[Nix-dev] What kills my xserver?

[Cillian de Róiste]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Arie Middelkoop <amiddelk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/05/12 18:41, Cillian de Róiste wrote:
>>
>> For what it's worth, I have the same symptoms although I have not
>> investigated it at all. I am using the ati videoDriver (the Free one).
>> I'd be happy to collect some information if it helps to debug. I had
>> always assumed that a fresh ~/.kde would solve it but never bothered
>> to try.
>
>
> One of the many steps that I tried is a fresh ~/.kde, and I can confirm that
> this does not help in resolving the issue.
>
> Actually, I recall that the Nixos manual mentions that it's possible to test
> your system in a virtual machine. I wonder if this could help in ruling out
> hardware issues. Virtualized hardware is hopefully more deterministic among
> different systems than real hardware...

That's a nice idea, I ran some tests based on the instructions here a
while back: http://nixos.org/wiki/NixOS_VM_tests

If it fails in the VM then it looks like it is indeed a hardware
issue. AFAIK Eelco is using KDE with the nvidia driver and can logout
and restart without any problems from the KDE menu.
I guess it's also worth testing the vesa video driver.