Bug#999631: "works for me" - Problem obviously solved

[Wolfgang Rosner]

My box is running now for a whole night&day without problems, 
including multiple hours of active working with libreoffice writer.

Obviously this solution works:


create folder and file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nouveau.conf
and put in:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NvidiaCard"
Driver "nouveau"
BusID "PCI:01:00:0" # PCI bus address of the Nvidia GPU here
EndSection


I'd recommend debian install / upgrade procedure to care for a similiar
solution, maybe adopted to the proper debianic way.

Bug#726965: In-Reply-To=<201508242313.56185.li...@rainbow-software.org>

[Wolfgang Rosner]

I ran into the same issue when upgrading from wheezy to jessie today on an age 
old IBM R30.


I could solve it without recompiling by upgrading 
 xserver-xorg-video-trident 
from 1:1.3.6-2+b2
to  1:1.3.7-1+b2 
which is available in testing(aka stretch) now (as of 2016-04-17)

compare
https://packages.debian.org/de/jessie/xserver-xorg-video-trident
and
https://packages.debian.org/de/stretch/xserver-xorg-video-trident

I used apt-pinning to keep dependencies consistent.
It updates quite some other xorg stuff (54 files, see below)
I didn't care for details, because it was the last hope before a fresh 
reinstall. Looks like it works like a charm :-)

Maybe it would be nice to provide this approach in a proper backport to jessie 
(supposedly aka "stable")?


Wolfgang Rosner



some Details:

On boot (the first boot after dist-upgrade), you see a short flash of console 
login, and then the screen gets dark.
Machine responds on ssh login, but keyboard is dead.
I could narrow down the issue by disabling kdm on boot.
Starting kdm manually reproduced the problem

I found this line in the  /var/log/Xorg.0.log :

(EE) TRIDENT: Failed to load module "xaa" (module does not
exist, 0)

Googling it dropped me to this Bug page.

The driver manual
ftp://www.x.org/pub/X11R6.8.0/doc/trident.4.html
lists the chip - "CyberBlade series i1" -
still as "supported"

--

root@wr-laptop:~# lspci

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev 5d)


root@wr-laptop:~# cat /etc/debian_version
8.4


root@wr-laptop:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
.[snip]..
# testing aka stretch
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free



root@wr-laptop:~# cat /etc/apt/preferences
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: *
Pin: release n=jessie
Pin-Priority: 900



root@wr-laptop:/etc/apt# apt-cache policy  xserver-xorg-video-trident
xserver-xorg-video-trident:
  Installiert:   (keine)
  Installationskandidat: 1:1.3.6-2+b2
  Versionstabelle:
 1:1.3.7-1+b2 0
 -1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
 1:1.3.6-2+b2 0
900 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ jessie/main i386 Packages



root@wr-laptop:/etc/apt# apt-get install -t testing xserver-xorg-video-trident
..
54 aktualisiert, 5 neu installiert, 2 zu entfernen und 2462 nicht 
aktualisiert.