Ubuntu 11.04 Natty | Segmentation fault with NVIDIA GeForce 9 Series | KERNEL FAILURE | SOLVED!

After initially bringing up Natty on my box I faced a serious randomly occurring error: X didn't start properly. After digging a while I found the following (var/log/kernel.log):

May 1 19:26:00 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 16.383524] vmap allocation for size 16781312 failed: use vmalloc= to increase size.
May 1 19:26:00 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 16.384670] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x26:0xffffffff:1050)
May 1 19:26:00 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 16.384685] NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed
May 1 19:26:01 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 17.519814] vmap allocation for size 16781312 failed: use vmalloc= to increase size.
May 1 19:26:05 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 21.609101] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x26:0xffffffff:1050)
May 1 19:26:05 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 21.609110] NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed
May 1 19:26:06 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 22.629852] vmap allocation for size 16781312 failed: use vmalloc= to increase size.
May 1 19:26:06 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 22.630973] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x26:0xffffffff:1050)
May 1 19:26:06 fl0-m0thership kernel: [ 22.630983] NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed
May 1 19:27:30 fl0-m0thership kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.

Obviously the kernel tried to allocate memory but somehow wasn't able to do so. The error manifested itself in freezing the system during start-up. As you can see in the kernel.log the boot process froze shortly after loading the bootsplash ...

Here's the solution:

Simply add more memory ^^

First of all, Ubuntu 11.04 utilizes grub2, so you won't find any "menu.lst". You could edit the "/boot/grub/grub.cfg" but this file gets overwritten every time you update your kernel (e.g.). So find "/etc/default/grub" and edit the line "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT". Now, add the option:

vmalloc=192MB

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash vmalloc=192MB"

sudo update-grub

Now Natty boots like a charm, no freezing, if 192MB aren't enough -- try to increase the value. Hope that helps.