I've run some more tests, and the problem seems to be very erratic. It
depends on the kernel, the video driver, maybe the room temperature (I
think the system runs better when the room is cold), and just random
chance.
But it does look like a bug in the radeon_drv.o module of the X Windows
system, which (if I understand right) is proprietary. Any idea where to
file a bug?
Here are come comments on recent postings (written at various times):
On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 16:36 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> ...
> File a bug. I don't think the maintainers will follow up with you based
> on your report here. As Red Hatters have repeated often on these lists:
> If it's not in Bugzilla, it's not a bug.
Always a good idea. I'll file one, when I know where to file it.
On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 16:24 -0400, Dave Jones wrote:
>...
> Is this using the stock xorg ati driver, or ATI's firegl driver?
> Does it still happen if you set your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use
> the vesa driver instead? It sounds more like an X driver issue
> than a kernel issue at first impression.
Neither. It's the "radeon" driver, which is (I think) a proprietary ATI
driver. The system seems to boot OK using the vesa driver with all
recent versions of the kernel. The standard ati driver, ati_drv.o,
invokes the radeon driver, radeon_drv.o, if it finds Radeon hardware on
the system, and ati_drv.o seems to fail in more or less the same way as
radeon_drv.o .
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon 9200"
EndSection
I assume that an entry of <whatever> in the "Driver" line causes the
module <whatever>_drv.o to be loaded from the directory
/usr/X11R6/lib64/modules/drivers
It *does* look like an X driver problem, particularly since yum
"upgraded" the X Window System at the same time that it upgraded the
kernel to version 1.447. Nevertheless the problem does seem to depend
on the kernel version to some extent.
> If you have this box networked, can you log into it when the display
> is garbled ? If so, grabbing the X logs from /var/log/ may yield
> some clues.
I have the box networked, and I have done this, which shows that (at
least) the whole system isn't crashing, just the video subsystem. There
doesn't seem to be anything useful in the logs.
I'll send you some logs if you like.
> You have all the Xorg errata installed I assume ?
I think so. I just upgraded everything with yum, and reran it about an
hour ago to see if there were any other upgrades pending. None are.
On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 23:26 +0100, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
> > ...
> > Hardware:
> > CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ running at 3 GHz
> > Video Card: Sapphire Card running ATI RV280 [Radeon 9200]
> > Motherboard: Asus K8N-E Deluxe with NVIDIA chipset
>
> Is this 32 bit or 64 bit?
>
> I hope you mean "running at 2 GHz". A 3000 at 3 GHz would be seriously
> over-clocked: you'd need to reproduce your results on a non-overclocked
> system.
The system is running 64-bit at 2 Ghz. "3 Ghz" is a typo.
