-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On 2016-08-15 05:10, [email protected] wrote:
> I realize that nVidia's aren't the preferred video card, but (being 
> divorce-poor) one sometimes has to make do with what one has.  :)
> 
> With my on-board nVidia (GeForce7100) and the nouveau driver (on both Tails
> and Qubes), things work okay, then suddenly at some random point the screen
> gets filled with diagonal line garbage, and things are unresponsive.  (The
> system seems to still be running, but the screen is pooched and keyboard
> seems unresponsive, and no Alt-F1'ing or whatever will get it back.
> Processes still seem to be running though, and the ethernet light is
> blinking normally as traffic goes in an out, etc.)
> 
> So I put in a PCI card, nVidia Geforce 7300, which seems solid, works 
> perfectly under Tails.
> 
> However, under Qubes, I experience random screen corruption.
> 
> See: https://i.imgur.com/ovEFgYO.png
> 
> It's usually fewer horizontal lines than in that snap, but I thought I'd 
> include an extreme example to show the problem.
> 
> It usually happens when the system is a bit busier CPU-wise/memory-wise, 
> but otherwise functioning fine.  Moving the window, or switching to another
> window and back, clears up the corruption.
> 
> Screen corruption like that could be a sign of some wild pointer or other 
> memory management bug, so I thought I'd bring it up.
> 
> The paranoid half of me (okay, okay, I'll admit, it's more than half) 
> worries it might be some attempted DMA attack.
> 
> (I've been, and continue to be, the subject of some rather high-end 
> professional hacking over the years, which adds to the concern.)
> 
> I've read about attacks where screen memory is used to stuff code and run 
> it to escalate privileges.  And the nature of the garbage doesn't look like
> mis-placed screen stuff, but code or other binary data.  Thankfully, if
> this is the case, the corruption seems contained to the AppVM.  The garbage
> never spills outside an AppVm's window.  It happens in both Redhat-23 and
> Debian-8 based AppVMs.  I've never seen evidence of it in dom0/Qubes
> Manager and such.
> 
> It realize it's *probably* not an attack, but I'd like to track down the 
> nature of the problem whether it's a bug or an attack.
> 
> I've read in another thread about video corruption caused by accessing 
> memory who page has moved, and "echo 0
>> /proc/sys/vm/compact_unevictable_allowed" supposedly helps.  At first, I
> thought that made a difference, but ultimately, the problem is still 
> there.
> 
> Any ideas on what I can try, short of giving up and hunting down an ATI 
> card or the like?  (I might try the proprietary nVidia drivers when I get a
> chance to compile them.  Not comfortable with grabbing binary versions for
> obvious reasons.)
> 
> Thanks.  You guys rock!
> 

Looks like it could be this issue:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1028

As you can see from the qubes-builder-github comments, some patches for this
are already in the testing repos. You may want to give those a try.

- -- 
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=gpn+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/39a530c3-0b23-7e62-75dc-d6c4fef3231e%40qubes-os.org.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to