Q: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

Check your updates. Snow Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 is here.

I'm sorry to say that the Snow Leopard Graphics update did NOT fix the problem, same graphics problems, same Console messages:
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 0000006b
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 00100000 00004097 00016877 00000002
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 000190ea 00001efc 16f7b8df 00000002
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 00000000 beef9601 00000000
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 00000069
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 0000006b
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 00100000 00004097 00016877 00000002
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 000190ea 00001efc 16f7b8df 00000002
8/18/10 4:35:23 PM kernel 00000000 beef9601 00000000
8/18/10 4:35:24 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
8/18/10 4:35:24 PM kernel 00000069
8/18/10 4:35:24 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
8/18/10 4:35:24 PM kernel 00000069

I've been noticing this problem for only about the past week, but it's happened every day. I've applied the Snow Leopard graphics update, and I still get the hanging and error message in console.

FAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK! Me too:

--

20/8/10 3:59:03 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
20/8/10 3:59:03 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
20/8/10 3:59:03 PM kernel 00000069

--

The graphics update didn't do A THING*. Disappointed beyond words.

* Well, not completely true: it did make the image corruption more persistent. I have now suffered a corrupted mouse pointer (only fixable by rebooting) and Tweetie now corrupts which is only fixable by restarting it, while before I could just switch tabs and it'd be fine.

+Another Fine Apple™ Update+

On my 24" iMac 6,1 I was having the exact same problems as everybode else. Even after the graphics-update. Then I installed the nVidia-supplied drivers using pacisfist as described in this thread. And so far it seems to work. No freezes, no garbled images or other artifacts. Fingers crossed.

Do you mean the drivers from 10.5.6 or a different source for the nVidia-drivers? I've really had enough of waiting on Apple and want to try it as well.

Please check back in with us in a week. If it's still working and you haven't had overheating problems, I'm going to try it as well.

After the graphics update on my 2006 Mac Pro....still get the error:

*Aug 20 17:03:31 kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!*

-Kevin

I mean these: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce-macosx-19.5.8f03-driver.html
Sure, it says it won't install but it contains drivers for the 7300, but if installed by hand the drivers work fine.

I'll check back in a week, but since I "updated" to the nvidia-written drivers yesterday I've not had any artifacts, no messages about NVDA in my syslogs and the system seems as stable as I remember from the days of Tiger.

Ah, I'm venturing in a bit of unknown territory and it differs a bit from extracting the stuff from the 10.5.6 update... would you mind terribly to offer a small guide? I have the drivers, Pacifist and KextHelper.

In the nVidia package there are three additional packages but I'm unsure of the subsequent steps. I've made a bootable clone from my current system, so I could frack up my system without dire consequences... but rather do it right the first time.

I second the request for a guide to installing the nVidia drivers.

Well, first I made a backup of /System/Library/Extensions/GeForce* and /System/Library/NV*, just in case.

Then I extracted all the files from the Nvidia-driver-package to /tmp/System/Library/Extensions and copied them to /System/Library/Extensions
I then ran in terminal the following.
sudo chmod 755 -R /System/Library/Extensions
sudo chown root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions

The files in the nvidia-package has the same name as the drivers in /System/Library/Extensions so I simply let them be overwritten.

After these commands I rebooted my system and ran disk-utility and had it repair permissions on the boot-drive.

It's been two days without any graphic artifacts, screen lockups or overheating issues what so ever. At least my problems seems to have disappeared. Also the logs are clean. Before I changed the drivers from apples to nvidia's my iMac couldn't go half an hour without strange graphics behaviour and now, as I said, it's been two days.

Thank you so much. I'm going to give this a try in a couple of days (when I've got some free time).

It may be worth noting that small differences in the extracted Nvidia files can cause subtle problems when mixed with the Apple-supplied extensions, especially if they are installed without running the pre-install & post-install scripts that the installer package runs to make sure everything is compatible & properly linked & referenced with the existing OS components. The OS is full of these things, not just in extensions but throughout the system domain. Some are updated automatically as needed, some are not.

For this reason, it is a good idea to make a clone of the entire startup volume when possible, just in case some oddity does surface later.

I'm sorry to say that altough the problems are a lot less severe with the nvidia-drivers the issues are not resolved. I played around with Need for speed Carbon and what do you know... Garbled screens and unresponsive display forcing me to ssh in to the machine and reboot it. I have now installed Leopard 10.5 and I'm in the process of install 10.5.6.

I see no other solution at this point as I use this computer as a tv in my living room. All of a sudden (under snow leopard) I would get one or sometimes two flickering lines in my tv-view when running EyeTV. Such a hassle can ruin even a Star Trek movie!