FC4 does not work, "out of the box" for me; GUI/X11 fails

[Mike Pepe]

Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> [Old thread: Hmm... I am trying to install FC4 but anaconda graphics broke!]
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> My System is:
> 
> - VA Linux Systems 501 (yes it is an old system)
> - Video: Cirrus Logic  GD5840
> - Monitor: Hitachi CM715
> 
> I tried to install FC4 "out of the box" and the GUI installation
> fails.  I tried ALL SORTS OF THINGS and I could NOT
> get FC4 to come up with the X11 windows system.
> 
> The video card is correcty found but not the monitor.
> 
> Here are things I tried:
> =========================================
> 1) Did the GUI-based installation but was not able to continue
>     because the screen was jumbled badly.
> 
> 2) Did Text-based installation and installed everything and hoped
>     that I can somehow fix the X11/GUI later:
> 
>   a) Manually added Monitor/Video details to /etc/X11/xorg.conf,
>       tried to start X and does not work.
> 
>   b) Tried a/usr/bin/X -configure, and xorg.conf.XXX file was
>       generated in /tmp and trying /etc/X11/X -conf /tmp/xorf.conf.XXX
>       does work.  In fact it is much worse as the mouse could not be
>       found even when manually added, along with specs for the video
>       and monitor results in a blank screen and it appeared to hang.
> 
> 3) In the many reboots, I tried to stop the boot process with "I" to
> stop the probes but was unable to.  This is a seperate issue right
> now but if anyone wants to test it, let me know how to get this to
> work.
> 
> 4) Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and Ctrl-Alt-F1 did not work for me so
> a forced reboot was necessary.
> 
> In general,  the X11 system does try to come up but the screen is
> jumbled or interlaced-looking but otherwise very unreadable so I could
> not do anything and the really wierd thing is that if you let the X11
> run for 3-5 minutes it appears to look like a curses screen but
> unfortunely with very weird characters and unreadable. There
> is a blue border at the edges of the screen if that tells you
> anything.
> 
> So - after banging on this all day, I gave up, and went back to
> FC3 and god... the darn thing actually works "out of the box"
> as with FC2 and FC1.  I see the GUI just fine (800x600) and I
> was able to install as usual.  Seems that FC4 is really HOSED
> for older systems?  This is not cool :-(
> 
> I am not sure if it is worth try to upgrade from FC3 to FC4 only to find
> out that the X11 system would get hosed again.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Kind regards,
> Dan
> 

This is a known bug that affects Cirrus and some other video chipsets.

If you boot your machine in text mode and update the X11 packages, 
you'll be fine.

Check on bugzilla for the gory details.

Editorial note: I personally believe there should be FC4.1 release that 
rolls the fixed X11 packages so that way people can install the thing 
graphically on systems with the broken video drivers.

-Mike