[colinjones]

Guys,

I have XBMCbuntu on an ASUS EB1501p. Eden (release). This uses the ION2 chipset. I've used these boxes before (XBMC on Ubuntu and XBMC Live) and they are very good. XBMCbuntu works well, 1080p HDMI, audio over SPDIF, etc.

The only issue I have is video causing XBMC to freeze intermittently. Have to kill -9 the xbmc process to get control back. Sometimes audio continues find but the whole UI is frozen. I understand from friends that this is a known issue, and relates to a VDPAU <--> OpenGL interface issue, and you can build from source a new version that solves the problem. However, those instructions are extremely involved, are fairly general to adding features/fixing issues across ATI/nVidia/Intel chipsets, and I don't want to jeopardise my installation (I have numerous other apps running just right!)

I believe the stable XBMCbuntu Eden is using nVidia drivers v280 (on mine it specifically looks like 280.13) and that some commentary has that this version is not very stable, particularly with multithreaded apps, and hangs during a call to set up VDPAU with OpenGL (I'm assuming this means VDPAU is attempting to start decoding onto a texture or something like that).My normal Ubuntu (12.04) is using v295. The instructions I mentioned above are essentially for compiling a fully rejigged VDPAU that among many other things, fixes this issue.

Too scary! I'm wondering if simply forcing the drivers to upgrade to 295 from 280 will be a simpler way to resolve the issue. I believe XBMCbuntu's current stable is 280. So I'm thinking I may just be able to find a ppa for 295 and run an update/upgrade....

Does anyone have any advice on this? Is it likely to solve this specific issue? Is it likely to break XBMCbuntu in some way?

Someone also mentioned ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates but that seems to be an upgrade to the X11 components, which I don't think are implicated here.

Any advice or experience on upgrading the nVidia drivers to 295 on XBMCbuntu Eden release would be greatly appreciated!!!

[teeedubb]

I'm sure that Ubuntu has a nvidia-current-updates package that is an newer driver. There is also the x-swat ppa which has the most recent stable nvidia driver, and is easily removed using ppa-purge.

[colinjones]

Thx teeedubb! If I try nvidia-current-updates do I remove it again using aptget remove and reinstall the standard driver for xbmcbuntu with apt-get install nvidia-current?

Will that be a clean rollback? (Just nervous of screwing up my installation, so want to be able to roll back cleanly!)

[teeedubb]

Yep.

The times I've done it it has been... it deletes the packages from the ppa and reinstalls them from the Ubuntu repos, but in saying that a clonezilla backup doesn't take long and has saved my ass many a time...

[colinjones]

Thanks! I've heard of Clonezilla but never used it. I've been looking for something that will take a snapshot (ideally multiple, differentially) and allow restorations, ideally onto bare metal, if needed. Fingers cross this can do all that! Will take a look in the software centre tonight.

Col.

[un1versal]

Ok the best way to do this is to update the drivers via x-swat ppa, since they keep the newest drivers handy and on time for various still updated Operating systems, from Server to Desktop, and most importantly the minimal cd install both x86 and x86_64 .

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings

The binary driver can also be installed manually, however its best to stick to "debianized" packaging where possible.

That's the quick version if you want to revert purge the xswat ppa and install the old drivers.

This info is valid for any Ubuntu install ,mentioned above.

This is now the forum for discussing this matter.. and it exists in the wiki now http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBM...d_variants.

uNi

[phermansson]

I followed this and got a message that the Nvidia driver was not installed and that I should run nvidia-xconfig. But nvidia-xconfig is missing?
No, its in /usr/lib/nvidia-current/bin, which is not in the systems path.
So you have to run it by "sudo /usr/lib/nvidia-current/bin/nvidia-xconfig".

[Ashex]

Just want to cross-post from this thread. I was having problems with XBMCbuntu Frodo where the system would completely lock up. No crash logs were being generated from XBMC or the kernel, after upgrading the driver and related dependencies I have had no lock ups.