"GPU has fallen off the bus" after some time of playing games (optimus + primusrun)

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I use Gentoo Linux (kernel 3.15.1, problem exists also with earlier kernels) on Lenovo Ideapad Z570 with Optimus (NVidia GeForce 630M). Driver version is 331.79 (problem exists also with 340.17). I use primusrun to run games (e.g. Portal 2 with Steam) on NVidia card. When I launch the game and play some minutes, the game hangs (it is even impossible to kill is with kill -9, zombie remains with child thread consuming 100% cpu) and the following message in kernel log appears:

NVRM: GPU at 0000:01:00.0 has fallen off the bus.

After that it is possible to restore computer functionality only after cold reboot. If I do hot reboot, computer hangs with black screen when it starts booting UEFI.

The first thought was about broken hardware, but I did some diagnostics and found out that with driver 304.121 all things work, there is no hangs, I was able to play game much longer than it takes to hang with driver 331.79. Also I tried playing under Windows 8.1, the game was also hanging but after some seconds the game continued.

Here is nvidia-bug-report.sh output: http://pastebin.com/Q4xbvxg5

Here is Xorg.8.log (bumblebee X-server): http://pastebin.com/qa9JeSKV

Please help me with this problem, it is really bad idea to stick with old drivers.

2

I’ve seen this error too, even with older drivers and kernels, used to get it all the time when I would fire up virtualbox and play a game in a windows guest (havent tested it in a long time, bug might still be there), it would crash the linux driver, machine would just have a black screen.

3

I did some more tests and found out the following.

These configurations work:

These configurations does not work:

  • Driver 331.79 on Gentoo with kernel 3.10.44 and xorg 1.14.5
  • Driver 331.79 on Gentoo with kernel 3.15.1 and xorg 1.15.0
  • Driver 340.17 on Gentoo with kernel 3.15.1 and xorg 1.15.0

I hope this information will help somehow.