Arch Linux

tatofoo

Member

Registered: 2009-05-18

Posts: 6

Some weird problem with X

Hello,

Today I updated my system (800mb update, haven't done it in a long time ;P) and after it I started to have some weird issues with X. I don't know how to explain it, so I took a screenshot (http://tinypic.com/r/169g9bp/6).

I have a Thinkpad T42 which uses a Radeon Mobility 7500. This is what I have in xorg.conf:

Section "Files"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/local"
EndSection    

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen     0 "Screen0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load "glx"
    Load "dri"
    Load "dbe"
    Load "drm"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver     "radeon"
    Option     "ColorTiling" "on"
    Option     "AGPMode" "4"
    Option     "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
    Option     "EnablePageFlip" "on"
    Option     "AGPFastWrite" "yes"
    Option     "GARTSize" "256"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Device0"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

I've tried disabling the extra options in the Device section but I still get the same problem. One thing that I noticed is that when booting, the terminal font changes to a smaller one just after UDev is started up, before the update that didn't happen.

EDIT 1
Looks like I might have found a solution. The font going smaller is a new feature in the kernel and you can turn it off by adding nomodeset to the kernel line in menu.lst (http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 25#p645725).

EDIT 2
I still have another problem which I didn't noticed before. When I try to play Dwarf Fortress, everything goes like 1 frame per second, and that happens with/without the nomodeset switch. Something similar happens to the videos, which display some weird parts while playing.

Last edited by tatofoo (2009-11-21 01:46:09)

Cyrusm

Member

From: Bozeman, MT

Registered: 2007-11-15

Posts: 1,053

Re: Some weird problem with X

you might find some useful troubleshooting tips here
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI … _.28KMS.29

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Hofstadter's Law:
           It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

radionecrotic

Member

Registered: 2009-11-29

Posts: 7

Re: Some weird problem with X

Like tatofoo, I updated recently and had some serious problems with X (no display at all).  I have an older Thinkpad X24 that hadn't had any problems for a while.  The link from Cyrusm proved to be very helpful.  I fixed my problem by adding nomodeset to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst and adding !radeon to my MODULES list in /etc/rc.conf.