Re: Fedora 12 - compiz ruined by updates

Aragorn <aragorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:i02usr$93k$1
@news.eternal-september.org:

On Friday 25 June 2010 17:29 in alt.os.linux, somebody identifying as
Ohmster wrote...

I have a home server with Fedora 12 on it. Old hardware:
Pentium III, 800Mhz Coppermine,
1.5Gb SDRAM
GeForce 6800
400Gb IDE hard drive
FQDN on Comcast cable Internet

Technically, although it may be /old/ in terms of how fast everything
evolves, if the hardware doesn't have any flaws, then I don't see why
you wouldn't hold on to it. After all, most x86-32 GNU/Linux
distributions I know of will run more than happily on such hardware. I
can't think of any that wouldn't, actually. ;-)

I is a great machine. Paid $3,500 for it new, many years ago with AWE64
Gold ISA sound card, 21" monitor, and nowhere near that amount of RAM.
Still works good. Had 2Gb 4 512 SDRAM sticks in it, got a bad IC in upper
memory causing lockups when RAM was really used up. Memtest86 found the
problem.

It really works great as a server and my desktop is gnome and I like
it a lot.

Just for the record, it is generally advised not to run X11 if you
intend to use the machine as a server, the exception being an LTSP
server of course.

I know that. You need to know the purpose of this machine in order to be
able to understand why I am doing all of this hybrid operation on a Linux
computer. This is my server/desktop/hobby/study and learning computer.
The servers are are real with real domain names but since it is on a
cablemodem IP address, I get blocked from mail servers and many browsers
like IE will turn the address bar red because they say there is
something wrong with the security cert on the site. That is why I run X
on a server. To learn, experiment with, play, and have fun. I really love
Linux but it really is way over my head, but still, I love it.

(Off topic, but is there anyway to pause the top screen so I can examine
or capture it then allow it to resume again?)

This Fedora box is my web server, learning machine for Linux, FTP server,
mail server, file server, and I love to experiment with and use the
desktop. It is not a dedicated server, if it was, I would not install X
at all. But I want to learn and to play, so I want a nice, usable desktop
with compiz to make it neat and cool.

I installed compiz-fusion as one of my first tweaks, loved
it, worked great, everything rocked. I did the updates as they came
along and by maybe the 3rd update, compiz was now broken and I have
not been able to remove or repair it ever since. The desktop has gone
from a usable and very useful tool to a curiosity that is unusable.

Hmm... Are you sure that it's Compiz that's broken? My bet would be
on
another component - see farther down.

No I am not sure it is compiz, but everytime something 3D occurs on
screen, my display freeze up for 20-60 seconds and the machine will obey
no commands. I can see top updating in the putty ssh term so I know the
machine is still working. My guess is that it is compiz or the video
driver. Used to be you could just download the latest driver from nvidia,
do an sh nvidia run, and the nvidia driver would look for one that
matches your kernel and download it for you or just build you a new one,
easy as pie. Now Fedora did some shit where the kernel headers are no
longer where they should be, down in /usr/src/linux. And so I now use yum
to download kmod-nvidia.

This time I really want to try a fresh driver from nvidia. I will make a
symlink and see if the nvidia installer will work.
ln -s ln -s /usr/src/kernels/2.6.32.14-127.fc12.i686 linux

Now run nvidia driver.
# sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.35.run

It worked and really installed, but did not fix the problem. I tried to
rotate the cube, it got stuck after 5 degrees of rotation and the screen
froze. Top running in ssh term was active, showed what was dogging the x
session:

3040 root 20 0 79332 40m 11m R 57.4 2.7 0:10.01 X
3273 ohmster 20 0 65064 43m 9092 R 40.6 2.9 0:25.95
compiz

glxgrears is running great in a term window now, 2390 frames in 5.0
seconds =477.977 FPS. Anything I do that uses compiz will lock up the
computer for about 10-20 seconds until it "recovers" and is then
useless but working again.

Please define "useless but working again"...? If it's useless, then it
cannot be "working again", can it?

Sure. Working in that I can start my gnome session. I prefer to use
runlevel 3 and then startx to begin my x session. It takes about a minute
but the desktop opens up in all of it's glory. You can click nautilus or
a term and use it, but anything that utilizes any 3D stuff like
screensaver or spin cube or drag window with wobble will lock the screen
right up, give you the very high CPU use as shown in the top report
above, X and compiz completely dog the CPU for close to 30 seconds and
then the desktop returns to normal and the mouse works again, just do not
do any compiz or 3D stuff and that is near impossible with compiz
installed and active. If you do, a minimum of 30 second lockup will occur
again.

Spin the cube, drag a window, anything and I see the "CPU Fire" applet
on the taskbar freeze and I know it is game over. I can "term in" with
putty from my Win7 box and run top to see what is going on when this
happens.

Which means that the system itself hasn't frozen, albeit that your X11
session may have. And there could be many reasons for that, but,
again, see farther down.

Yes, you are rigth. I can use top in an ssh term.

Here is a snapshot of the top 4 lines in top during a freeze by
attempting to spin the desktop cube.

1725 root 20 0 86988 26m 10m R 39.9 1.8 3:01.98 X
1942 ohmster 20 0 68028 30m 7412 R 30.0 2.0 3:01.09 compiz
2439 ohmster 20 0 36624 7972 2360 R 28.4 0.5 5:31.43 glxgears
2623 ohmster 20 0 2564 1120 828 R 1.3 0.1 0:00.28 top

Word wrap is terrible, I am sorry.

CPU% Process
39.9 X
30.0 compiz
28.4 glxgears

Those are high percentages of CPU time, but not abnormally high.

That was NOT a normal freeze up. I do not normally run glxgears when this
happens. See top snapshot below for a "normal lockup".

8855 root 20 0 90484 25m 10m R 98.3 1.7 8:49.94 X
11196 ohmster 20 0 2564 1100 816 R 1.0 0.1 0:00.16 top
1 root 20 0 2032 788 568 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.99 init

Those were not normal lockup numbers. Now I was not paying attention and
the bouble screensaver came up, it is frozen on the screen. My ssh top
session is still active, look at PID 8855, X. 98.3% CPU. Very high.
Frozen.

I killed 8855 -9 and my load went way down, unfortunatly, my monitor went
black and will not come back. Alt-Ctl-Backspace does nothing, nor does
Alt-Ctl-Delete. I must reboot from the ssh term.



I was going to show top with only glxgears now with system lock, but
when I tried to move cube, computer is now locked up for good. A hard
reset is all that will work now. Yep, my putty term window is frozen
as well. ...you get the idea.

Always attempt to use the "magic SysRq keys" before pressing the reset
button if you have access to the machine's local console. Userspace
may be locked up, but System Requests are sent straight to the kernel,
and so you may still be able to shut down the machine cleanly.

What is "magic SysRq keys"? You mean Alt-Ctl-Delete or Alt-Ctl-Backspace?
They have no effect at all.

The desktop is now useless and has been since a month after I
installed Fedora 12.

No one knows how to fix this, nothingI have tried works. The forums
for compiz, fedora, yield no answers, and the best reply I got was
"Send a bug report to Fedora". I tried and if something is not quite
right about the report, you cannot send it. I just did a "sudo yum
update" and everything updated, must be 200 updates including the
kernel, kmod- nvidia, and Xorg, I think. Still my desktop is broken.

That may be the result of the unclean shutdown. Sometimes this leaves
certain configuration files in an incoherent state, even if you have a
journaled filesystem.

File system is 83 ext3 for boot, 8e Linux LVM for rest of drive on
/dev/sda. I have my old drive mounted so I can pick stuff from it as
/dev/sdb, same setup, 83 ext3 for boot, 8e Linux LVM for rest of drive,
although I no longer boot from that 200Gb drive. I now boot from the
400Gb drive first mentioned. Both IDE drives mounted as LVM by way of
Fedora install.

I presume you're using ext3 as the filesystem type on this machine -
given that Fedora does not allow you to use any of the other
filesystems - and ext3 has both data and metadata journaling, but the
data journaling is disabled by default. This means that in the event
of an unclean shutdown, the metadata journal will be played back, but
there is still a chance that the crash happened in the middle of a
non-atomic write and that the data itself has gotten corrupted.

I do not believe an unclean shutdown caused this. I loved and used the
gnome desktop with compiz all the time. The Fedora update applet was
going off every 2 days with tons of updates to install. Figuring that
Fedora must know what they are doing and not wanting to miss out on any
security updates like when I used Red Hat 9 WAY past EOL and got invaded
by script kiddies that came in through apache.

I now have the Fedora 13 DVD, will an upgrade install fix this?

I don't really know, because I always prefer doing a clean install
myself.

I could not agree more, but the configs you see. I am job hunting and it
is HELL. I just do not have the time to redo Linux all over again with
everything I have done to it from scratch.

If so, will it just break again at my first system update?

This is always possible, albeit that I don't think this would be the
case. I'm also a faithful believer in "If it isn't broken, don't try
to fix it". Some updates may contain bugfixes and security patches
which you might need, but you surely don't need any fixes for software
you never use. Also bear in mind that updates and upgrades often fix
known bugs by replacing them with unknown ones. ;-)

I hear ya, dude. I long for an Enterprise version of Linux where I can
just "set it and forget it" like Ron Popiel, but I think Fedora is not
the distro for that sort of thing and I am hooked on it because I like
yum handling all of the dependencies and updates. No more tarballs
please!

I dread a clean install as all of my servers, httpd.conf, FTP, alias,
mail settings, dovecot, etc. will all have to be done over again.

Not if you back them up. And if you have an FTP repository, then
having
that on a separate partition allows you to save it across
reinstallations, as you don't have to format that partition if you
don't want to.

I have two drives in the box, I can always back up stuff but where to
begin backing up all configs? Unless you mean backup the entire disk,
with what, ghost?

What is the best way out of this?

I would recommend backing up all your important data - which you should
always do anyway - and doing a fresh install with Fedora 13.

Yeah, sigh. I will backup with ghost I guess, try the upgrade to see what
happens, and then probably go clean. Dam.

Can or should I just shitcan compiz as not ready for prime time and
give it up?

Compiz *is* ready for prime time. The problem however may be (and
usually is) the proprietary video driver. I strongly suspect that to
be the case.

I just installed the latest nvidia driver right from nvidia. Found that
if I put a symling in /usr/src/ I can now run the nvidia installer
instead of depending on kmod-nvidia rpm releases. The driver made no
difference and I thought it really would, too.

How can I get rid of it? I tried to uninstall it with yum and thought
I was successful but the problem remains and compiz is still here.

Probably because something else relied upon it, according to your RPM
database. I don't use Fedora myself, but you should check the "man
page" on "yum" for options on how to check for dependencies.

Yeah, I will have to put a little more time into it. Problem is, I really
do not *want* to give up compiz because it is so f*cking cool.

Sorry for the "wordy" post. Please help.

For what it's worth... ;-)


It was worth plenty. Thank you very, very much. Will update you when I
try new things if interested. Thank you again for your very helpful
reply.

--
~Ohmster | ohmster59 /a/t/ gmail dot com
Put "messageforohmster" in message body
(That is Message Body, not Subject!)
to pass my spam filter.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Fedora 12 - compiz ruined by updates
    ... installed Fedora 12. ... Both IDE drives mounted as LVM ... by way of Fedora install. ... Some updates may contain bugfixes and security patches ...
    (alt.os.linux)
  • Re: Fedora 12 - compiz ruined by updates
    ... I did the updates as they came ... Are you sure that it's Compiz that's broken? ... installed Fedora 12. ... filesystems - and ext3 has both data and metadata journaling, ...
    (alt.os.linux)
  • Re: not genuine Windows
    ... that with Linux. ... install, side by side, and then start testing applications with the ... with all patches before Fedora even finishes updating from yum..... ... The updates took about 15 minutes. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: not genuine Windows
    ... that with Linux. ... install, side by side, and then start testing applications with the ... with all patches before Fedora even finishes updating from yum..... ... The updates took about 15 minutes. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: How to get the update notifications working on a installed Fedora KDE Live CD? + wireless proble
    ... reinstalled fedora.. ... > notifications) and updates where indeed availible. ... > anyone any idea what i need to install to get the notifications working? ...
    (Fedora)