Blackscreen - failed to idle channel

Question

I've just installed Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS and everything was working fine.

But suddenly it freezes and then goes blackscreen, and displays this:

* Stopping System V runlevel compatibility
* Stopping save kernel messages
* Starting crash report submission daemon
[  797.944847] nouveau E[Xorg[1052]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 [Xorg[1052]]
[  812.930255] nouveau E[Xorg[1052]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 [Xorg[1052]]
[  827.971609] nouveau E[gnome-shell[1911]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 E[gnome-shell[1911]]
[  842.957016] nouveau E[gnome-shell[1911]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 E[gnome-shell[1911]]
[ 1304.084012] nouveau E[Xorg[3342]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 [Xorg[3342]]
[ 1319.069420] nouveau E[Xorg[3342]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 [Xorg[3342]]
[ 1334.110775] nouveau E[gnome-shell[3923]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 E[gnome-shell[3923]]
[ 1349.096181] nouveau E[gnome-shell[3923]] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 E[gnome-shell[3923]]
[ 1349.096294] nouveau E[   PFIFO][0000:01:00.0] read fault at 0x0000013000 [PTE] from PBDMA0/HOST_CPU on channel 0x021f894000 [unknown]

And then, after some time, i'm asked to login, or it just displays weird patterns and does nothing.

This is happening more and more often.

Do you have and ideas how can i fix this?

Solution 1

Now everything is working.

My solution:

1. Run software-properties-gtk --open-tab=4
2. Under NVIDIA Corporation: ... select NVIDIA binary driver instead of Server X
3. Click Apply

Solution 2

Those of us accustomed to a graphical user interface and allergic to text can choose System Settings > System > Software & Updates > Additional Drivers.

Then we need to wait a couple of minute for the page to update.

Under 14.01 I was offered two options for NVidia legacy drivers under three different menu entries. I chose, with some success to date, version 304.125, because it had the higher serial number and was therefore implicitly a later version.

Comments

[Brent Bradburn]

The next step in the process: askubuntu.com/q/759641/11522

[Bruce]

Here we are, 7 years later and Ubuntu is still feeding us the Nouveau driver that crashes all the time. This, then, forces us to google around and figure out how to bypass the broken stuff. Working correctly is more important than being "free and open source."

[Bruce]

I guess this command line solution doesn't survive the ages. I get critical error messages followed by a hang: "(software-properties-gtk:32075): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:45:47.068: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook"