Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 52178
X server (permedia2) locks the system, preferably when running a screen saver
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:36:05 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2smp i686) Description of problem: On my Pentium II biprocessor machines equipped with a Fire GL 1000 PRO graphics card (Permedia2 chip, 8 MB video RAM), the X server locks up the system frequently. Observations: 1) It happens always almost when I leave the Gnome screensaver running for some minutes (the energy saving feature is disabled) 2) It happens mostly with the screensaver, but occasionally during normal work. 3) The screen display remains static, keyboard and mouse have no effect, even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work. 4) It is still possible to log in remotely. I can then observe that the X server uses 99% of the CPU (from "top"). Killing the X server, or any other measure short of rebooting, does not help. The problem occurs on two identically configured machines and started exactly with the update from 6.1 to 7.1, therefore I don't suspect hardware faults. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Wait for the Gnome screen saver to come up 2. Wait for about five minutes Actual Results: The system hangs. Expected Results: Nothing! Additional info:
Created attachment 28694 [details] XF86Config-4
THis problem was fixed in an unofficial update I made, which can be downloaded from: ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris/testing/7.1 be sure to get the updated Mesa package as well, etc.. The above package was planned on being an official errata, however I am holding off for an XFree86 4.1.0 errata instead, which also fixes this problem, so Rawhide has the latest code, but the 4.0.3 package above is much more stable currently. Up to you which one you'd like to try.
Thanks, that seems to solve the problem, after two days of testing I am reasonably certain. However, the update produces a new bug: when getting back to work after a screensaver has been active, in some cases (estimated 1 in five) the redrawing functions are severely impaired. The background doesn't get redrawn properly, and some program's window contents look very bad as well. I have never had this problem before the update. I guess this is a different bug that should be reported separately, but how can I report a bug on an unofficial bug fix???
My success report was premature: one of the machines crashed again a few minutes ago, with exactly the same symptoms. It definitely happens less often after the update, but the problem is not solved yet.
Upgrade to the Rawhide packages then. The 4.0.3 packages are unofficial and not supported. No further bugfixing will be done on 4.0.x. All official bugfixes for RHL 7.1 XFree86 are now in rawhide. I leave the 4.0.3 packages there only as a convenience. 4.1.0-0.99.1 is current release, avail on my ftpsite in the bleeding-edge dir now. Does it fix the problem?
Sorry, I can't test 4.1 right away, the RPMs require glibc 2.2.3, whereas my system has 2.2.2 and Rawhide already has 2.2.4. Does XFree 4.1 require glibc 2.2.3 or would it be OK to recompile the SRPMs on my system?
The 4.1.0 libs were built against glibc 2.2.3 but it is not a requirement of XFree86. You can rebuild it against any glibc.
Sorry, but I have to give up. I had to update RPM to be able to process the SRPMs, fine, no problem. Then I discovered that the XFree SRPM requires me to update gcc as well. That is a risk I do not want to take; my machines are used for work (including development), not for compiler testing. If there is no other way to get a stable X environment, I'll have to go back to RedHat 6.2 for the moment.
You do not need the newer gcc to build X, you just need to reconfigure the specfile to use the older gcc. It is a conditional define at the top. Change DisableModuleStringMerging to 1: %ifnarch s390 s390x %define DisableModuleStringMerging 1 %else %define DisableModuleStringMerging 0 %endif Set the lower one to "1" instead of "0"
After two days of compiling, here's where I am 1) After setting DisableModuleStringMerging to 0, there was a problem in building libbitmap. I tracked it down to the definition #define ModuleRanlibCmd RanlibCmd missing when module string merging is not disabled. 2) With that modification, I can build the RPMs without error messages. However, when I try to install them, rpm complains that libXxf86dga.so.1 is missing. The comments in the spec file indicate that this file was removed on purpose, but apparently it is still needed under some conditions. 3) Since I don't really need DGA, I set BuildXF86DGA to NO and tried again. This time, the compilation stopped without any reason that I could identify: gcc -O2 -march=i386 -mcpu=i686 -pipe -ansi -pedantic -Wall -Wpointer-arith -I. -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/common -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/Xext -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/mfb -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/mi -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/fb -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/xaa -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/vgahw -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/ramdac -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/rac -I../../../../../../include/extensions -I../../../../../../include/fonts -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/include -I../../../../../../exports/include/X11 -I../../../../../../programs/Xserver/render -I../../../../../.. -I../../../../../../exports/include -Dlinux -D__i386__ -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=199309L -D_POSIX_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_SVID_SOURCE -D_GNU_SOURCE -DSHAPE -DXINPUT -DXKB -DLBX -DXAPPGROUP -DXCSECURITY -DTOGCUP -DXF86BIGFONT -DDPMSExtension -DPIXPRIV -DPANORAMIX -DRENDER -DGCCUSESGAS -DAVOID_GLYPHBLT -DPIXPRIV -DSINGLEDEPTH -DXvExtension -DXFree86LOADER -DXFree86Server -DXF86VIDMODE -DSMART_SCHEDULE -DBUILDDEBUG -DX_BYTE_ORDER=X_LITTLE_ENDIAN -DNDEBUG -DFUNCPROTO=15 -DNARROWPROTO -DIN_MODULE -DXFree86Module -c IBM561ramdac.c make[7]: *** [tga_driver.o] Error 1 make[7]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs.... make[7]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/XFree86-4.1.0/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/tga' For the moment I don't know what to do!
Sorry, bugzilla isn't a tech support forum.. I can only advise to use a newer release and make some suggestions. Please use xpert@xfree86.org for help compiling XFree86. I'll update the report when more info is available.