From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.1) Gecko/20031009 Description of problem: I am assigning this bug to anaconda, although it may be a redhat-config-xfree86 or firstboot bug. I did an install on a SMP system with a Fire GL 1000 card: lspci -v: 01:00.0 Display controller: Texas Instruments TVP4020 [Permedia 2] (rev 01) Subsystem: Diamond Multimedia Systems FIRE GL 1000 PRO Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16 Memory at f4300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K] Memory at f5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M] Memory at f4800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M] Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K] Capabilities: [40] AGP version 1.0 During other Red Hat installs, this card doesn't return the probe properly, thus it defaults to 512K RAM. There wasn't anywhere that I could specify the proper amount of video RAM, so rhgb didn't fit on the screen and I couldn't see the Forward/Backward buttons during firstboot. When I logged in, I ran redhat-config-xfree86, but there is no place to put in the amount of video RAM either, and when I chose 'Custom' video card, it gave a traceback: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/share/redhat-config-xfree86/xConfigDialog.py", line 254, in configure_videocard self.videocard_dialog.dehydrate(self.state) File "/usr/share/redhat-config-xfree86/videocardDialog.py", line 179, in dehydrate carddata = self.videocard.cardsDB()[name] KeyError: Custom Obviously it is checking the video card database for a card named Custom, and it doesn't exist. I had to manually edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and under the Device Section: VideoRam 8192 and then I could change the resolution in redhat-config-xfree86. I think that it would be prudent to allow a 'Configure advanced video options' like the 'Configure advanced boot loader options', and a warning in rhgb/firstboot that states that the resolution is 640x480, which means that they won't be able to see the entire screen. Maybe it would be possible to make it a virtual 800x600 so that the screen would scroll as the mouse approached the edge. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-9.0.95-1 redhat-config-xfree86-0.9.9-2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install on old video hardware that doesn't probe properly 2. Wait for rhgb/firstboot/redhat-config-xfree86 Actual Results: The minimum 640x480 isn't large enough to see the entire screen, and there is no place to manually set the proper video RAM except editing /etc/X11/XF86Config manually. Expected Results: The best situation for me would be to have an option during install or via redhat-config-xfree86 to specify video RAM. Otherwise, I would have appreciated a virtual 800x600 so that I wouldn't have to guess which buttons that I am tabbing to during firstboot.
All modern video hardware has it's video memory amount properly probed by the XFree86 video driver. There are a very small number of exceptions to this rule, however the exceptions don't make the rule of course. The number of video cards out there that specifically require the user to set the video memory amount in order to work correctly is extremely small. In the past, our config tools have had a VideoRAM dialog box option, and we have observed that when users are presented with the VideoRAM option in a dialog box, a rather large portion of users will set the VideoRAM amount wether they need to do so or not. What is worse, is that a large nontrivial number of users will either inadvertently set this number incorrectly, or they will think their card has more memory than it really does. When users set the video memory amount too high, the video driver and X server will crash and/or deadlock the system, as the driver will now ignore the probed amount and try to use the amount it has been told is there, leading to random and unpredictable behaviour. This has become an increasingly more common problem nowadays. Many users think incorrectly that because they can see the option to set video memory, that they should set it, or that it is best to do so. Due to the high volume of users misconfiguring this option because it is made too visible in a GUI, and those users then reporting bugs about their video not working, we have wasted a lot of time debugging and troubleshooting video driver problems which really were nothing more than end user misconfiguration, or not knowing how much memory their card truely has, we have removed this option from the config tools intentionally. The VideoRAM option has been totally disabled in some of our video drivers, such as the "radeon" driver, and "savage" driver, as those drivers are known to properly detect video memory on all supported devices, and many cases of VideoRAM being specified have resulted in a broken setup. We plan to remove this option from other drivers in the future, and eventually have it only functional with hardware which the drivers can't autodetect memory amount. The VideoRAM option will not be returning to our config tools GUI, however the option is useable by hand editing the config file and adding it there. This may slightly inconvenience a small number of users out there who require this option in order to have their hardware work properly, but it is more beneficial to inconvenience a small number of users, than to inconvenience a rather large number of users who use the VideoRAM option when they specifically do _not_ need to use it, and thus end up breaking their system, and tying up our precious technical and engineering support services trying to diagnose problems one at a time as they come in. The driver for your particular card is provided as-is by Red Hat, since it is part of a default XFree86 build. While we do not officially support this hardware, we do provide the driver, and hope it works for people, and will review upstream fixes or user supplied bugfixes to the drivers for potential inclusion in future releases. Users who have hardware that does not work unless VideoRAM is specified, should file a bug report in XFree86 bugzilla at: http://bugs.xfree86.org In the report, provide a completely detailed explanation of the problem, and attach config files and log files as appropriate. If the given driver has an active maintainer, or an XFree86 developer is familiar with the driver, they may respond, and may be able to fix the memory autodetection perhaps. In the mean time, the config file can be modified by hand to work around this problem. If you file a bug upstream, if you put the URL to the upstream bug report here and I will track it and review the fixes for future erratum. Closing WONTFIX