In a thread back in November 2011,
http://marc.info/?t=132173453400070&r=1&w=1
I reported intermittent kernel/X hangs (usually under near-idle loads)
on a Thinkpad T60 widescreen laptop (alas I misspelled the name as
"Tinkpad" in the Subject: line) running 5.0-stable amd64. My full
dmesg is given in the first message in that thread,
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132105242827683&w=1
along with various other (hopefully-)relevant information. There's
also more information on the problem symptoms in my later messages in
that thread,
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132103762123592&w=1
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132137790200900&w=1
I've now gathered a bit more information, and have some new questions
for the list:
Moving to 5.0-stable made no difference to this problem.
Switching between GENERIC.mp and GENERIC made no difference to this
problem.
My original reports were with X autoconfiguring (i.e.,
/etc/X11/xorg.conf did NOT exist), using the Radeon driver:
% dmesg|grep vga
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "ATI Radeon Mobility X1400" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
radeondrm0 at vga1: apic 1 int 16
Since I don't actually need/use accelerated 3-D video, I've tried to
switch to the generic VESA X driver. Alas, I haven't been able to
construct an /etc/X11/xorg.conf which successfully uses the VESA
driver at the full (15.4" widescreen) hardware screen resolution of
1680x1050 pixels. (None of my attempts would go above 1400x1050
pixels, "stretched" in a horribly ugly way to fill the screen.)
As a last-ditch measure to try to get a reliable computer, I've tried
disabling ALL video acceleration using the xorg.conf given below. This
"works" -- I've had no more hangs in the 2 months I've been using this
configuration (now with 5.0-stable GENERIC.mp), whereas before I was
getting multiple hangs/week. Alas, this has come at the price of
painfully slow scrolling in xterm, painfully slow window drags, and
general video "performance" that reminds me of that 8 MB Sparcstation
SLC I remember using back around 1990 or so. :( :(
So... questions for the list:
* Can anyone point me to a working xorg.conf to use the VESA video
driver on a T60 @ 1680x1050 pixel resolution?
* Can anyone suggest a better fix or workaround for my X hangs?
Loosing 3-D acceleration is no problem for me, but 2-D acceleration
would be nice...
* If I do switch back to the Radeon driver, and the hangs reoccur,
is there any information I could gather from a hung machine, and/or
any logging I could switch on before a hang, that would be useful
in further diagnosing the problem?
* Starting from a cold boot, my current xorg.conf (given below) doesn't
work -- X is unable to properly initialize the video, resulting in
a screen display that's vaguely abstract-art bars of white pixels
scattered around the screen, with no X cursor visible. So, right
now, after each cold boot I first start X with an xorg.conf in which
the line
Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
is commented out (with thie xorg.conf X starts fine, but is vulnerable
to crashes), then immediately shut down X, then restart with the
no-acceleration xorg.conf (the one given below). This procedure works,
but is awkward. Is there a way around this kludge?
--- begin /etc/X11/xorg.conf to disable ALL video acceleration ---
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/OTF/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "dri2"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "wsmouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/wsmouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac8Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "BusType" # [<str>]
#Option "CPPIOMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPusecTimeout" # <i>
#Option "AGPMode" # <i>
#Option "AGPFastWrite" # [<bool>]
#Option "AGPSize" # <i>
#Option "GARTSize" # <i>
#Option "RingSize" # <i>
#Option "BufferSize" # <i>
#Option "EnableDepthMoves" # [<bool>]
#Option "EnablePageFlip" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoBackBuffer" # [<bool>]
#Option "DMAForXv" # [<bool>]
#Option "FBTexPercent" # <i>
#Option "DepthBits" # <i>
#Option "PCIAPERSize" # <i>
#Option "AccelDFS" # [<bool>]
#Option "IgnoreEDID" # [<bool>]
#Option "DisplayPriority" # [<str>]
#Option "PanelSize" # [<str>]
#Option "ForceMinDotClock" # <freq>
#Option "ColorTiling" # [<bool>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreCrystal" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreTunerPort" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreCompositePort" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreSVideoPort" # <i>
#Option "TunerType" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreMicrocPath" # <str>
#Option "RageTheatreMicrocType" # <str>
#Option "ScalerWidth" # <i>
#Option "RenderAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SubPixelOrder" # [<str>]
#Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>]
#Option "DynamicClocks" # [<bool>]
#Option "VGAAccess" # [<bool>]
#Option "ReverseDDC" # [<bool>]
#Option "LVDSProbePLL" # [<bool>]
#Option "AccelMethod" # <str>
#Option "DRI" # [<bool>]
#Option "ConnectorTable" # <str>
#Option "DefaultConnectorTable" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultTMDSPLL" # [<bool>]
#Option "TVDACLoadDetect" # [<bool>]
#Option "ForceTVOut" # [<bool>]
#Option "TVStandard" # <str>
#Option "IgnoreLidStatus" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultTVDACAdj" # [<bool>]
#Option "Int10" # [<bool>]
#Option "EXAVSync" # [<bool>]
#Option "ATOMTVOut" # [<bool>]
#Option "R4xxATOM" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
--- end /etc/X11/xorg.conf ---
thanks, ciao,
--
-- Jonathan Thornburg <jth...@astro.indiana.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
