From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20010913 Description of problem: With regard to bug #53867, there are more problems. Not only is kdm's Red Hat logo lost when switching back from virtual console to X Windows the first time. It can also happen that the virtual consoles are "lost" completely, giving either a black screen or cleary visible outlines of the Red Hat logo on what doesn't look much like a text mode. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): XFree86-4.1.0-3 (and also Seawolf) How reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: Case 1: 1. Start X and wait until kdm login screen comes up. 2. Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to switch to virtual console. 3. Return to X Windows (CTRL+ALT+F4 with my config). 4. Red Hat kdm logo is gone. Case 2: As described in bug #53867, but with regard to screen corruption, not only keyboard focus but also both the virtual console's text mode and the Red Hat logo may be lost. Additionally, coloured outlines of the Red Hat logo may appear instead of the virtual console's text mode. Actual Results: kdm's Red Hat logo is gone AND/OR virtual console is neither text mode nor appears to be usable anymore. Expected Results: Don't know about the Red Hat logo, but I don't think it should vanish. Virtual console should be text mode, visible, and usable. Additional info: For system config details see bug #53866. This happens also on updated and unalienated Seawolf (with XFree-4.0.3-*), although not as easily reproducible. May take more tries (also see comments of bug #51615).
Still the case with 4.1.0-4. While typing this in X, I have no fully working virtual consoles anymore. When I switch to a VC, I get a black screen (graphics mode!) with hardly visible outlines of the X display contents. E.g. when KDE starts, I see a couple of pixels outlining the KDE logo. When KDE has started, I see pixels of a few desktop icons in wrong colour. Most visibly is my XMMS icon which appears as a light gray/green X. I can still log into these disabled VCs, typing "in the dark" without any echo at all, but instructions being executed. Console "reset" doesn't help.
Got it a few minutes ago with XFree86-4.2.0-6.62 (Skipjack-beta2), trying to switch to ALT+F1 while logging out of KDE. I expected the first text mode console to appear, but the screen stayed black. I then tried all other consoles, but only ALT+F8 returned the mouse cursor and shortly after the kdm prompt. Switching back to ALT+F1 gave red outlines of the Red Hat logo. All my virtual consoles are "gone". ALT+F[1-7] gives graphics mode garbage. Small fragments of the KDE desktop are visible, in dark red colour with a bit of green where the desktop icons are. I also see the title bar of the Mozilla window I'm typing this report in. I can log in blindly, so it is just a graphics<->text mode initialization problem. A conflict between X server and virtual console.
Filed 2001-09-20, I cannot reproduce it with Fedora Core 1 and haven't encountered it for a long time either. Not worth keeping this open.
Ok, thanks for the update Michael!