I have tried to install FC5test2 on a Dell Inspiron 510m, but I failed at the very beginning. When I choose the graphical installer, only the upper left part of the display is actually shown. When the mouse reaches the screen corners, nothing happens (i.e. no scrolling). All buttons ("Next" etc.) are invisible and also not reachable with the mouse. I could only use keyboard shortcuts to continue the installation. When trying to use the textual installer, the text is readable, but the layout is garbled. The layout is getting worse on every keypress. I can always reproduce it here, just by booting from the FC5test2 installer CD #1 on a Dell Inspiron 510m. Trying to install from the FC4 graphical installer does work fine. The screen is completely visible. I have noticed that the FC4 installer detected an "i852" video card, but FC5test2 detected an "Intel 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device". The monitor was both times detected as "unknown".
I see the same behavior on my circa 2004 Dell Dimension with i810 integrated graphics. Anaconda also fails to configure X (sets machine to run level 3 rather than 5 and no xorg.conf file is created) at all if a text install is performed. I am current to today's rawhide.
These bugs are being closed since a large number of updates have been released after the FC5 test1 and test2 releases. Kindly update your system by running yum update as root user or try out the third and final test version of FC5 being released in a short while and verify if the bugs are still present on the system .Reopen or file new bug reports as appropriate after confirming the presence of this issue. Thanks
Is this better with test3? Does it help if you add resolution= to your boot command line and pass the native resolution of your LCD?
Tested with FC5test3, but nothing changed. Still only the left upper part of the screen is visible, and the text installer layout is also still broken. Booting with "linux resolution=1400x1050" had no effect at all. Was this the right way to pass the resolution option?
Yes, that's the right way. If you do a text mode or VNC install, does X come up properly after the installation?
With VNC I was able to successfully install FC5test3 on that machine. Anyhow I was unable to boot the machine after that, due to Bug 179714. I currently have no way to find out if X was properly configured. Using the rescue system, I could at least find out that /etc/inittab is configured to start at runlevel 5. There is an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file present. It is configured to use "i810" as video driver. The only configured screen mode is 800x600, though, which is wrong. It's a 1400x1050 display. Sorry, I have to give up at this point.
Sounds like a video driver or X server problem, however we need the X server log file and config file in order to diagnose. Since you're unable to boot due to bug #179714, I've added that bug as a blocker of this bug for the time being. Once you're able to boot FC5test3 with a new kernel or whatever is needed, please boot into runlevel 3, and try "startx". Update the report with your findings, and if the problem you were experiencing is still present, attach the X server log and config file to the report and we'll review them. Thanks in advance.
Meanwhile there is a workaround for bug 179714. So I booted FC5test3 for the first time. The first time setup configuration screen opened. It was shown in a lower than the native resolution, but it was completely visible, no hidden parts. I configured the monitor as a generic TFT with 1400x1050 resolution, set up X to use this resolution with millions of colors, and finished the first time setup. Anyhow, GDM and also Gnome still appear in a lower resolution, I guess 1024x768. system-config-display shows that X is set up correctly (1400x1050). When I open the user's resolution preferences (is it "xrandr" ?), only the resolutions 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 are offered though, with the last one being selected. I currently see no way to change to the display's native resolution. Anything seems to be configured correctly so far.
Created attachment 125583 [details] xorg.conf
Created attachment 125584 [details] Xorg.0.log
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1400x1050" (no mode of this name) (II) I810(0): Not using mode "1280x960" (no mode of this name) (II) I810(0): Not using mode "1152x864" (no mode of this name) Your video BIOS does not know those modes, so they are not available to the X driver, which relies on VBE to set the video mode. In order to work around this hardware limitation, you'll need to use the i810resolution or similar utilities floating around the net, until Intel provides the documentation to X.Org developers to be able to program the mode timings directly to the hardware instead of relying on the BIOS. Alternatively, check your manufacturers website to see if they have released an updated video BIOS for your motherboard, which has the native panel modes built into it.
Sorry, but I think the bug has been closed too early. The original issue was that FC5test3 could not be installed because only parts of the screen are visible, while other parts were hidden. If I understand it right, there is still a valid 1024x768 resolution available, which could be used by Anaconda for the graphical installation.
>Trying to install from the FC4 graphical installer does work fine. The screen is >completely visible. I missed that in my previous review. (In reply to comment #12) > Sorry, but I think the bug has been closed too early. > > The original issue was that FC5test3 could not be installed because only parts > of the screen are visible, while other parts were hidden. If I understand it > right, there is still a valid 1024x768 resolution available, which could be used > by Anaconda for the graphical installation. Assuming you now have the OS installed via text mode install, and have updated to the latest packages from Fedora development, what does the output of the following produce: xrandr Reviewing the BIOS reported video modes from the X server log, there is no 1400x1050 mode reported, however there are a number of modes that look bogus (0x0), etc. Are you positive that in FC4 this worked, and that you were not using i810resolution or similar utilities to override the BIOS mode tables?
Also, please post the X server log and config file from FC4 that you had that worked and did not have this problem. That will help narrow things down quite a bit. TIA
The text mode installer is also broken (layout is messed up), so I was using VNC. I have updated to the latest BIOS and the current developer xorg-x11 rpms. (I couldn't update the entire system due to traffic limitations, sorry.) All resolutions above 1024x768 are still unavailable after the update. xrandr produces: SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh *0 1024 x 768 ( 302mm x 232mm ) *75 1 800 x 600 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 75 2 640 x 480 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 75 Current rotation - normal Current reflection - none Rotations possible - normal Reflections possible - none I have only *tried to install* FC4 instead of FC5test3. As mentioned above, with FC5test3 only a part of the installer screen was visible, so I was trying to find out if the issue already occured on FC4. The FC4 installer was working fine, showing the entire screen, but also not in full 1400x1050 resolution. Actually I don't know if FC4 would also run a 1400x1050 resolution. The previous owner of the notebook had a recent SuSE installed, and he told me that the full resolution was supported on that system. I have never seen it myself, nor do I have any SuSE log files I could provide.
Tried FC4 right now. It supports only up to 1280x1024, also not the full resolution. xrandr of FC4: SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh *0 1280 x 1024 ( 301mm x 230mm ) *0 1 1024 x 768 ( 301mm x 230mm ) 0 2 800 x 600 ( 301mm x 230mm ) 0 3 640 x 480 ( 301mm x 230mm ) 0 Current rotation - normal Current reflection - none Rotations possible - normal Reflections possible - none
Created attachment 125758 [details] Xorg.0.log of FC4
Thinking twice about it... FC4 was able to use a 1280x1024 resolution. FC5test3 also detected a 1280x1024 resolution, but was unable to use it ("width too large for virtual size") and fell back to 1024x768. Could it be that FC5's Anaconda tried to display a 1280x1024 bitmap on a 1024x768 resolution, thus showing only the upper left 1024x768 pixels? This could at least explain what I saw on the screen when I tried to install FC5test3.
(In reply to comment #15) > The text mode installer is also broken (layout is messed up), so I was using > VNC. I have updated to the latest BIOS and the current developer xorg-x11 rpms. The i810 driver isn't responsible for text mode installation though. ;o) > (I couldn't update the entire system due to traffic limitations, sorry.) > > All resolutions above 1024x768 are still unavailable after the update. xrandr > produces: > > SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh > *0 1024 x 768 ( 302mm x 232mm ) *75 > 1 800 x 600 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 75 > 2 640 x 480 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 75 Right, because your video BIOS does not support higher modes according to the X server log file. > I have only *tried to install* FC4 instead of FC5test3. As mentioned above, with > FC5test3 only a part of the installer screen was visible, so I was trying to > find out if the issue already occured on FC4. The FC4 installer was working > fine, showing the entire screen, but also not in full 1400x1050 resolution. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe anaconda runs in 800x600 or 1024x768 on all hardware, but I could be wrong. You might want to confer with our installer team about that. > Actually I don't know if FC4 would also run a 1400x1050 resolution. The previous > owner of the notebook had a recent SuSE installed, and he told me that the full > resolution was supported on that system. I have never seen it myself, nor do I > have any SuSE log files I could provide. As mentioned previously, there are 3rd party utilities which can reprogram the video BIOS modelists with alternative modes. The primary utilities are i810resolution and i915resolution - you can google for them and try them out if you wish, however we do not ship them with Fedora Core. SuSE may ship them in their OS, and may perhaps even default to using them automatically perhaps. That's just a hypothesis however, I have no idea as I haven't examined SuSE's X configuration setup. There is a reason why we do not ship these utilities with the OS however, which is because they are not foolproof, and are known to fail in many circumstances resulting in unreliable operation. If your video BIOS does not support a given video mode, then the X driver can _not_ use it, because the driver _only_ uses the BIOS to do mode programming. There is a lot of laptops and other hardware out there in which the supplied video BIOS does not support the native video mode of the included panel. That is a rather senseless hardware design, but many manufacturers have done this shortsightedly anyways, thereby leaving their Linux users with a very undesireable situation. Google for the i810resolution/i915resolution utilities, and test them out, manually configure X to use the modes you configure into the BIOS, and see if it works. Additionally, try using Option "noddc" in the device configuration, as some displays report back bogus DDC data on Intel hardware (most notably the Dell 2001FP). Hope this helps.
Thank you for your help. I will give i810resolution a try after I have installed FC5-final on my notebook. But I would have to install FC5 first, which I cannot because both the graphical installer and the text mode installer is broken. ;-) The FC4 graphical installer was working fine on this notebook, so it seems to be a regression in Anaconda. If you agree, maybe we should reassign this bug back to the Anaconda team.
This bug has been fixed on FC5 final for the Dell Inspiron 510m. Thanks!