Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

jacobmj · 2011-09-09 15:35:39

Hi.

I'm a new user of Arch, and am rather pleased with what I've found. Thanks!

I am, however, struggling to get X running on my laptop. Upon starting X, the screen is briefly black, and over the next 30-60 seconds, bleeds to an off white from the corners of the screen. Eventually, the screen becomes a set of uneven splotches of white and dark purple. The machine is a Sony R505, and the graphics hardware is an i830M (Intel 82830), and uses the i915 kernel driver. I've freshly installed, and am running the stock 3.0.4-r1 kernel kernel. I have xf86-video-intel version 2.15.0-2.

It is my understanding that this is related to KMS and newer versions of the xf86-video-intel X driver. I've searched these forums at length, and others, without a concrete solution. (One related report is here: http://www.mail-archive.com/xorg@lists. … 5945.html). I previously had an older version of the kernel and the intel driver on a Gentoo installation on this machine. I've never used KMS on this laptop.

Are there others who have experienced this issue? Is there a configuration that will work with KMS?

I don't believe it is possible to run the current xf86-video-intel driver without KMS. As expected, X fails to start (no screens found) when I disable KMS with the boot parameter "i915.modeset=False". Is it possible to downgrade to the X driver to one that does not require KMS? I don't know what versions of the X server are compatible with which version of the driver. If this is possible, being unfamiliar with the intricacies of Arch, I'd appreciate a bit of guidance as to how?

Thanks much.
~Jacob

Gusar · 2011-09-09 17:04:26

You'd have to downgrade quite a bit back for a driver that doesn't require KMS. Technically possible, but quite a hassle. First try with this xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "old intel stuff"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "shadow" "true"
EndSection

Last edited by Gusar (2011-09-09 17:04:47)

jacobmj · 2011-09-09 17:05:48

Thanks. I had already tried that, with the addition of "DRI" "False", to no avail.

Gusar · 2011-09-09 17:19:46

You'd have to downgrade to xf86-video-intel-2.9 which will work up to xorg-server-1.8. You can try simply installing the packages from here: http://arm.konnichi.com/search/ but who knows if they'll actually work. Also, just getting the video driver will not be enough, you'll also need input drivers that work with that server, and I have no idea which versions those are. Like I said, hassle.

Do other distros work? Worst case, you'll have to go with an old but still supported distro, such as CentOS 5.

jacobmj · 2011-09-12 20:01:54

To follow up, I've filed a bug at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40806.
~Jacob

ewaller · 2011-09-13 02:03:28

Not that this will help, but what is happening is that your backlight is on, but the LVDS signals to the LCD have stopped. The birefrengent crystals in the LCD liquid have limited persistence and slowly float to a relaxed state when not being electrostatically driven.

Does you Xorg.0.log say anything about the HDMI interface on your graphics card?

Last edited by ewaller (2011-09-14 14:55:11)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-09-09 15:35:39

Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

#2 2011-09-09 17:04:26

Re: Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

#3 2011-09-09 17:05:48

Re: Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

#4 2011-09-09 17:19:46

Re: Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

#5 2011-09-12 20:01:54

Re: Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

#6 2011-09-13 02:03:28

Re: Intel i830M with KMS fades to white screen upon startx

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