Created attachment 139661 [details] stripped5 Newer linux distributions with kernels 3.10 through 3.15 produce a bug i named "stripped death". When launching Firefox (or Sparky linux's IceWeasel) the system becomes totally unresponsive and a stripped screen image (see attachment) appears. From this moment on, even Ctrl+Alt+Del does not respond. I have tested kernels 3.10.37, 3.12.13, 3.14 and 3.15, all of which produce the error. 3.4.87, 3.8 and 2.6.33.7 don't. My box has 1GiB RAM, 2 pcs of AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+, and graphic card nvidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430.
Created attachment 139671 [details] stripped6
The error appears also with kernel 3.16. With kernel 3.12.13 the error appears only when launching both firefox and thunderbird simultaneously.
Please provide kernel logs.
Created attachment 146131 [details] kernel log (tar.bz2) i hope this is what you need
The only interesting thing i see is Aug 10 14:03:35 amd64 kernel: [ 27.181486] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x002c0001 FAULT at 0x00b000
The problem still recurs. I have three linuxes installed: a Mageia 4 for casual use, a SparkyLinux for experiments and a legacy Mandriva 2010.2 as reserve. The Mandriva system has an old kernel (2.6.33.7) which never produced the error. Under the Mageia I found a workaround with an old (3.4.87) kernel. This workaround does not work on Sparky, because the ADSL (pppoe) does not start with the old kernel (3.4.87). I guess pppoe can be implemented several ways, and Sparky's pppoe assumes some kernel service that the old kernel does not provide. I guess this distro focuses on wireless internet contacts. The newer kernels (from 3.10 on) have this service but they include the danger of system death on launching Firefox or Thunderbird (I experienced the system death also with Chrome once). Kernel 3.18 also produces the error.
At last have i found a distro that addresses my problem. This is LinuxMint 17.1: «Solving freezes with some NVIDIA GeForce GPUs If you are unable to boot Linux Mint with an NVIDIA card, or if you are experiencing constant freezes and system lock ups, please append "nomodeset" to your boot arguments. At the boot menu of the live DVD/USB, press Tab to edit the boot arguments and add "nomodeset" at the end of the line. If you're still having issues, you can also remove "quiet splash --" from that same line. Alternatively you can use the "nouveau.noaccel=1" boot argument. Once the system is installed, use the Driver Manager to install the nvidia-304 driver.» See also: "https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12935"