kde screen redraw glitch

[LeftyAce]

I just finished my first debian install, and am running across a peculiar glitch. At random intervals, KDE will cease to redraw the screen properly. If I drag a window around, the area it used to occupy is filled with rainbow strips and squares. The contents of moved or newly opened windows are not displayed unless the mouse is run over them. (and even then they sometimes dissappear again). If I log out of kde (end session) and then log back in, the problem goes away for a while. I have not noticed this problem while running xfce4.

I am dual booting with WinXP. Hardware specs: 3Ghz P4 NVidia GeForce6600 1G ram 160G hdd (/dev/sda1=35G=ntfs, /dev/sda3=110G=reiserfs)

Not sure if this is all the info you need, but hopefully its enough to get some ideas.

Thanks in advance,

[Slackitude]

Are you using the nv driver for your video card? I have a 6600 and it behaves oddly with the nv driver, similar to what you're describing. The nvidiaglx driver works great for me though so if you're not using it I suspect it would fix the problem.

[LeftyAce]

I am using the nv driver. Is this nvidiaglx driver you're talking about the standard NVIDIA-*.run driver on their website? or something else. I've tried installing the .run file from their website and it complains it can't find the kernel source to compile the module.

[Vergil83]

do you see any errors in

/var/log/XFree86.0.log

[LeftyAce]

I'm using the xorg server, so the log file is /var/log/xorg.0.log. But that's irrelevent. It shows no errors; only a few warnings (fonts and things like that).
Someone told me that I need to install the "real" nvidia driver, so I downloaded it and ran it, but it says it cannot build the nvidia kernel module. It detected my compiler just fine and even started a progress bar "building the module" and after it reached 100% it said "unable to build nvidia kernel module. please see the logfile" The log file says:

In file included from /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src
   /nv/nv.c:14:
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-linux.h:646:2:
   warning: #warning "conftest.sh failed, assuming remap_page_range(4)!"
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c: In function
   'nvidia_init_module':
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1110: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 2 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1110: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 3 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1110: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 4 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c: In function
   'nv_kern_mmap':
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1711: warning
   : passing argument 1 of 'remap_page_range' makes pointer from integer withou
   t a cast
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1711: error:
   incompatible type for argument 4 of 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1711: error:
   too few arguments to function 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1736: warning
   : passing argument 1 of 'remap_page_range' makes pointer from integer withou
   t a cast
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1736: error:
   incompatible type for argument 4 of 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1736: error:
   too few arguments to function 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1780: warning
   : passing argument 1 of 'remap_page_range' makes pointer from integer withou
   t a cast
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1780: error:
   incompatible type for argument 4 of 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1780: error:
   too few arguments to function 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1844: warning
   : passing argument 1 of 'remap_page_range' makes pointer from integer withou
   t a cast
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1844: error:
   incompatible type for argument 4 of 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:1844: error:
   too few arguments to function 'remap_page_range'
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c: In function
   'nv_kern_read_cardinfo':
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2378: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 4 of 'rm_get_device_name' differ in si
   gnedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c: In function
   'nv_kern_read_status':
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2546: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 2 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2546: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 3 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2546: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 4 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2547: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 2 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2547: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 3 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2547: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 4 of 'rm_read_registry_dword' differ i
   n signedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c: In function
   'nv_alloc_pages':
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2919: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 5 of 'KernAllocAGPPages' differ in sig
   nedness
   /tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.c:2949: warning
   : pointer targets in passing argument 6 of 'rm_alloc_agp_pages' differ in si
   gnedness
   make[3]: *** [/tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv.o
   ] Error 1
   make[2]: *** [_module_/tmp/selfgz9374/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1/usr/src
   /nv] Error 2
   NVIDIA: left KBUILD.
   nvidia.ko failed to build!
   make[1]: *** [module] Error 1
   make: *** [module] Error 2
-> Error.
ERROR: Unable to build the NVIDIA kernel module.
ERROR: Installation has failed.  Please see the file
       '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details.  You may find suggestions
       on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
       driver download page at www.nvidia.com.

(it says more, but this is where the warnings/errors start)

Any ideas ? I've got the kernel-headers package in /usr/src/

[Slackitude]

Ok some of this might very well be stuff you already know so bear with me as I'm no expert and have to give advice newbie style. If you bring up the terminal and type
uname -r
that'll give you the kernel you're using so you can make sure you've got the right header files and what not. I used the nvidiaglx from the repos, I believe it's in "non-free" so you ought to be able to get it if you enable main, contrib, and non-free with this
deb http://HTTP.US.Debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free
in your apt sources list. I also used "module-assistant" and after I downloaded and installed my header files, nvidia-glx, nvidia-kernel-common and module-assistant I ran
module-assistant auto-install nvidia
than edited the xorg config file as it said to on the Nvidia site. I don't know if any of that will help but it worked for me and I hope it's usefull.

[LeftyAce]

Ok I downloaded those packages and ran module-installer auto-install nvidia (as root), but it gets a little ways in and fails saying "build of the package nvidia-kernel-source failed" The logfile starts giving errors with:

You appear to be compiling the NVIDIA kernel module with
a compiler different from the one that was used to compile
the running kernel. This may be perfectly alright and you
may be building this module for another kernel in which case
you may ignore this message.

The compiler that will be used to compile this module has been
determined from:
 1) the CC environment variable
 2) that specified in
    /usr/src/linux/include/linux/compile.h
 3) gcc
Using compiler gcc-3.3 version /bin/sh: gcc-3.3: command not found
touch /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv/gcc-check
touch /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv/cc-sanity-check
## Main Make ##
IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1 CC="gcc-3.3"  /usr/bin/make -C /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv -f Makefile SYSSRC=/usr/src/linux   KBUILD_PARAMS="-C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv" module;
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv'
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
./conftest.sh: line 9: gcc-3.3: command not found
Your kernel was configured to include rivafb support!

The rivafb driver conflicts with the NVIDIA driver, please
reconfigure your kernel and *disable* rivafb support, then
try installing the NVIDIA kernel module again.

*** Failed rivafb sanity check. Bailing out! ***

make[2]: *** [rivafb-sanity-check] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv'
make[1]: *** [build-stamp] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel'
make: *** [kdist_image] Error 2

I have gcc4.0.1 (determined by gcc -v), and don't know how to disable rivafb.

Should I consider re-installing debian with a stable base system? (ie XFree86 instead of xorg) or should testing work just fine with the nvidia driver?

[Slackitude]

I saw that trouble about the compiler around a month ago, I used stable and tried testing every now and than until it was fixed. Or at least it was fixed as far as I knew. I do know that right after the install apt-get upgrade wanted to put in a new kernel, and I locked the kernel it came with (2.6.12-1, I believe it was 2.6.12-8 it wanted to put in and I've gotten pretty conservative about changing kernels unless there's a need) I'm running unstable right now with the 2.6.12-1 kernel, before that it was testing. Both were smooth and trouble free aside from the fact I actually had to add "nvidia" to /etc/modules or KDE couldn't load. I remember during the install it asked if I wanted to enable the frame buffer and frankly, not having a clue what it was on about i said yes and it worked out OK. It sounds like you've done what worked for me and it hasn't worked, I wish I had some better ideas than re-installing and using stable, but I've got nothing at this point.

[LeftyAce]

Ok, I'm going to re-install with a stable base and see if it works from there. If it does, I'll upgrade packages if I need to from testing and unstable (but not the kernel if I don't need to). Thanks for your help/time!