Bug 173449

Summary:	'vesa' driver does not clear previous screen contents before enabling display
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Michal Jaegermann <michal>
Component:	xorg-x11-drv-vesa	Assignee:	X/OpenGL Maintenance List <xgl-maint>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	rawhide	CC:	gustavo
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2006-03-08 22:11:15 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Michal Jaegermann 2005-11-17 04:17:43 UTC

Description of problem:

When starting a new server shows for quite a long while what was on a screen
in the preceding session (like terminal windows with a text in them, or
whatever documents/data were displayed on a session close).  In an age of
digital cameras this leaks an information like crazy.  This happens at
least with "vesa" driver as so far this is the only one which works on
my hardware (Radeon 9500 Pro video).

BTW - this new X server seems also to mess with colors of my console fonts
(making, for example, sometimes a coloured display in vim in places practically
unreadable) to an extent of turning them into black-on-black; but I cannot
really tell when and how it will do that.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-0.99.3-5

How reproducible:
always

Comment 1 Mike A. Harris 2005-11-17 07:06:10 UTC

This is a video driver specific problem, in which the driver does not
clear video memory before enabling the display.  It is best to report
the issue to X.Org bugzilla for each driver the problem is encountered
for, as this is a general X problem, and not OS distribution specific.

We do have a bug about this kicking around in our bugzilla already
somewhere which seems to have gotten outprioritized by bigger fires
on a continual basis, however it's much more likely to get fixed
faster if reported upstream.

Please paste the upstream URL here when you report it, and we'll track
it there too.

Thanks in advance.

Comment 2 Mike A. Harris 2006-02-06 06:40:24 UTC

*** Bug 166599 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3 Mike A. Harris 2006-03-08 11:48:17 UTC

Is there an upstream URL for this one?  I had a quick query of Xorg
bugzilla, but didn't find one.  I thought I had seen one before, but
perhaps it was another bug in our bugzilla.  Anyhow, we'll track this
upstream if you find/file a bug in X.Org bugzilla.

TIA

Comment 4 Michal Jaegermann 2006-03-08 22:11:15 UTC

> Is there an upstream URL for this one?

I thought that it was but I could not find anything.  Maybe I remember wrong.

The situation changed, though.  I checked again and with a vesa driver
indeed some "lefovers" are still displayed but only a background.  How
this is done that only a background I have no idea but I do not think
that this classifies anymore as a bug.  I will close that.  If you
think otherwise, or you see something else, then shout.

Comment 5 Gustavo Homem 2009-04-17 23:34:49 UTC

For the record, 4 years later:

The "garbage" displayed by the startup of xorg using the vesa driver disappears if we use this option:

 Option "ModeSetClearScreen" "off"

If the option is On (the default) or missing we see "garbage" for a second or so. We set it to off and the screen is cleared on X startup.

(it's really like this even if the Option name suggesting the opposite)

Tested on xorg 7.1.