Mandriva 2006 keeps crashing

[micmac303]

Hi all,

I recently installed Mandriva 2006 and all went well until I tried to play a movie through Kaffine, at which point it crashed.

It now crashes regularly, worst case being during login.

After reading several posts it seems that I may be better off installing a previous (more stable?) release - is this really my only option?

M

[fingal]

Sounds strange because I think 2006 in very stable indeed. You say your system crashes during log in. How far into the log in process do you manage to get? It's very rare for an entire distro to completely fall over, but not as rare - indeed quite common - for individual applications to hang or occasionally go bananas.

Kaffeine needs a couple of libraries installed before it can manage to play dvds, assuming that's what you're doing: libdvdcss and libdvdread. These can be found here.

It might indicate a hardware problem, and if so the usual suspect is your video card. If you would please list your hardware it might help us a bit.

The only other thing I can think of is a corrupted download of Mandriva 2006. It's not impossible that you have an incomplete distro, though this also seems a bit unlikely.

You could log in without a gui, type top and this would list your system processes. Each process has a PID number which can be used to Kill it. If Kaffeine persists as a problem, it might be worth remembering this.

[micmac303]

Hi again Fingal,

I was playing avi's which worked for about 20 seconds and then hung.

I have an NVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128MB.

This card was not one of the listed cards during install, so I selected an incorrect one to complete the installation and later installed the driver from NVidia - http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-7676.html.

This actually worked for a while, but has since reverted to crashing.

I do get an odd message during boot - along the lines of "NVidia driver already installed..." as if it is trying (and failing) to re-install the driver during each boot.

M

[techieMoe]

Hi again Fingal,

I was playing avi's which worked for about 20 seconds and then hung.

I've had this issue when a distribution used the open-source nv driver instead of the commercial "nvidia" drivers.

I have an NVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128MB.

This card was not one of the listed cards during install, so I selected an incorrect one to complete the installation and later installed the driver from NVidia - http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-7676.html.

This actually worked for a while, but has since reverted to crashing.

I do get an odd message during boot - along the lines of "NVidia driver already installed..." as if it is trying (and failing) to re-install the driver during each boot.

M

What process did you use to install the Nvidia drivers? Did you make sure to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to use the "nvidia" driver?

For the record, I have a Geforce 6800 (not too much older than your 6600) and it works fine with the commercial Nvidia drivers in Mandriva 2006.

[JaRaEeZ]

Hi again Fingal,

I was playing avi's which worked for about 20 seconds and then hung.

I have an NVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128MB.

This card was not one of the listed cards during install, so I selected an incorrect one to complete the installation and later installed the driver from NVidia - http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-7676.html.

This actually worked for a while, but has since reverted to crashing.

I do get an odd message during boot - along the lines of "NVidia driver already installed..." as if it is trying (and failing) to re-install the driver during each boot.

M

Hi, this may actually be a problem with the drivers. Have you checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any errors? Do you get the NVidia splash screen on your screen just before X starts? I would re-install the drivers if the splash screen isn´t displaying. The service ¨dkms¨ may be running which will explain your errors during boot. After you re-install (if you decide to..) try disabling that services from the control panel & see how you get on...


HTH

[micmac303]

I changed the runlevel to 3 and rebooted into CLI and simply entered:
"sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1.run" and followed the install instructions.

I also made the recommended changes to the xorg.conf.

[techieMoe]

I changed the runlevel to 3 and rebooted into CLI and simply entered:
"sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg1.run" and followed the install instructions.

I also made the recommended changes to the xorg.conf.

Did you also modprobe nvidia after you installed the driver?

[micmac303]

I do get the splash screen.

I'll check the log for errors, thanks.

What is "dkms"?

[micmac303]

Did you also modprobe nvidia after you installed the driver?

I didn't no, do I just type "modprobe nvidia" at the prompt?

[fingal]

Did you also modprobe nvidia after you installed the driver?

I didn't no, do I just type "modprobe nvidia" at the prompt?

I think you need to be root to do that? You're inserting a module into the kernel with modprobe.