X server crash: "Fatal server error: Active ring not fl

[cmcclean]

Hi,

I've been happily using Knoppix 3.2 (hd install) for the past couple of months (after a number of years running SuSE and Red Hat). In the last week I've had problems with the X Server crashing, although I have made no changes to my configuration nor have I installed any new packages.

Typically what happens is that, in KDE, I switch to Konqueror (connected to google) and start to enter some text in the search field. Then the screen hangs and moments later is replaced by garbage. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, Ctrl+alt+f1 do not have any effect. However, the keyboard does respond to a ctrl+alt+del which reboots the machine.

It has also happened while starting to type an email address into Kmail - one letter and it hangs.

The XFree86 log shows the following:

(II) I810(0): Adding 768 scanlines for pixmap caching
(II) I810(0): Allocated Scratch Memory
(II) I810(0): [dri] Buffer map : 57d000
(II) I810(0): [drm] added 256 4096 byte DMA buffers
(II) I810(0): [drm] dma control initialized, using IRQ 9
(II) I810(0): [dri] visual configs initialized.
(==) I810(0): Write-combining range (0xf8000000,0x4000000)
(II) I810(0): vgaHWGetIOBase: hwp->IOBase is 0x03d0, hwp->PIOOffset is 0x0000
pgetbl_ctl: 0x179a0001 pgetbl_err: 0x0
ipeir: 0 iphdr: 50c00004
LP ring tail: 79f0 head: 7870 len: f001 start 300000
eir: 0 esr: 0 emr: 3d
instdone: ff3a instpm: 0
memmode: 4 instps: 810
hwstam: 9ac7 ier: 0 imr: 9ac7 iir: 0

I understand that this type of error is usually encountered with multiple x servers; I am only running one.

I've spent the morning trawling the web looking for a solution. One suggestion is to comment out the 'Load "dri"' line in XF86Config.

Has anyone else encountered and solved this problem?

Thanks in advance,
Cormac.

[cmcclean]

Hi,

I left out the end of the XFree log, which is the crucial bit, sorry!

Fatal server error:
Active ring not flushed

Regards,
Cormac.