Hello,
If you run Cooker, and use NVidia's driver, then you may read the
following. I have experienced a bug related to module NVdriver in
Mandrake 8.0 and I would like to know whether this bug could still
happen in Cooker or not.
*Abstract* : The problem is that I tried a game called "Cannon Smash"
this afternoon, and it suddenly freezed my X server. Thanks to Guillaume
(gc), I checked the log and found that in /etc/cron.d/kmod, there's a
script that runs "rmmod -as" every 10 minutes. That command is here to
unload all unused kernel modules if they have the attribute "autoclean"
set (which is shown in "lsmod"). Unfortunately, when playing "Cannon
Smash", X freezed on my machine after a few minutes of a fantastic match
(cough). So, what I think has happened is that "rmmod -as" unloaded
NVdriver module *even though* it was still being used. Which freezes X
instantly.
If you want to help me to know if this bug is reproduceable on other
machines, please do the following steps:
*Testcase*
1 - please reboot your PC (for safety)
2 - switch to runlevel 5 if not already
3 - check that /etc/cron.d/kmod contains the line:
*/10 * * * * root /sbin/rmmod -as
4 - launch Cannon Smash as a simple user, with defaults options
5 - play a few matches (you should use the *right* mouse button
otherwise you will feel very bad). Then, one of the following will happen:
6a - suddenly X freezes (after a somewhat long period, many minutes), do
not swear, and do the following : press "SysRq K", which should restart
KDM (SysRq is "Alt PrintScreen" on my computer). If not, then try to do
"SysRq S" which will sync your disk. Hopefully, a hard reboot won't
screw up your partition (don't quote me on that).
6b - nothing happens, you can play the game for hours.
7 - In both situations, please send me a mail, that's interesting.
Thanks for your help.
Grégoire
PS : if you see the bug, comment out the line in "kmod" file and you
should be safe from this freeze. Try it out and see, it works for me.
