i386/97287: Screen Corruption In FreeBSD 6.X When Apps Started In rc.conf

[Jeff Molofee]

>Number:         97287
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       Screen Corruption In FreeBSD 6.X When Apps Started In rc.conf
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon May 15 03:50:15 GMT 2006
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Jeff Molofee
>Release:        RELENG_6_1 (6.1 Release #2)
>Organization:
NeHe Productions
>Environment:
FreeBSD nehe.divine 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #2: Sun May 14 01:52:47 MDT 2006     jeffm at nehe.divine:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/NeHe  i386

>Description:
I have an Nvidia 5900fx video card.  It has ran fine from FreeBSD 4.x through 5.x.
I am using the Nvidia AGP, agp is disable in my kernel, I have no real tweaks other than hardware cursor.  My machine is an Intel P4 3.0Ghz w/ HT enabled.  HT is also enabled in my kernel.

If I start my machine with just:

compat5x_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
gdm_enable="YES"

My machine boots fine, runs fine, etc.

If I add any of the following to /etc/rc.conf:

mysql_enable="YES"
samba_enable="YES"
cupsd_enable="YES"
squid_enable="YES"
apache22_enable="YES"
webmin_enable="YES"

Not all of them, but any one of them on it's own, I get a bar of random pixels at the top of my screen (about 10-20 lines of pixels).  This bar changes as I move the mouse.  The color of each pixels changes as I move up / down / left / right with the mouse.

When I upgraded from 6.0 to 6.1 the problem became MUCH worse.  After logging in (the gnome 2.14 login looks fine), my screen goes completely black, then reappears with stripes of random pixels down the screen.  I can then see my desktop loading, in a video mode that does not look correct (wrong bit depth, horribly stretched).  when I press CTRL-F1, I see the console, but I can not type in it.  When I press CTRL-F9 to go back to Gnome 2.14 I then see my screen correctly, but with the 10-20 lines of random pixels.

I have asked about this problem many times on the FreeBSD Questions Digest, and have had many suggestions on things to try.  I have tried the following:

Disable the nvidia-driver (x11/nvidia-driver) and boot with freebsd's driver.  I still saw the 10-20 lines of random data.

Remove any cards in your machine that may conflict with the video card.  I removed my ATI TV Wonder Pro Card (and thought the problem had left, but it's back).

Change resolutions (lower the resolution).  I see the problem in 640x480 up to 1280x1024 (flat panel monitor, dvi connection).

Disable Hyper Threading.  I recompiled without it, disabled it, and still had the problem.

I even went as far as reinstalling from scratch (format, reinstall using new ISO).

I have had a few people say it could be my video card, but I dual boot to Windows XP, and have no problems at all in XP ... nor do I have any problems in BSD if I disable everything in rc.conf (like squid, samba, etc).

If I disable everything, boot into freebsd (which will allow it to work fine), and THEN load squid, etc, my system runs fine, without any of the random pixels.

It appears as if data is being pushed onto my screen buffer.  Although I am not an expert, it's the same effect you would have gotten on an old Atari computer if you wrote random pixels to video ram.

I would be more than happy to supply more information, screenshots, dmesg, rc.conf, etc.
>How-To-Repeat:
I have asked people to reproduce the problem, and they have said they can not.  However on my machine, I do the following:

RELENG_6_1
Nvidia 5900fx
Install Gnome 2.12 - 2.14
In rc.conf enable cupsd, squid, webmin, etc (any larger app)
Boot the machine, and you will see random pixels.

>Fix:

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: