Terrible display flickering after FC5 update today

[John Vasileff]

On 10/25/06, Johannes Erdfelt <johannes at erdfelt.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006, Tom Horsley <tomhorsley at adelphia.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:53:58 -0400
> > Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Neal Becker wrote:
> > >
> > > > After today's fc5 update, I now have a horrible random flickering on my
> > > > display.  I only hope fc6 (when I can finally get bt to download it) will
> > > > repair it.
> > >
> > > Went away after reboot.  This is probably just a different manifestation of
> > > an (apparent) race condition with starting the X server.
> >
> > Not sure what you mean by flickering, but with my radeon I have noticed
> > (much more often on FC6 test than FC5) that it sometimes acts like the dpms
> > monitor shut-down stuff gets triggered randomly every few seconds. It will
> > go through a really bad time, then it will stop happening for a while. Video
> > just keeps turning on and off. If I reboot enough, I'll eventually get
> > to a state where it no longer does it (until the next time I reboot :-).
>
> What monitor do you use?
>
> I had a similar problem with my Dell 2000FP. Turned out to be a timing
> problem between the ATI card and the monitor.
>
> I was able to hack my X driver to use a lower timing and almost
> completely solve the problem (every blue moon it would flicker once).
>
> You can also check the archives for past discussions.
>
> JE
>

I've had the same problem with FC5.  My solution - ctrl-alt-f1 to
switch to a text console followed by alt-f7 to return to X clears it
up.  The problem seems to happen on bootup, but weeks can pass without
a problem (assuming no reboot) after using the above technique.


John