Computer: HP Vectra XU 6/150 dual Pentium-Pro 150 MHz 80 mb RAM 2x 2GB SCSI hard drives > fb_check returned with value Card:Matrox Millennium II (generic) 4MB video RAM > Using X server /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_FBDev When switching between consoles (Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F7, etc.), it usually works OK. However, when I was running fdisk, it crashed when either leaving (Ctrl-Alt-F1) or returning to X (Ctrl-Alt-F7), and the error message was: > Gdk-ERROR **: Fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server 1.0. It executed a normal shutdown and said: > you may safely reboot your system but when I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, the blinking frame buffer cursor stopped blinking, and the computer hung without rebooting. On another try, Alt-SysRq-B also failed to reboot (displayed "SysRq: Resetting" and hung). This also happened when I switched VTs while X was starting up (very slowly!), and another time while it was "Reading package information" after clicking "Next" on the MD5/shadow/NIS password option screen. For now I think I will just avoid doing this in this beta version. :-) Another time, when I confirmed to start the installation, X locked up completely when switching back to X (while the file systems were being formatted). The display partially came back, with the proper background colors for various fields on the screen, but no text or graphics was displayed, and the keyboard and mouse didn't work.
I have also seen this ... intermittently but too frequently. Video card: Creative Labs Annhilator 2 GTS. I've never had a problem going between any of the text consoles. All of these problems I've had occur when leaving the X console and going to a text console. I haven't had the machine hang when going in the other direction except for the USB-mouse-during-install-when-a-PS/2-port-is-detected problem. But there, X hangs at the language selection screen if a USB mouse is used at install ... and thus going to a text console delayed this hang until I returned to X. Except for this, I have only had this particular kind of installer crash when leaving VT-7.
If you add 'vga=788' to the end of the boot command you use to boot the installer, does it improve the situation?
Booting the installer with "linux vga=788" seems to make the problem go away. Hopefully the default setting can be changed so it isn't necessary to pass this paramenter, or at least it should be documented how to fix it.
Yes, the default vga mode will be 788. I made the mistake of setting it to be 787, which is 800x600 at 15 bit color. I think a lot of the video card bugs we're seeing with framebuffer problems stems from the fact that they do 16 bit fine (which is what 788 is) but the don't do 15 bit so well. Thanks for your report. This has been fixed already in our latest internal builds. Brock please verify that the default vga mode is 788, not 787.