Fedora 8 64 bit X server issues

[John Summerfield]

John Thompson wrote:
> I have Fedora 8 x86_64 installed on a machine with on board Intel-945GM 
> video. The xorg-x11-drv-i810 driver has been giving me a lot of 
> problems: if I use it, I cannot access a text console using 
> [ctrl-alt-Fn]; the monitor goes into standby with no display. The 
> console still reponds to typed commands, but nothing is displayed on the 
> monitor. On return to the X session, the display becomes unstable, and 
> often dies, and won't let me log back in -- the gdm screen disappears 
> and the "loading" cursor appears over a black screen, which persists 
> indefinitely. I then have to change to a text console, log in (blindly) 
> and initiate a reboot. On reboot, the POST text display is often wildly 
> off-center unless I power off the machine for several minutes.  
> 
> I can use the vesa driver instead of the Intel driver, but then power 
> management doesn't work. DPMS is enabled in the BIOS and in xorg.conf, 
> but doesn't seem to be recognized by the vsea driver. If I try using 
> e.g. GoogleEarth with the vesa driver, the X server just crashes.
> 
> What can I do to rectify this? Or should I just shit-can the on board 
> video and get a separate video card?

My experiences with Intel graphics are generally poor, and it's nothing 
to do with amd-64 architected CPUs. After some fiddling, I have this 
working in my IBM Thinkcentre:

82865G Integrated Graphics Controller

OTOH I was wholly unsuccessful with this in a Dell Optiplex GX270:
82865G Integrated Graphics Device

This does not work well in my HP DC7700 SFF:
82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller


I like to run xen-capable CPUs and this adds to the problems. First, 
with xen:
I like to use a framebuffer console. It's a while since I tried on the 
Dell so we'll ignore that for the moment.

on the Thinkcentre, I boot with no special options for the kernel or 
module lines, vga=text-80x60 works for xen, but that's not good enough.
During running init scripts, I load intelfb
09:37 [summer at numbat ~]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/modules/local.modules
#!/bin/sh
for i in intelfb ;do
         modprobe $i
done
09:37 [summer at numbat ~]$ grep intelfb /etc/modprobe.conf
options intelfb mode=1280x1024 at 70
09:38 [summer at numbat ~]$


That gets me a framebuffer on EL5-clone, whether I'm running xen or not.

On the HP, intelfb does not handle the graphics card, only the vesafb 
driver does, and that doesn't do framebuffer under xen.

The problems with these are minor compared with what I experienced on 
the Dell. Problems varied, and I had several different versions of Linux 
installed on it at the same time, SLES, OpenSUSE 10.0, RHEL5 client and 
server betas, FC6. I think it worked if I didn't use framebuffer, but if 
I did use framebuffer (and I don't think xen was necessarily part of the 
mix), then I tended to get video extreme corruption on the text 
consoles, and on FC6 X locked up when I switched back.

If a bit of fiddling with intelfb doesn't get results for you, then an 
alternative card sounds good to me.

-- 

Cheers
John

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