Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 34903
More experiences with X-4.0.3 on Alphas
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:32:33 EDT
I had an opportunity to try XFree86-4.0.3 on UP2000 Alpha with Nvidia TNT2 graphics card (PCI). All binaries were recompiled for glibc-2.1. Both versions XFree86-4.0.3-3 and XFree86-4.0.3-5 were running on this setup fine without any visible differences. A default 1280x960 was overdriving a bit a monitor on hands (not a very capable one) causing some distortion on the top of a picture but after a dropping vsync a bit, by making a picture shorter, things got corrected. I attach a log file from these runs just for a reference. OTOH I tried the same XFree86-4.0.3-5 binaries on UP1100 Alpha with Matrox G450 (AGP) card. There were no problems once X server started but it took a very long time to start, making an impression that it already crashed, and I lost all visible text on a console (it become black with very faint leftovers of parts of a picture from a gdm screen). There are no effects of that sort if I am using XFree86-4.0.3-3 on the same setup. I will be investigating the situation with G450 further as time permits. Michal michal@harddata.com
Created attachment 14743 [details] Sample log file from a run with TNT2 card on Alpha
Can you please attach your config, and a new log file from a run of XFree86-4.0.3-17 from ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris/testing Also, just a note for future attachments - please do not compress file attachments, I can't view them easily.
> Can you please attach your config, and a new log file I am afraid that not in this moment as I do not have a single TNT2 around as of this time. Maybe sometimes in the future.
This bug is deferred...
I still have no TNT2 to try but recently we were running Alpha UP1500 with Nvidia Geoforce MX. Not precisely the same thing but at least the same driver. :-) In a "normal usage" no troubles were observed with 4.0.3-15 as opposed to 4.0.3-9 which was loosing text colours if one would try to switch to a text console.
Assuming this works in latest XFree86 release for Alpha (4.1.0-26). If not, try 4.2.0 from rawhide. Realistically if it doesn't work, we can't do much at all about Nvidia bugs due to complete lack of documentation.
Hm, this note from over a year ago basically said that things were running ok on a somewhat "exotic" setup after some adjustments. I am afraid that for a very long time now I did not see such machine with such video card. I did hear later complaints later on from somebody with something similar and I understand that his situation is indeed much better with binaries from current rawhide. With various current video cards rawhide is practically the only realistic option (especially that various 4.1.0 releases had a tendency to kill a text console with assorted cards - see, for example, #61325 - and this was not happening with 4.2.0). A video card I have right now (ATI 7500) does not really work with anything below 4.2.0, i.e. rawhide.
Ok, good to hear it seems to work now. A bit of confusion in the above though.. Current rawhide is 4.2.0, and nothing should have changed in rawhide that doesn't also exist in RHL 7.3. However... we don't have RHL 7.3 for Alpha either. ;o) You're right on the 7500 - support for it was added first to 4.2.0. I'm trying to keep the packages building and working on Alpha as well as x86. Right now Alpha build is disabled due to a bug I haven't had time to fix, but I believe I can fix it easily. It should be re-enabled within a week or so likely. Dunno how well the current gcc 3.1 stuff runs on Alpha though.. I build it but haven't ran it... Once I get bigger disks in my Alphen, I'll probably set up multibooting. Thanks for the update.