Ubuntu
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20 package

7.04 (fglrx) display corruption and hard lock with X1650 on SIS chipset

Bug #108402 reported by Jarrett Miller
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20 (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I am running an AGP ATI official branded X1650 on a SIS north bridge. enabling the fglrx driver apears to work initially. That is to say the logon screen appears and then the desktop. However display items are corrupted. The most obvious issue is any kind of scrolling activity just truns that display area to garbage. Also many dialog boxes do not render properly. For example gksudo dialog appears blank, IOW it is just a frame and text box with not buttons, decorations, or fonts.

If i do try to use it like this it hard freezes the computer after about 1 minute. By that I mean that tty switching hot keys or ctrl-alt-backspace do not work. I have to hard reset.

Because of the card in question I can not try the 'ati' driver. The vesa driver works but looks like awful. It is al blurry. I am guessing this is because of improperly set DVI timmings?

Revision history for this message
Jarrett Miller (spook) wrote :

fixed the blurry issue with vesa driver. It was just a resolution issue. gnome thought I was using 1600x1200 but apparently my vesa bios only has modes up to 1280x1024. changing that control panel setting fixed that issue. The fglrx issue still stands however.

Revision history for this message
Jarrett Miller (spook) wrote :

fixed it.

I do not understand how this fixed it but it did. I am now using fglrx without hard freezes or display corruption. 3D does not work but I don't care. I only need 2D as this is a development workstation.

I did 3 things. As stated I used the gnome screen res control panel to change to 1280x1024.

secondly I manually edited xorg.conf and replaced vesa with fglrx instead of using the restricted manager to do it for me.

finally and this seems to be what fixed it (and why I am so puzzled about how this fixed it) I edited my monitor description.

I commented out the HorizSync and VertSync lines that came default and replaced them with these lines for my Dell 2001FP

HorizSync 31 - 80
        VertRefresh 56 - 76
        DisplaySize 408 306

I then reset the X server and logged in. Switched the resolution in gnome back to 1600x1200 and now all is well.

Strangest bug I have ever run in to. I ran in to this same issue with feisty beta and could never resolve it. Went back to edgy at that time. Anyway I hope this helps anyone else who runs in to this bizzare issue. I frankly have no idea how this fixed the problem but all is working fine now.

Revision history for this message
Jarrett Miller (spook) wrote :

opps! I spoke to soon. I have found the cause of the issue. It is DRI!!

I had to force ably enable the composite extension. Now this is counter intuitive since ATI does not support composite, however by doing so the xorg log file indicates that the driver detects that composite is on and disables DRI and then everything works fine.

However if I set composite to "off" then I get the screen corruption and hard freezes.

Hope this helps.

Revision history for this message
Daniel T Chen (crimsun) wrote :

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 beta?

Changed in linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote : linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20 is obsolete

This package has become obsolete so we're closing out the bug report as WONTFIX.
Thanks for reporting it though!

Changed in linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20:
status: Incomplete → Won't Fix
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