Xorg is killing me

[jds]

I have a Dell notebook, and an external LCD screen. The notebook uses nvidia drivers, and I've tried updating the driver for the video card a dozen different ways. I've tried setting AccelMethod three different ways in the xorg.conf file. I've followed every suggestion that I can find. But still Xorg uses tons of CPU whenever I use amarok, or sometimes when I use Firefox. Xorg often consumes all of one core, drops to about 15-30% (of total CPU) whenever I am doing anything, and might drop to 10% when there is nothing (nothing!) open or running. The machine is hardly usable for anything besides what I could do with my Commodore 64. This is my last desperate plea. Don't make me install Windows. Please.

[sithlord48]

Re: Xorg is killing me

first things first what video card do u have. did u install the properitary driver (if so did u attempt to use the open driver first?). we are gonna need some more info on that video card to help w/ a possible driver issue. i would also suggest you try the maverick (10.10) live disk and see if its any better (the LTS versions don't get the most updated HW drivers.)

if you could give us the output of the command lshw (only the section about your video card) that would help us greatly.

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

first things first what video card do u have. did u install the properitary driver (if so did u attempt to use the open driver first?). we are gonna need some more info on that video card to help w/ a possible driver issue. i would also suggest you try the maverick (10.10) live disk and see if its any better (the LTS versions don't get the most updated HW drivers.)

if you could give us the output of the command lshw (only the section about your video card) that would help us greatly.

As you can see below it is an nvidia GeForce 8400M GS. When I installed LL, the open driver was too slow, so I installed the proprietary. I first tried what was in the repos, but that was also problematic. I uninstalled these, and installed the driver from the nvidia website recommended for this card.

Here is the relevant part of the output from lshw:

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G86 [GeForce 8400M GS]
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:f5000000-f5ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff(prefetchable) memory:f2000000-f3ffffff ioport:ef00(size=128) memory:f4000000-f401ffff(prefetchable)


*update: the driver I installed is: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-260.19.44.run

[sithlord48]

Re: Xorg is killing me

well your first issue is prolly getting it from the nvidia webpage. i would check and see what version of xorg you have and what version is supported by that driver version. i don't have a nvidia card anymore but i know there are several people using them around this forum. you might just have to tweak your xorg.conf file further. if possible i would try to use the open driver since it does not require an xorg and should autoconfigure it self to work. look for a post by dibl his signature shoud have more info for you in his 20 top problems faq.

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

well your first issue is prolly getting it from the nvidia webpage. i would check and see what version of xorg you have and what version is supported by that driver version. i don't have a nvidia card anymore but i know there are several people using them around this forum. you might just have to tweak your xorg.conf file further. if possible i would try to use the open driver since it does not require an xorg and should autoconfigure it self to work. look for a post by dibl his signature shoud have more info for you in his 20 top problems faq.

You contradict yourself. The FAQ from dibl says to use the latest driver from the Nvidia website. I read through his instructions, which are rather similar to what I already did, but did them again anyway to be sure. Right now I am looking at my CPU usage, and Xorg is using nearly 100% of one core.

Is there anybody out there who knows what is going on ?

[rfakhrai]

Re: Xorg is killing me

1) When you had a clean and fresh xorg file that the nvidia installer created, did this problem persist?

2) Did you follow dibl's method #3 to the tee when you installed the driver?

3) let's have a look at the log at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Maybe there are some errors there that might help us.

4) Is xorg always hogging that much of your resources or only when amarok and sometimes firefox is being used?

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

1) When you had a clean and fresh xorg file that the nvidia installer created, did this problem persist?

2) Did you follow dibl's method #3 to the tee when you installed the driver?

3) let's have a look at the log at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Maybe there are some errors there that might help us.

4) Is xorg always hogging that much of your resources or only when amarok and sometimes firefox is being used?

1) Yes.
2) Yes.
3) OK
4) Always? There is a strong correlation with having either of those progs open, and is, like I wrote above, relatively high even when nothing else is open.

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Any ideas, anybody? Am I condemned back to the world of windoze?

[rfakhrai]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Your Xorg log doesn't look troublesome. I've thought about it and I can't seem to find an explanation for this. I will continue to do research because I don't want you to go back to windows.

In the meantime, I'll bump this thread for you

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

OK, Ithink that I finally found out the problem. It's a hardware issue! I tried just reinstalllling the OS, since it was a fairly recent install, and my home directory was on a separate partition. But I kept having problems with it. Finally ran a diagnostic at boot up. There was some bus error. Talked to Dell support, took the thing apart and reinstalled the optical drive, put it back together, and the same problem. Needs a new motherboard. I can't imagine that would be a good investment for this machine.

[rfakhrai]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Interesting that it would cause Xorg to be weird like that. But stranger things have happened.

I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune with the MOBO. I'm curious, how long have you had the machine?

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Only about 2 years. Long enough to be out of warranty.

Thanks for your help.

[rfakhrai]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Question is: does windows run on it?

[jds]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Don't know if windows runs on it---never tried it. The machine is pretty much unusable now. It seems unable to read the optical drive reliably.

[verndog]

Re: Xorg is killing me

Don't know if windows runs on it---never tried it. The machine is pretty much unusable now. It seems unable to read the optical drive reliably.

Then what does this quote referring to:

Any ideas, anybody? Am I condemned back to the world of windoze?