ERRATUM (video bios info) : 
Title      : Video:nVidia GeForce4 4200 Go BIOS
Version    : A05
OEM Name   : nVidia
OEM Ver    : 4.28.20.31.C1
Computers  : Inspiron - 8500, 8600;
Latitude - D800
Oses       : Windows 2000 Professional,Windows XP Home Edition,Windows XP Professional
Languages  : English
Created    : Wed Jan 21 16:33:39 CST 2004

dpkg -s xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
;;;
Version: 1:0.0.16+git20120525.7041e30a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise
;;;

Created attachment 62151 [details]
full dmesg output

posted from windows again ("Open file" firefox dialog always crashes xorg in Linux side)

Created attachment 62152 [details]
contains caracters that gedit can't display...

...gnome events log viewer shows a white line instead

I see a message on the boot screen:
nouveau : Unknown LVDS configuration bits, please report

Here a copy/paste of the 2 strange lines (+1 before/after) in xorg.0.log:
...
Unknown vendor-specific block f
T[0007][0004][0007][0001]3997FA
 \C0\A3\92\85p]@
EDID (in hex):
...

PS: the crashes not only happen in firefox: it seems any "Open file" (or Ctrl+O) dialog crash the xserver (seen in gedit too)
Maybe a concurrent operations display dialog + browse file system?

here is a snapshot of the "ugly" screen with nouveau, before I install xorg-edges
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/+bug/948053/comments/56
I could not install edges's kernel (non pae system), instead I installed the precise ppa kernel 3.4 released 6 days ago

When xserver crashes, I sometimes get a popup on restart after killing it stating:
"The system is running in low-graphics mode: Your screen, graphic card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You need to configure these yourself."
Then, no mouse keybord available I need to power down to reboot.

PS: the snapshot shows gnome3 (gnome-session-fallback because I don't like the Unity desktop); On the picture, you cannot see the "double/echo" cursor, although it is really here

Direct snap link:
https://launchpadlibrarian.net/105898820/rub.png

(In reply to comment #6)
> Here a copy/paste of the 2 strange lines (+1 before/after) in xorg.0.log:
> ...
> Unknown vendor-specific block f
> T[0007][0004][0007][0001]3997FA
>  \C0\A3\92\85p]@
> EDID (in hex):
> ...

The 2 successive lines are at 26.296 in Xorg.0.log
The brackets enclosed numbers are show in gedit in a square matrix this way:

____
|00|
|07|
----

Do you have the nouveau mesa/dri/opengl driver installed?

If so, it would be nice to rule that out as the problem.

(In reply to comment #13)
> Do you have the nouveau mesa/dri/opengl driver installed?
> 
> If so, it would be nice to rule that out as the problem.

Hi Martin
Thank you for your reply
I find this:
sudo dpkg -s mesa-utils
Package: mesa-utils
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 132
Maintainer: Ubuntu X-SWAT <ubuntu-x@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: i386
Source: mesa-demos
Version: 8.0.1+git20110129+d8f7d6b-0ubuntu2
Replaces: xbase-clients (<< 6.8.2-38)
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libgl1-mesa-glx | libgl1, libx11-6
Description: Miscellaneous Mesa GL utilities
 This package provides several basic GL utilities built by Mesa, including
 glxinfo and glxgears.

I'm not very good english speaking, so please, how could I "rule that"? Adding key words to the bug report?

@Martin
I forgot to say I stick using Gnome classic (no-effects) that's why I posted here in xorg instead of mesa. Should I move the bug?
Thank you

There is an easy way to check (you have to run this from Xorg), that is to run "glxinfo":

This line (or something like it) "OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer" means you don't have the nouveau opengl driver installed, but if it lists something other than software rasterizer you may have it installed.

I'm guessing mesa-utils is not the driver package.

To "rule out a problem" means "to check something is not the problem" in this case.

(In reply to comment #5)
> I see a message on the boot screen:
> nouveau : Unknown LVDS configuration bits, please report

Can you attach (you'll probably need to copy them somewhere first):

/sys/class/drm/card0-LVDS-1/edid
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/vbios.rom

Thanks!

Hi Maarteen
Thank you for spending time with me. Hope this is not waste.
Here the line I read from glxinfo > glxinfo.txt:
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI nv28 x86/MMX/SSE2

Would you advise me to uninstall something. If you need to read the full file, please tell me, I'll attach if (xserver hanged just after issueing the command and Ctrl+Alt+PrtScn+K won't revive it)

Hi Ben
here are the 2 files; I had to switch to windows to post them, so I also add the glxinfo;

Created attachment 62192 [details]
full glxinfo output

Created attachment 62193 [details]
edid file

Created attachment 62194 [details]
vbios.rom file

Good night gentlemen
Just a little more comment to add 2 other symtoms. Not sure if they are usefull: clicking the drop-lists is this very page olso hangs the xserver, and about the double cursor in the title, in fact it is not truely a double well drawn clean double cursors, instead it is badly drawn and blury, and if you know the grid (I learnt today it is the name of this thing) that displays over the background picture of the default ubuntu loging screen (the greeting screen is the name I beleive), so each point of the grid is doubled, about 1mm on the right (or left, I can't know), like the phantom/echo on old tv with poor signal before DVB. I'll post a photography of the current cursor just in a few minutes...

When I opened the cursor photo, metacity repported an error.
In fact on login, the grid over the flat purple color is not doubled immediately; it turns doubled at the same time the artwork shiny picture overrides the flat purple. Now I switch to win to post the photo, and maybe a small video to show what happens on login.;;
bye bye

Created attachment 62240 [details]
Cursor (in session)

I posted the bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/+bug/1006437 after ppa-purge because Canonical support asked me to ubuntu-bug xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, and this command said it can't work because of third party packages.

Should I now revert back to you xorg-edges guys?
bye bye

Fabrice

+1

Ubuntu 8.04 supported this card with the nv driver. Nouveau has never, to the best of my knowlege, supported this card. We could really use nouveau support, as I have read that nvidia is considering ending support for this and all nvidia-96 cards. I have the same pointer and desktop graphics corruption in Ubuntu 12.04.

Thank you Glenn, I ended feeling I just posted silly noise

Created attachment 63145 [details]
Bios recommended update

I got the PC already flashed with this video bios from dell/nvidia

I am previewing the next release of Slackware, on a similar D800, and am seeing even worse corruption than your screenshots indicate.

The problem is, the current version of Xorg will no long work with the proprietary nvidia driver (Nvidia has not updated their legacy driver);

The "nv" driver segfaults (I have not been able to figure out why: this is using a configuration that used to be fine).

The nouveau driver is all that will load in 1920x1200 now, and the graphics are too corrupted to be used.

I cannot find a way to get 1920x1200, even unaccelerated, with an nv28 card now.

Hi this bug might be related to the one I've reported here
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54700
as asked by debian mantainers.

nvdia just released a new driver: see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/+bug/948053 post #119

Marking this as a duplicate of the bug which has more up-to-date information. Description seems identical. Feel free to undup it if I got it wrong.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 54700 ***