kernel-2.6.8-1.603 brings back refresh problem for 815 Graphics Controller

[Jim Cornette]

Adam Yates wrote:
>  >From the output of xorg.conf and lspci, I have determined I have the
> S3 ProSavageDDR video card.
> The 'savage' module in xorg.conf  seems to mess things up. I replaced
> it with 'vesa' and it works fine.
> Does anyone know of a current conflict with the 'savage' module?
> 
> thanks
> Adam
> 
> 
> Jim Cornette wrote:
> 
>> Adam Yates wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Cornette wrote:
>>>
>>>> I just booted up using the kernel-2.6.8-1.603 and had a very 
>>>> familiar problem that I used to only have with loser resolutions and 
>>>> depths. With the new kernel, even the higher color and depths 
>>>> exhibit the refresh problem.
>>>>
>>>> I added this to the triage bug for the refresh problem.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Do you know if this problem affects laptop displays? I have 
>>> successfully run core 1 & 2, but whenever it tries to
>>> do anything with x as far as gui stuff, even system-config-display, 
>>> it hangs up on me.
>>> Any suggestions?
>>>
>>
>> I had the hanging problem with a radeon 7200 recently. I have not had 
>> problems on the only laptop that I install Fedora on.
>>
>> If you can run /sbin/lspci and see which type of graphics controller 
>> that the laptop has, someone might have similar hardware and know a 
>> workaround for bypassing this failure.
>>
>> With the 815 Graphics controller which is used on a lot of 
>> desktops/laptops, system-config-display is usable. The resulting X 
>> server is unusable because of all items on the screen do not get 
>> updated  and you get messy output.
>>
>> If you have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file created already, you might try 
>> the vesa driver in place of whatever screen driver is in this file. 
>> The vesa driver does not work for Graphics controllers though. You 
>> would end up with diagonal lines across the GUI.
>>
>> lspci output and the xorg.conf file might be handy for determining why 
>> you are getting this error.
>>
>> Jim
>>
> 

I tried two different things to find out more about the savage driver. 
The first was to read "info savage". The results were your card was 
listed in the info page.
Next, I went to freedesk.org and looked up bug reports for savage. The 
results were 8 reports. (Below link)

It is good that you can get running with the vesa driver. You might want 
to change the driver back to savage for a test. What you want to do is 
to run the below after the failure to get the xorg.conf file results 
regarding the failure. I believe that it was reported that this log 
overwrites each time X is ran. Therefore, to get the log for the failure 
you need to cat this to a file, after the savage failure. Then you can 
include this on your bug report to freedesk. You can change the entry 
back to vesa and submit the report to freedesk. You can search fedora 
bugzilla for reports also on the savage driver.

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log >~/savage-xorg.0.log

This should save the Xorg.0.log in your user directory for submittal. 
This is before changing back the driver and launching X w/ vesa.

Jim

https://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__open__&product=&content=savage