Problems With 10.2 Hanging On Acer Aspire 5584

[cheeze]

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone suffers from a hanging system when using SUSE 10.2 on an Acer Aspire 5584WXMi. Below are my system specs

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz
2 GB DDR2
1x 120 GB SATA HDD
nVIDIA 7300 Go 128MB (additional 256MB shared)
2.6.18.8-0.3-default kernel
openSUSE 10.2

It's a brand new system. I blew away Vista the moment I got my hands on it and replaced it with 10.2. Was happily installing everything including Beryl. But when running Beryl or Compiz, after some time the screen will hang and then shades of red and green will 'eat' away the display and the entire system hangs. It will not accept any input from mouse or keyboard. Cannot SSH in as well - the only option was to power it off.

I've also checked the forums and Nvidia site for help. There are few posts on random hangs on SUSE Linux. I tried some of the suggestions made. Also there were a few suggestions on making the Nvidia driver work properly from Nvidia's forum too. Below are the things I did

1) I've done a hard disk scan to make sure the hard disk is ok using

badblock -n -s /dev/sda2

There doesn't seem to be any errors.

2) Memory test using the installation disc (the last option in the menu). Ran the bugger for about 9 hours with one error occurring. Don't know what to make of it.

3) From Nvidia's suggestion, passed in pci=nommconf at the GRUB screen. I thought that solved the problem but apparently it didn't.

4) Also from Nvidia, added idle=poll with pci=nommconf again to no end.

5) Used the repo RPM from ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.2 (didn't work) and compiled from the Nvidia package (also didn't work). I used version 1.0.9631-0.1.

At the point of frustration, I switched back to the open source nv driver, sacrificing my much desired Beryl effects. Up till now, there doesn't seem to be any more random hangs.

Can it also be due to the heat? I mean when running Beryl, the Nvidia card seems to be working overtime with the fan running at full speed most of the time.

Does anyone have other suggestions or guess what could be the reason? I was thinking of downgrading the kernel to try, but will it help? And yes, I'm willing to sacrifice kernel upgrade in exchange for Beryl - how superficial can I be

[gogalthorp]

Have you tried running the NVIDIA driver without Beryl. This will tell you which is having the problem. My guess is Beryl.

[kahoona]

My box freezes up occasionally and I think it is because of the compiz. I'm running without it now just to see for sure if that is causing it. I setup a nightly reboot so I didn't have to worry about it but I don't want to do that forever.

[cheeze]

Well, looks like gogalthorp was spot on. After running Linux for a few days without Beryl and with the Nvidia driver, I've not experienced any more hangups.

This isn't good. I spent the extra cash to buy a better laptop with dedicated graphics card that cannot run Beryl.

I'm gonna try the newer driver 100.14.09 and see if it works.

[gogalthorp]

How are you installing Beryl? Here is a page that might help

Beryl - openSUSE

good luck

[cheeze]

Ya, that's exactly how I installed Beryl. Will try 100.14.09 and see if it helps. Thanks!