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First, Installing Fisher cleanly, my ATI AiW 128 PRO was recognised as Rage 128 (generic) which is probably fine since it worked on RH7. I did switch it to a proper name, which I now guess doesn't really change anything. It worked fine and I got Xfree86 running. Second, I noticed that there is no 3d hardware acceleration. I found appropriate bug reports here. I added "Mode 0601" in XF86config-4. I tried it on an xscreenserver blahblahblah3d. I got Xfree86 lock-up AS SOON AS I chose it in GNOME Control Center, which probably wanted to show me a preview. Actually, I got this lock up earlier running as root, so it's not about "Mode 0601" thing. Plus, I was able to run those screensavers and see previews without 3d- acceleratiopn earlier as a user. By "lock-up" here I mean that I was not able to reboot cleanly at all. The only working thing was mouse. Window manager died. I was just able to move the pointer not clicking anything. I guess that kernel itself survived all this time because I did hear some disk activity for a minute or two after the lock- up.
I found a lot similar reports on Xpert and DRI-devel mailing lists archives for January-February. Suprisingly, I haven't seen a solution. My guess is that it exists since important guys do not react on such bug reports.
*** Bug 26518 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 26759 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is a known issue with XFree86 4.0.2 and there is currently no known fix. r128 DRI is broken, and the XFree team is still trying to determine the problem. Currently DRI should be disabled in order to use r128 cards.
*** Bug 25254 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-kernel/archive/2001-Week-09/0433.html should fix this ...
The freshest combination of Xfree86-4.0.2-11.4.0 with recent kernel 2.4.2- 0.1.19 from rawhide still reveals this bug: 3D screensavers knock Xfree86 down. It's now easily triggered by any user since "Mode 0666" was added by default to Xfree86.config There is another bug 28987 which might not be even related.
In addition to reading my annotation at #28987 on the latest RPM's, please try the following: Quit X, log in from the console as root, and delete the directory /dev/dri using "rm -rf /dev/dri". Now start the new X back up again. If this doesn't fix it for you, I'm at a loss because all r128 cards work for me, and everyone else who has tested them with the latest kernel + XFree packages. Please supply an attachment of both your XF86config-4 and your X server log as well. If you get a crash, please do a backtrace on the coredump. Also, if your machine is overclocked, please clock it properly and try to reproduce. If it still dies on you, please obtain a copy of the program 'memtest86' from http://freshmeat.net or ftp://sunsite.unc.edu and do an extensive memory test on your machine.
Created attachment 12166 [details] XF86Config-4
Created attachment 12167 [details] XFree86.0.log
Created attachment 12168 [details] output of glxinfo
An additional relevant dmesg output is attached to bug 28987 which is filed as a kernel bug.
Fixed with latest packages XFree 4.0.3 + Mesa 3.4-13 + latest kernel in rawhide.
I keep having those lock-ups with all the recent rawhide updates (xf-4.0.3-1, mesa-3.4-13, kernel-2.4.2-0.1.28). I'm not reopening this bug yet though. This is just to clarify that this happens with ALL-IN-WONDER card with r128 AND bttv (bttv829) chips. This combination had problems before - "either TV or 3D, not both". I don't know if those were addressed. I do want somebody to confirm or deny this bug using All-in-Wonder 128 (PRO) card specifically. I'll dig more to provide more info in a new and better bug report (comming soon).
Okey. The final solution to my problem was to reduce depth of the color from 24 bpp to 16 bpp. No more lock-ups and 3d stuff is just great! This raised the question - why the hell do anaconda and Xconfigurator offer 24 bpp as their best depth? Solution to bug 33581 will probably answer this question.
It's all about memory. DRI requires 3-4 times more memory than usual 2d display. 16 Mb card will lock up at 1280x1024x24bpp on 3d stuff because of lack of memory. It happily does 3d-acceleration at 1280x1024x16bpp or 1024x768x24bpp however.