From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.7-10 i686) Description of problem: Xconfigurator and/or startx no longer work after RH7.2 upgrade, using the ATI Radeon card. Starting the X11 server (or testing it) produces a screenful of colored snow, an X cursor you can move, but the keyboard is dead and the machine has to be rebooted. X11/XFree86 and the Radeon worked fine under RH7.1. I called into tech support (conf #I-2346541) but this was one they couldn't solve although they saw the problem too. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Upgrade from Redhat 7.1 to 7.2 with an ATI Radeon card. 2. Try Xconfigurator or startx. 3. When X11 tries to start up, your keyboard will go dead and the machine will need rebooting. Actual Results: Machine hung up, machine requires reboot. Expected Results: X11 should have started up and I should have gotten a Gnome desktop. Additional info:
ATI Radeon is my main card on 4 machines. It is the most tested piece of video hardware. I'm not sure what the problem you are having is, as the Radeon's very much work for me. While a bug is not out of the question, I much more highly suspect a misconfiguration of some kind. Please make sure that the xfs font server is configured, and that it is running properly. If you still have problems, please look in your X server log /var/log/XFree86.0.log for clues as to what might be wrong. > I called into tech support (conf #I-2346541) but this was one they > couldn't solve although they saw the problem too. I'm curious as to who in tech support could reproduce this, as it is the first time it has ever been reported. I'm skeptical that it is a bug, but I will look deeper if you provide me with more information. Please attach your XF86Config-4 and X server logs using the link below, as well as the output of "uname -a" and "rpm -qa |grep kernel".
Created attachment 38067 [details] most recent /var/log/XFree86.0.log, after startx puts garbage on screen
Created attachment 38068 [details] /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 created by Xconfigurator
Created attachment 38069 [details] output from "uname -a" and "rpm -qa | grep kernel"
Please update to the latest official erratum kernel first, which at this time is 2.4.9-13. If you still have trouble, attach new X server log, and also your /var/log/messages.
I am experiencing VERBATIM the exact problems as described by gknauth... >I'm curious as to who in tech support could reproduce this, as it is >the first time it has ever been reported. *Please refer to bug 56320 in which I reported this on the 17th of November* If this is a misconfiguration, it is because of the setup installation. It worked fine during install for X, but as soon as system was live, no more X.
...And I'm seeing a similar problem. X/gnome work okay, but after leaving xstart, the console promptly turns to gibberish with all sorts of non-text characters. Sometimes am still able to shut the system down ("init 0"). Other times, I get no response whatsoever to typing. I'm using the Radeon ATI "generic" driver, even though it's an AGP card.
gknauth: Can you please also attach a copy of the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo please, and your /var/log/messages from immediately after a crash. mknight: You'll also note that on your bug #56320 which you reported back in november, that I have requested you provide me with more information less than two hours after your last entry. You have not supplied me with this information, and so I have not (and will not until you do) looked into your report further. So far, all ATI Radeon bug reports that we have had reported have been one of either: 1) Buggy VIA chipet and/or buggy BIOS on VIA motherboard Solution: Upgrade the BIOS to the latest flashrom available, upgrade kernel to latest Official that Red Hat kernel erratum. 2) Buggy AMD 760 series chipset/motherboard Solution: Upgrade BIOS to latest version and upgrade kernel to latest Official that Red Hat kernel erratum. 3) AMD Athlon CPU PSE/AGP bug that was recently discovered Solution: Upgrade your kernel to the latest official Red Hat erratum kernel. Make sure your kernel boots with the "nopentium" option There are also other hardware issues. I suggest everyone experiencing Radeon problems read the mailing list archives of our mailing lists, as well as xpert. I can assure you that very very few people ever report Radeon lockup problems, and in all cases that we have resolved, the problem has turned out to be buggy hardware, or kernel bugs in DRM or the console locking code - which have been long since fixed.
Nobody seems to be in a race to get this looked into... Is this problem a non-problem now? All of my Radeon cards work perfectly fine with all released versions and beta version of XFree86 4.0.2 and up with 2D, and 4.1.0 and up with 3D, including the rawhide versions, so if someone is having a problem, I need details, or I'm going to have to chalk it off to being an incompatible hardware combination as I can't test it further due to inability to reproduce.
I have yet to upgrade the XFree86 to 4.1.0 on the affected system since I'm not sure it's a clean RPM upgrade and time has been very precious, so precious that I restricted my Linux work to a different machine without a Radeon card. The affected machine has lately only been run from its WinNT4 disk because I was tasked to crank out hundreds of pages of tech docs in MS Word (yes I know that's sad, but a dozen people's jobs depend on it). So you're right, I have not been in a rush to get this fixed because getting the machine with the Radeon to work under Linux is considered play and not work right now. What's the quickest way to upgrade to the XFree 4.1.0 you mentioned [Mike H.] ? I just took a look at http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.0/Install.html and it seems I need to download 12 files and run a script. That in itself doesn't sound terrible but I wonder why they don't use RPMs or have a tgz with the 12 things you need. If you think the Xinstall.sh is a routine (relatively painless) operation I'll be happy to give it a try. I know I took a look at that the first time and thought, "Just what I need, lost hours getting and building pieces, answering questions and tweaking configurations."
Over the weekend I upgraded to XFree 4.2.0 and the fundamental problem went away. That is, X11 basically works again, instead of locking up the local keyboard and painting garbage on the screen. The only problem I had after that was, after XFree 4.2.0 installed itself, it left me with a vanilla (really old-fashioned) X11 login. Even though Gnome still seemed to be there, it wasn't coming up. I did some tweaking of config files (I forget specifically what I did now), but then the Gnome didn't look the way I expected it did (it too seemed old), so I went to the Ximian website and reinstalled Gnome. Maybe that was overkill, but at least my desktop has the "new" Gnome look (thin menus at the top, buttons at the bottom that show launched applications and showing all Emacsen, for example, under one Emacs button).