Help !! It's Baaack !

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2007-12-19 at 06:01 -0500, mylar wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 10:31 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 06:30 -0500, mylar wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 11:30 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 06:11 -0500, mylar wrote:
> > > > > Hello.
> > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Any ideas. Where do I start debugging this thing ? Why would it work,
> > > > > then not work, intermittently like that. Its one of the strangest
> > > > > problems I've had in a looooong time. 
> > > > 
> > > > First off, what kind of video hardware is it?  Which driver are you
> > > > running?  This sounds like the driver is misinterpreting the DRI data
> > > > from the monitor on warm boots.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Okay, the machine is 2.8 Ghz Dell 4600 running an Intel on board video
> > > adapter. The video card is an Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics
> > > Controller  and the monitor is a Dell E172FP flap panel LCD display. The
> > > driver is the i810 driver which is the one I was told to use and, the
> > > only one which seems to work. I'm running at a screen resolution of
> > > 1280x1024 which I have been using on this machine for several years. I
> > > had no problem with Fedora 1, not with Fedora 7 while running the 2.6.18
> > > XEN kernel. As soon as I upgraded to 2.6.20 whammo, the problem began.
> > > 
> > > To make things confusing (at least for me) it sometimes the display
> > > comes up fine. Other times it will flicker a few times then come up
> > > fine. other times it sits there like stone and does nothing till I hit
> > > the big switch.
> > > 
> > > Oh, one other thing. It also happens on cold boots too. This morning I
> > > booted the machine cold and it happened. I had to reboot to the old
> > > kernel.
> > > 
> > > Lastly, I can find nothing in the systems logs or anywhere else that
> > > might indicate where the glitch is occurring. It's strange.
> > 
> > I've run into a similar thing myself.  On occasion after the screen
> > saver blanks the screen (this is on an nVidia with a Viewsonic display),
> > the display wakes up but it's torn and unreadable.  A quick
> > "CTRL-ALT-F1" followed by an "ALT-F7" (go to text console and back to
> > GUI) cures it.  I've not found a permanent fix.
> > 
> > It seems that the DRI/DRM stuff isn't sticking so the horizontal and
> > vertical refresh aren't sent properly when the screen wakes up and my
> > weird key sequence above causes a reset.  This smells like something
> > that should be sent to bugzilla.
> > 
> 
> I may have found a temporary fix. I lowered the default screen
> resolution as root and thus far it has booted up with no problems two or
> three times in a row. However, when i log in and operate under X under
> my regular non-root account it seems to run fine under the higher
> 1280x1024 screen resolution that I normally like to use.
> 
> I googled around a bit to see what I could find about this problem. it
> seems that I am not alone. Others have reported similar problems. seems
> something got broke between kernel updates with respect to the i810
> driver. I hate it when updates break stuff that has previously worked
> but that's the nature of the beast.

I kinda suspected it was something like that.

> I never submitted a bug report to bugzilla. Is that a relatively
> painless process ?  It would be great if this problem could be patched
> soon.

First, go to https://bugzilla.redhat.com and create an account (don't
worry, it's free) and log in.  Select "New" in the grey menu bar below
the red one at the top.  In the next screen, select a product and you'll
be taken to the appropriate screen.  The items labeled in blue should be
filled in as best you can.  When you're done, click on the "Commit"
button at the bottom of the page.

Pretty simple.

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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc.                http://www.internap.com -
-                                                                    -
-        Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.        -
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