Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 1588
Kern3l 2.2 Frame Buffering vs. Netscape
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:49 EDT
I upgraded a 5.2 RedHat install to the new 2.2 Kernel. I enabled frame buffering for a S3 Trio 3d (86C366) video chip. Everything works wonderful. The kernel is fast, and X-Windows rocks when run through this new feature. Unfortunately, there is a bug. When I run netscape, then run a Java applet, Netscape crashes. I installed another video card and turned off frame buffering, and it works, so I am pretty certain that it is something to do with frame buffering and Netscape's Java.
Has anyone approached this problem? It will sure to be a big issue shortly.
DKL, I have about 2500 installs that need this to work. Have you heard anything????
I haven't been able to duplicate it here. Is there a specific web site you can point me to that causes it to die?
I can get it to crash by selecting the Java console from the netscape menu's. [Communicator->tools->Java Console] I just upgraded to kernel 2.2.5, and I am using Communicator 4.5. I used the instructions at www.uno.edu/~adamico/banshee to setup for Frame Buffering, and the instructions at www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/kernel-2.2/kernel2.2-upgrade-5.html for the kernel 2.2.5 install. The machine I have been working with is an IBM 300GL. The video chipset is the S3 Trio 3D (86C366), which explains why I am trying to do frame buffering, i.e., no suitable X-Window drivers I know of. Everything else seems to work flawlessly using frame buffer. It seems to only affect Java within netscape. When I installed another video card, and turned off frame buffering, it worked fine even with the same kernel image. I can not remember if I tried this on a different machine. If you like, I can give it a try on a different piece of hardware.
I tried this on an Acer box with a different chip. Running off of a normal X-Window driver, it worked. With Frame Buffering, everything worked until Netscape called a Java function. I've been told that Caldera has promised to find a solution for us. I'll keep you updated. Thanks -- Bob
How many bpp are you running at? Also, are you running XF86_Xvfb on top of the frame buffer, or with a standard server?
I am running something called XF68_FBDev I downloaded from www.uno.edu/~adamico/banshee. I am using "VGA=791" in my lilo prompt, which is indicated in www.uno.edu/~adamico/banshee/files/vesafb.txt to be 65,536 colors at 1024x768. Do me a favor, and send me a copy of your driver and XF86Config file, for it might be wise to rule out problems with the code I am using. Also, what version of Netscape are you using? I am using version 4.5 downloaded from the Netscape web site for the 2.0 kernel; there is none for the 2.2 kernel.
What I've been testing on is the following: kernel-2.2.5 Matrox Millenium using matroxfb XF86_FBDev from the 3.3.3.1 release Netscape 4.51 (glibc-2.0 version) Are you using the glibc or libc5 version of Netscape? (Running ldd on it will tell you; if a libc.so.5 shows up at all, it's the libc5 version.)
Also, are you running with a font server or with a local font path? If so, what is the font path set to?