Bug 672620

Summary:	No smooth plymouth / X transition in Fedora 14
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Mads Kiilerich <mads>
Component:	gdm	Assignee:	jmccann
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	14	CC:	cschalle, jmccann, rstrode
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2011-02-28 18:05:02 UTC	Type:	---
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Mads Kiilerich 2011-01-25 18:16:43 UTC

Previous Fedora versions had the nice smooth plymouth / x transition described on http://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-⟶-x-transition/

AFAICS it is broken in F14 on all machines.

Plymouth works fine until /etc/X11/prefdm. A moment later the screen goes black, the mouse pointer appears, and X fades in.

It seems like one reason it doesn't work could be that that prefdm quits plymouth, and when gdm (with plymouth.patch) later pings plymouth it isn't running and gdm doesn't do its magic. That alone do however not fix/explain what is going on. Especially because Xorg is started with -nr which might indicate that gdm knows plymouth is running anyway?

A hint about what is going on and how it could be debugged would be welcome.

plymouth-0.8.4-0.20100823.7.fc14.i686
gdm-2.32.0-1.fc14.i686
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.9.3-4.fc14.i686

Comment 1 Mads Kiilerich 2011-01-26 15:04:20 UTC

It seems like this sequence reproduces what happens when prefdm makes plymouth quit before gdm is started:

ssh root@fedora
init 3
killall -u gdm
killall Xorg
plymouthd --mode=boot
plymouth show-splash
#plymouth deactivate # not - see comments
plymouth quit --retain-splash
init 5

In F11 this makes X fade in smoothly, but not in F14. In F14 the plymouth image stays on the screen after quit, but once we start starting X the screen goes black.


However, Fedora patches gdm with plymouth awareness, so it seems like a bug that prefdm quits plymouth before gdm is started.

gdm in F14 will run the new "plymouth deactivate" command before it runs "plymouth quit --retain-splash". Deactivate ends the animation (which otherwise is done by quit). But all my testing shows that deactivate followed by "quit --retain-splash" doesn't retain the splash!


Finally, in F14 on intel 915GM I have seen X on vt1 fail when started after plymouthd has quit with splash retained:
	drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports 
	drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card1
	drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor returns -1
	...
	drmGetBusid returned ''
	(EE) intel(0): [drm] failed to set drm interface version.
	(EE) intel(0): Failed to become DRM master.
- but then it flickers and starts X on vt7 where it gets
	drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci:0000:00:02.0
(I don't see that problem on GM45)

Comment 2 Mads Kiilerich 2011-02-10 21:07:30 UTC

It seems like this is all caused by the removal of -nr in f14 xorg-x11-drv-intel.

gdm pinging plymouth is dead code in f14 but will be used in f15. F14 uses the flag file force-display-on-active-vt, so it is no problem that prefdm quits plymouth.

I will test and confirm on some non-intel machines.

Comment 3 Mads Kiilerich 2011-02-28 18:05:02 UTC

Ok, this turns out to be caused by
* intel support for smooth fading was completely disabled in f14 X
* radeon KMS/X is apparently broken on all the machines I have tested. While booting it will flicker and show digital noise.