Bug 653456

Thanks for the bug report.  We have reviewed the information you have provided above, and there is some additional information especially concerning your hardware we require that will be helpful in our diagnosis of this issue.

If the anaconda crashes during the switching to the graphic mode, most likely the problem lies in Xorg support for your graphics chip. There are couple of options how we can obtain information necessary for resolving the issue.

If the computer is not completely frozen when installation fails, switch to the console (Ctrl+Alt+F2) and copy /tmp/X* and /var/log/anaconda.xlog to some other place -- USB stick, some other computer via network, somewhere on the Internet, and please attach it to the bug report as individual uncompressed file attachments using the bugzilla file attachment link above.

If the computer is completely useless after installation fails, you can also install Fedora with a VESA mode driver (see http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/
for more information on that). Then after successful installation you can collect /var/log/anaconda.xlog, /var/log/Xorg.0.log, and the output of the program dmesg instead.

Or you can install Fedora in a text mode completely, and then start X after that. If it fails, still /var/log/Xorg.0.log and the output of dmesg program from the failed attempt to start X would be useful.

We will review this issue again once you've had a chance to attach this information.

Thank you very much in advance.

Created attachment 461421 [details]
dmesg

Created attachment 461423 [details]
Xorg.0.log

OK, here's the information you requested. Fedora 14 installed just fine in text mode but I really wanted to be able to see the graphical installer. This laptop should work out of the box with nouveau and X11, as Ubuntu worked just fine. 

I set up X11 with nouveau driver and got the logs you asked for. 

Hope you can help resolve this problem!

This patch should fix the problem; old BIOSes often do not have enough info to set the mode. 

diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_bios.c b/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_bios.c
index 23a7bec..fc35e9d 100644
--- a/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_bios.c
+++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_bios.c
@@ -5855,7 +5855,7 @@ static void fabricate_vga_output(struct dcb_table *dcb, int i2c, int heads)
 	entry->i2c_index = i2c;
 	entry->heads = heads;
 	entry->location = DCB_LOC_ON_CHIP;
-	/* "or" mostly unused in early gen crt modesetting, 0 is fine */
+	entry->or = 1;
 }
 
 static void fabricate_dvi_i_output(struct dcb_table *dcb, bool twoHeads)

I'm sorry to have to ask, but has there been any progress on this lately?

What is the rationale behind initialising entry->or exactly?

I'd have thought it self-evident, but you can find the information here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org/msg05904.html

This explains why the patch is needed and what it solves. 

I'd urge getting this patch into the kernel asap as it would solve this issue on old laptops that doesn't provide enough information for mode setting.

It's not overly self-evident if you're not too familiar with pre-G80 modesetting :)  But, indeed that patch looks fine.

Oh, and another note:  This should be already fixed since kernel-2.6.35.8-60.fc14, at least, there's an equivalent to the above patch in that kernel.

Ok, I just upgraded to 2.6.35.9-64.fc14, and now getting a different error:

[drm:drm_crtc_helper_set_config] *ERROR* failed to set mode on crtc dc5bb800

Looks like there's another bug that hasn't been resolved yet. 

I'm also running Gentoo w/ 2.6.35, and I'm not experiencing the same problems with X.

I have just encountered the same problems with Ubuntu Natty, so I think this is now a upstream problem, as this laptop has a NV11 chip. But the other laptop has a NV34 chip but works perfectly. 

I'll also be raising this on the drm mailing list for a resolution.

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