GPU hang in Dota2 leads to system crash

[sturdee]

While running Dota2 and moving around in the Panorama menus (most likely a technology based on Chromium) the game freezes and the system becomes unresponsive. The screen is stuck on a frame and I have to hard reset my system.

In systemlog the key lines written are as follows:

21:47:41 kernel: NVRM: GPU at PCI:0000:01:00: GPU-3d2e1720-3ac2-b3d0-73cf-e44dab47add3                                                                                                           
21:47:41 kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 31, pid=1070, Ch 00000034, intr 10000000. MMU Fault: ENGINE CE2 HUBCLIENT_CE2 faulted @ 0x1_1db46000. Fault is of type FAULT_PTE ACCESS_TYPE_WRITE
21:47:48 kernel: nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Error while waiting for GPU progress: 0x0000917c:0 2:0:3624:3616

I will try to generate a proper nvidia-log next time it happens (need to enable logging in xorg first). It has been more and more frequent since recent Dota2 patches.

Below is the full log after I issued kill commands through SSH to attempt to kill the Steam client and eventually my X11 server (to no avail).
gist

Reported the issue to Valve here.

[VulkanGuy]

Did you try with a newer driver?

Vulkan Driver Support

Latest mainline driver that you’re using ( 440.82 ) is released at April 7. It is very old VLK wise at this point + it doesn’t have many fixes like some PrimeSync woes.

Hangs/Freezes when Vulkan v-sync (VK_PRESENT_MODE_FIFO_KHR) is enabled

Hi all, This issue has been fixed with the latest Vulkan Beta Driver 440.66.11 available here. It is part of these fixes: Fixed several synchronization bugs that could momentarily lock up the X server when moving/resizing/focusing OpenGL and Vulkan windows when PRIME Sync is enabled [Linux] I will let you know when the fix reaches stable drivers.

As you can see this issue is fixed on beta driver for more than one months at this point yet there is no sign of any mainline driver from NV with this fix included.

So i say just give it a shot , since you’re on a laptop too and symptomps are somewhat similar maybe that might be the fix.

[sturdee]

Thanks for the tip. I’ll ought to give the nvidia-vulkan branch a try whenever I experience this crash again.

[sturdee]

Sadly I have tried the 440.66.15 driver linked above, and the crash occurred much sooner than I expected. :(
Right now I’m testing by disabling the vulkan renderer in Dota2 just to make sure this is really Vulkan related.

[sturdee]

I can confirm this only occurs with the Vulkan renderer, no problem with the OpenGL renderer.