially to linuxcbon for compiling this particular driver (and putting the package together? Not sure about that....)

Download, install, re-boot.....and it's working. Easy-peasy!

One thing I will say, and that is that you immediately notice a difference in the GPU temps with the 'official' driver.....everything is running several degrees cooler. According to gKrellM, with the 'nouveau' driver the GT710 averages around the 44-45°C mark (remember, this is the 'silent' model with the large, passive heatsink; no fan, so the temperature simply rises and 'plateaus'), whereas with the official driver, this is running between 8-10°C cooler.

44-45°C isn't exactly 'hot', anyway.....but I feel this illustrates some of the issues the kernel team must face in reverse-engineering these things. It's a well-known fact that NVidia are not forth-coming with their source-code for this stuff, which just makes the devs work that much harder, of course.

Anyway, many thanks to all concerned. I may see if I can do this with the other Pups; previously, I never bothered with this sort of stuff. I was running anywhere up to 14 Puppies, but the graphics in the old Compaq tower were integrated, and I could never get an AMD driver that would work with 'em...

I'm only running 3 Pups these days, because this up-to-date hardware is too much for many older Pups.....the kernels don't recognise a lot of stuff, and they won't boot with UEFI anyway, even running in legacy mode. So; modern Pups it is.....and getting applications to run is so much easier, too!

(EDIT:- I tried the newest driver first, because my GT 710 is pretty much identical to gychang's GT 720:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 86#1051086

Both use the exact same GK208B main processor chip, so I figured if the 440 driver worked for him, it should work for me too. Nice to be proved correct..!)

Cheers, all.


Mike.

[linuxcbon]

Mike Walsh , I didnt compile the nvidia driver, I only asked phil to do it, it's easier LOL.
Glad to see you are using bionicpup , it's excellent for new hardware.

[Mike Walsh]

Mike Walsh , I didnt compile the nvidia driver, I only asked phil to do it, it's easier LOL.
Glad to see you are using bionicpup , it's excellent for new hardware.

Ahh..... I see.

No, I kind of assumed you must have had something to do with it, since Phil has credited you in the 'notes' for the most recent Quickpet update. Fair enough.

Having said which, I actually undertook the compiling process twice earlier on today, and installed (and knocked together .pets) using the appropriate .run files from Nvidia, plus Shinobar's get-nvidia-1.5.pet (which makes the process a walk in the park) for the other two residents of the kennels - Xenialpup64 and radky's DPup Stretch. The .pet packages have been made available in the appropriate Puppy threads.

I now have all 3 Pups in the kennels running the 'official' Nvidia drivers, rather than the 'nouveau' one. They just do seem better, somehow....the whole process in fact taking less than 5 minutes. And for somebody whose compiling skills are utterly atrocious, believe me, that's impressive!

(Thanks must also go to bigpup for providing a very straight-forward guide to the entire process, from start to finish, which even a complete dunce like me can follow... )


Mike.

[bigpup]

running the 'official' Nvidia drivers, rather than the 'nouveau' one. They just do seem better, somehow

The nouveau driver is generic and only provides support for features that all Nvidia hardware has.
Common basic features.
Some things the hardware can do are not even activated.

The specific Nvidia driver package, that supports specific hardware, has every feature fully supported and than some.
A lot of tweaking is now possible.