Arch Linux

janwil

Member

From: Tartu, Estonia

Registered: 2003-08-15

Posts: 88

Really weird freeze

Hi all,

I use an IBM ThinkPad T42 laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics card. After one of the last system upgrades I have had the issue of random crashing and being sent back to the GDM login screen from Gnome, Xfce and even LXDE. This issue has been reported and discussed on this forum before.

However, after today's (November 4th, 2009) upgrade I experienced something completely new. When working under Gnome, my fonts started to disappear pixel by pixel! This process took about 20 minutes and when the text became more or less unreadable, the whole system froze.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Or perhaps can even explain it?:)

Thanks in advance,
Jan

MadTux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 553

Re: Really weird freeze

Do you know, what packages got upgraded? One of the recent upgrades was xorg-server 1.7, maybe your problems started with this upgrade?
Also, kernel mode setting seems to be a problem on some ATI cards and is enabled by default with kernel 2.6.31.

tkdfighter

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 126

Re: Really weird freeze

This is what I am experiencing as well with the Xserver-1.7 on my T42. I downgraded xf86-input-evdev xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse xf86-video-ati xf86-video-vesa xorg-server-utils and xorg-server, and added them to IgnorePkg. I kept the new mesa version, as I feel things are a bit smoother with it compared to the old one. Video playback is a bit jerky, though.

janwil

Member

From: Tartu, Estonia

Registered: 2003-08-15

Posts: 88

Re: Really weird freeze

Do you know, what packages got upgraded? One of the recent upgrades was xorg-server 1.7, maybe your problems started with this upgrade?
Also, kernel mode setting seems to be a problem on some ATI cards and is enabled by default with kernel 2.6.31.

It was really a big upgrade, some 336 packages were upgraded (all of the KDE among other things).

Thanx for the hints, at least I know now that disappearing fonts do not mean loss of my eyesight or insanity

Jan