Bug 69982

Created attachment 86872 [details]
errors.log edited for lines relevant to the crash

Created attachment 86873 [details]
xorg log file at the point the system crashed

Can you see if booting with nouveau.config=NvMSI=0 helps?

(In the future, unless you're on some super-mega-secret machine whose full configuration you can't reveal, editing logs down is undesirable.)

OK I will try adding the kernel line you suggest and I will attach the full version of the log files for you shortly.

Created attachment 86874 [details]
full kernel log file without editing down

Created attachment 86875 [details]
full errors log file without editing down

I added nouveau.config=NvMSI=0 to the kernel boot line and the system booted fine so far, KDM gave a normal offer of login, and KDE login worked fine. I tested the system for several minutes, running konsole, and the chrome browser and so far there is no crash at all. I will attach the new kernel log that is current for this configuration.

Created attachment 86876 [details]
kernel log with nouveau.config=NvMSI=0 at boot

Ilia's suggestion is spot on - and armed with that information I now see that there is a related bug at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69928

Having now also seen that there was a long running thread "drm/nouveau: use MSI interrupts" in the nouveau devel list, and that Ilia is a key developer, I would appreciate knowing if a patch to fix this issue will get into the upstream code? Thank you for any new info about this.

As a temporary workaround I made a file /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf containing one line:

option nouveau config:NvMSI=0

Now booting the 3.12 rc3 kernel with this in place gives a working system until the nouveau driver has a fix.

I have now tested kernel 3.12 rc4 with my arch linux system which had updates to nouveau-dri to version 9.2.1-1, and to mesa-libgl version 9.2.1-1

The original problem of the system freezing within a minute or so of logging in to KDE has come back, despite using NvMSI=0 so the issue remains, but I don't know if this is due to the mesa/nouveau updates or to changes in the rc4 kernel.

With the release of 3.12 rc5 yesterday I can finally run 3.12 rc5 with stable operation and no freeze.  

I believe that it was this patch in the kernel release patchset in rc5 that resulted in a fix for the moment:

Ben Skeggs (1):
drm/nouveau/mc: disable msi support by default, it's busted in
tons of places

I will continue to test as further 3.12-rcX releases happen, so in the meantime it would be best to leave this bug not resolved and not closed, since whether the bug re-surfaces or not will depend on whether there are more problems if msi is set by default in the future and whether the associated code is buggy or not. Therefore it will need to wait until 3.12 reaches final release and then see if the kernel remains stable before closing this bug.

Do the freezes still occur with a recent kernel (3.17, 3.18) and newer Mesa, Xserver while not specifying "nouveau.config=NvMSI=0"?

(In reply to Mike C from comment #11)
> As a temporary workaround I made a file /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
> containing one line:
> 
> option nouveau config:NvMSI=0
> 
> Now booting the 3.12 rc3 kernel with this in place gives a working system
> until the nouveau driver has a fix.

MSI was enabled again in 3.13, hopefully in a more reliable fashion. As there hasn't been a response to a test request almost a year ago, closing as invalid.