VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] - xorg with openchrome segfaults
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If you are able to run a huge kernel you are able to run à generic of the same "kind" (i.e. smp or not) anyway, so you certainly can install a generic kernel. Yes I am using a nVidia card but this is not the point. I have way more kernel modules loaded, video ones aside, that what puzzles me.
Last edited by Didier Spaier; 10-20-2012 at 02:19 PM.
I installed slackware with the huge kernel - huge-smp won't run on this system.
I did try the instructions in #14 - blacklisting vt8623fb, modprobe via after a reboot, running with no xorg.conf or the one from the system running Debian 6. Again, I got the segfault.
I need a little prompting about how to install the generic kernel and make sure it doesn't affect the installation of the huge kernel, and I want to set up lilo so I can choose either kernel at boot time. (I know if I can do that, I can make either one the default kernel).
And, for the generic kernel, will I have to download the various necessary kernel modules?
There don't seem to be as many prebuilt kernels on the slackware 14 CDs as there were a few years ago, and not many on the ftp site(s) either.
I'm attaching the latest Xorg.0.log, from using the xorg.conf which worked on Debian.
As for uname -r, I found that uname -v provides further information for distingushing the huge and generic kernels - for the generic kernel, uname -v gives:
Sorry, no more clue. If I search Google for: chrome(0) chipset cle266 segmentation fault I find some interesting threads, including one I did some input in, but if I add linux-gate.so.1 as a search argument I only find the present thread.
You could try the proprietary Unichrome driver instead on Openchrome. I don't know if that will help.
My best advise would be to switch to an older X stack (this thread makes me think that, though the backtrace mentions vdso, not linux-gate.so.1). The easiest way to do that is probably to install an older version of Slackware instead of Slackware 14.
Well, that's too bad, given that Debian 6 works fine with its openchrome driver, and the Slax live CD does too - I forget which slackware version it's based on; I suppose I could check that and try the corresponding slackware version.
Thanks though, for all your help! I've learned a bit about slackware. I have a LAMP server set up on this system, which works fine. I'm getting used to figuring out all the weird ways various distros set up the Apache2 config files: Debian, RedHat, Slackware, FreeBSD, NetBSD. Maybe I'll try slackware 14 on another old system, maybe one with an older AMD cpu, and see what I can do with that.
According to this thread linux-gat.so.1 is a vdso anyway.
Other than that, Slax 6.1.2 includes xorg-server-1.6.3 which is included in Slackware-13.0 as well. So you'll probably be safe installing Slackware 13.0.
But as Debian 6 ships xorg-server-1.7.7 included in Slackware-13.1 you could try Slackware-13.1 as well.
Last edited by Didier Spaier; 10-22-2012 at 12:49 PM.
This occurred to me last night: was the openchrome driver for slackware built for i686 or for i486? If it was built for i686 it might well fail since the VIA Samuel 2 CPU does not have the CMOV instruction.
Ubuntu was building its '686' version without CMOV (different config flags) until a couple of years ago, so then I had to switch to Debian on this system and its twin.
According to this thread linux-gat.so.1 is a vdso anyway.
Other than that, Slax 6.1.2 includes xorg-server-1.6.3 which is included in Slackware-13.0 as well. So you'll probably safe installing Slackware 13.0.
But as Debian 6 ships xorg-server-1.7.7 included in Slackware-13.1 you could try Slackware-13.1 as well.
Thanks, Didier - I'll probably try 13.1, in that case. I suspect my guess about the 14.0 driver being built only for i686 is wrong, but who knows?
If 13.1 supports ext4, I can probably get by keeping my /home partition, as I often do when I do an upgrade or when changing distros, that would be best!
I installed 13.1 in the same system, and managed to install all the LAMP components as usual. I set up the same web pages that I had before, with some additional feature, using php and MySQL.
I set up xfce, using the openchrome driver. By default, this came up in 800x600 mode; so I'll try using an xorg.conf file to change this. One problem is that it had neither a top nor a bottom panel, and the utility for setting up panels would not run, so I have to depend on launchers on the screen background and the righ-click pop-up menu. I did install all the X software for this version from the CD's, so I hope there is some upgrade.
The version of Firefox which comes with this over-2-year-old firefox is also very old, so I have to see if I can upgrade this a bit.
An easy way to apply all security patches available for Slackware 13.1 is to use the slackpkg utility, see "man slackpkg". The Changelog for Slackware 13.1 will tell you all recommended updates/ upgrades since release date that slackpkg can deal with.
Other than that you can upgrade what you want using the SlackBuilds provided in the /source directory to make yourself a newer Slackware package if you wish. Personally I would only do that if I really need to upgrade a specific package but hey, that's your system
Now I have the 13.1 slackware updated, and also I added the xorg.conf file from my twin VIA system (running Debian 6), in order to get 1024x768 resolution.
This works fairly well - it did come up with a panel at the bottom, which I set to autohide.
A major problem is that there are bugs in switching to text consoles with control-alt-Fn keys, and back again. The first few consoles (1-3 maybe?) don't work as expected, and switching back with Alt f7 or Alt f8 results in a partially-working screen with no panel or with a panel with nothing on it.
Another problem is that I should have tried to enable some old config files, or just all the old ones - the worst problem is that I had to reconfigure Apache over again. Not a big problem because I can practically do that automatically, having done that on various systems many times. What happened is that I went away while updating, and I had to go back and decide whether to use new config files.
If I had time, I'd reinstall version 14, and then file a bug with openchrome.org - I did that a couple of years ago, with openchrome on a laptop which always came up in too high a resolution.
hi,
after having similar issues (segfault / high cpu load), i investigated a bit. for me the unichrome xorg driver works nicely: unichrome.sourceforge.net
i've also made a slackbuild for this: slackbuilds.org/repository/14.0/system/xf86-video-unichrome/ .
i hope that helps
PS: sorry for the not linked links, seems to be a linuxquestions rule for the first post..
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