Comment 2 for bug 477972

I can confim this behaviour on Maxdata Pro i600 Notebook. After upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10 the display freezes and cannot be restarted at all. The system is fully available from network (i.e. ssh shell) and can be shut down or restarted. System load is ~1 although 100%idle on CPU.

There is a stack trace in the messages log which shows, that this must be a problem of the i915 driver:

Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420086] i915/0 D c08145c0 0 285 2 0x00000000
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420101] f6b33f04 00000046 f6868000 c08145c0 f6b71bb8 c08145c0 302255c5 00000092
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420121] c08145c0 c08145c0 f6b71bb8 c08145c0 30224573 00000092 c08145c0 f6bec000
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420141] f6b71920 f68f1414 f68f1418 ffffffff f6b33f30 c056f776 f7070c90 f68f141c
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420160] Call Trace:
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420182] [<c056f776>] __mutex_lock_slowpath+0xc6/0x130
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420193] [<c056f690>] mutex_lock+0x20/0x40
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420256] [<f81abc0a>] i915_gem_retire_work_handler+0x2a/0x70 [i915]
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420273] [<c0157a7e>] run_workqueue+0x6e/0x140
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420318] [<f81abbe0>] ? i915_gem_retire_work_handler+0x0/0x70 [i915]
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420331] [<c0157bd8>] worker_thread+0x88/0xe0
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420344] [<c015c280>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420357] [<c0157b50>] ? worker_thread+0x0/0xe0
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420368] [<c015bf8c>] kthread+0x7c/0x90
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420378] [<c015bf10>] ? kthread+0x0/0x90
Nov 8 12:17:33 seal kernel: [ 840.420391] [<c0104007>] kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10

Please see the full dmesg attached.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1742
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx+
        Latency: 0
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
        Region 0: Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        Region 1: Memory at feb00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Region 2: I/O ports at dc00 [size=8]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915

Thanks for debugging this issue. I hope my information helps.
 - Dan