Q: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

With me, the channel exceptions returned, unfortunately, too - after roughly a month of well-being.

Another idea which I am trying out right now - and it seems to work so far - is to disable any accelerated finder animations (dialog windows, info screens). You can do this via the great freeware "TinkerTool", right under the "Finder" section. Deselect the three animation options.

What I learned so far seems to indicate an illfated implementation of NVIDIAs graphic driver for any 7xxx type graphiccard, which popped up when new models of NVIDIA where adapted by Apple. This very much means, we won´t see any help from neither NVIDIA nor Apple on this issue.

I find that one of my clients has an iMac 24-inch that's less than 30 days outside of AppleCare and they're now experiencing the same issues this post describes. However, the user is pretty heavily into WebDev with CS3. I can sense from what we've been seeing that there's not a clear-cut solution just yet? Am I wrong?

Has anyone gone to the genius bar yet ? ... this is a big bummer ... crashing at least once a day
+2/18/10 7:23:58 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+
+2/18/10 7:23:59 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+
+2/18/10 7:23:59 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+
+2/18/10 7:23:59 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+
+2/18/10 7:23:59 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+
+2/18/10 7:23:59 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error+

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer care.
This is Shailendra, assisting you with this query.
I understand that you are experiencing issue while using GeForce graphics card with Apple operating system. I am sorry to inform you that NVIDIA does not have updated graphics driver for Mac operating system and for getting the support for this issue I would request you to contact Apple support.
Apple will be able to troubleshoot this issue and able to provide you the supported graphics driver for this operating system.

Please let us know if you need any further clarifications.

Regards,
Shailendra
NVIDIA Customer Care

Having upgraded the iMac from 10.5.8 to 10.6.2, and while this seemed to have cured the crashing that we've been experiencing, but we continue to see video artifacts relatively often.

I think what bothers me most about this is that it's cropped up 30 days outside of AppleCare expiration.

artifacts are far better than the spinning pizza of death , I troubleshoot failures on LAN and will be sure latest upgrade is invoked on iMac tomorrow .... thanks for slight encouragement that something can be resolved ... although I can't afford a new iMac I was feeling that a new machine might be the only resolve. The IMac serves my business via FileMaker and thank-goodness File Maker survives forced re-boot without catastrophic results ... shame on Apple!

I am developing an application that uses OpenGL. Recently, I made a change that brings the following error every single time I run it:

15/03/10 10:35:36 kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error

After that, like other people on the thread, my screen freezes and the machine is as good as dead, i.e. it still works remotely, but even a 'sudo reboot' won't do.

The application works fine running on Linux. I am doing nothing really fancy with OpenGL, I believe.

If anybody from Apple is listening, I'm willing to share the code with them to help track the problem on their side. Again, with my application, the problem is reproducing every single time in a few seconds.

This post is intended for Apple or NVIDIA engineers.

While I did not build a completely reduced test case, I was able to workaround the problem by disabling a specific piece of my code.

This makes me believe that the problem (in my case) is the interaction between glRenderMode(GL_SELECT) and rendering part of the scene in an OpenGL framebuffer object to be used as a dynamic texture.

Since all I'm doing is building a dynamic texture, and the texture has no impact on selection, this is code I can safely skip in my case.

However, it is pretty clear that this should absolutely not crash the kernel driver (if only because it works fine on Linux, which is not exactly known for the stability of its GL stack...)

Any progress? I am also having this problem:
4/2/10 5:46:41 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
4/2/10 5:46:41 PM kernel 00000069

Model Identifier: iMac6,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.33 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

My imac will throw this error and completely lock up many times I play full screen video (Flash mostly). Requires a forced reboot then.

+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:03:42 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x8 = Fifo: Watchdog Timeout Error+
+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:03:42 AM kernel 0000006e+
+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:03:42 AM kernel 00000010 00008297 00000474 00000000+
+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:03:42 AM kernel 0000047e 00001528 00000000 00000009+
+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:03:42 AM kernel 00000000 00000000 01b00003+
+4/16/10 [Apr 16] 9:04:02 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!+



Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D573)
Kernel Version: Darwin 10.3.0

This thread started in February of 2009. It's now April of 2010. How can we get the driver fixed? NVIDIA has chronic problems with terrible drivers. Why does Apple keep using them?

Dear Mr. Transue,

The simple answer to your question? Apple has proved over and over again that it isn't able to solve NVidia driver problems: as a matter of fact the critical part of this software is written... by Apple!
Apple and NVidia was and unfortunately still is a bad combination from the start and the graphic industry using Macs professionaly was not happy at all Apple was switching its main, reliable supplier.
And although also ATI/AMD cards are not always free from glitches too, there's only one way to avoid these problems (and as an Apple fan I regret having to write this over and over again): do yourself a favour and never buy an Apple computer with NVidia graphics!

Best regards,
Robbert

This is a user to user forum and not a forum to post to Apple or NVIDA.

I suggest you post at

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Allan

OK.

I sent in a bug report through that page. What's next?

Wait.

Allan

Another year? That's unreasonable.