Hi Guys,

First of all my specs:
Debian etch
Kernel 2.6.16
GONME/Fluxbox with GDM/XDM respectively
AMD GX2 Processor Board


Now my hardware vendor had provided Xorg patch for Xorg 6.8.1 in order to get the hardware specific driver for the video. I patch the Xorg 6.8.1 sources with the patch and also compiled it successfully. Now the Xorg Graphical is working fine and the "amd" driver is also getting loaded, but the problem is whenever I try to restart/shutdown from GNOME or Fluxbox the screen goes blank. Although the system is restarting/shutdown at the back but the user can't see it. For example as soon as I hit the restart button in GNOME the screen goes blank(i.e. I cannot see those text message during restart/shutdown) and the next thing I see is my BIOS POST screen and then the GRUB loader.

Also this does not happen when I am in text mode(i.e. only base install).

Has anyone ever seen such issues? Can someone suggest me what is going wrong?

THanks

I guess it is because the driver doesn't proceed switch back to text mode. Test: try switching to text console and back (ctrl-alt-f1 alt-f7, I guess). If screen goes blank - it's that. The ways to fix:
1) start begging (or requiring..) for a driver update. Don't know the success probability.
2) Analyze dri.freedesktop.org. I think that being not supported is more probable, but there is a chance.
3) Give up hardware acceleration and use vesa driver. Maybe except some rare cases.

Thank you for your reponse. It was quite useful to analyze the problem.
When I hit ctrl-alt-f1/f2/f3 from GNOME/Fluxbox the screen goes out of resolution(signal) so that only way to get back the screen is to hit the reset button. Is this is what you were thinking too?

Is there any out of this?

Well, you had an option of ctrl-alt-del - it was not a hang, it was just video failure. And you would please your daemons and filesystems by not powering off at once without telling them to stop.

It is just the behavior I expected. That means broken driver with big probability.

Ah yes, you were right. I totally forgort about that..Thanks for reminding me of the basics

Coming to the video problem, I don't think my hardware vendor is going to provide the patches for the Xorg 7.0 in the near future. So that's why I was wondering if I could solve anything at user level.

THAnks for your help. You are awesome!!!

I'm afraid that the only real solution is patching the driver yourself. That means getting the driver as a text file, understanding what it does and where you'd need to look for, adjusting the file to fix the bug, build it as an executable and patch the kernel with your updated driver... Good luck

Thank you Dutch Master and raskin for the help. Before I start bugging my vendor for the updated driver, do you think I should try this driver on some other distro like Fedora/Mandrake.....Is there any possibility that the other distro might show some different behaviour -- They might show the text screen during restarting and shutdown.

I know this may be a stupid think to ask but I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to X windows system.

Thank you once again.

Anyone???

I guess going round the distros is not the best thing to do. Although they say MEPIS is good for something like that, but... Really, I don't see anything like AMD in Mesa drivers list. Also you can try hitting ctrl-alt-"gray +" in X to check if resolution switch goes fine. If yes, maybe (though not sure) you will succeed to run some framebuffer console, and switching to it will not ruin everything. But really, do you think you always need 3d acceleration and screen text on shutting down?

If I understand your question correctly, I do need the AMD drivers while I am in X. But on shutting down I really don;t care if the drivers are AMD or VESA. All I want is that the user should be able to see the text screen to say the least. Is there any way by which I can unload the AMD driver and load the vesa driver while I am restarting or shutdown-ing my computer.???

Any help will be highly appreciated.

THank you once again.

You don't understand the problem completely. When you run X, driver switches hardware to graphics mode and initializes it somehow. When you switch back, it fails to uninitialize it correctly and go to text mode. Maybe you can use some software changing textmode settings - just to put video card in text mode. Or you can try readjusting framebuffer console - with similar reason.

Thank you once again for replying. I really appreciate your efforts and help. Just to make sure that I understood your solid explanation, the problem that I am having is that my Video Card Driver is not able to switch from Graphics mode to text mode when I try to shutdown/restart. And that;s why you have suggested me to find a software which will make(or force) my video card to go into text mode? Am I right? So the question is if my driver is broken internally then how can a software will cover up for that functionality? Afterall even If I find a software, it will essentially use the Video Card Driver capability to go into text mode.

I know I am asking a lot of question, but as said in my previous posts, I get very confused when it comes to X.

Thank you very very much once again.

P.S. does anyone on this forum knows about such kind of software?

Well, I'm not sure it will work. But as I understand:
-> you've got working hardware
-> your X driver is broken
But, there are lots of drivers which can give at least some effect with given hardware - it's all about sending signals to hardware...
By the way, did you try to switch to text console, login (blindly..) and run X with another config on another console but with vesa driver?

Ok, I did some experimenting. here is what I did.

I installed the base-install (debian sarge), then I installed the compiled Xorg patched version and then finally xdm. Now the default windows manager was twm. So I rebooted my computer and I got the xdm login screen. I was able to log in successfully and now when I try to restart/shutdown my video card switches to text mode but the screen is static i.e. I cannot see the scrolling text. What I see in the text mode is the screen which was there when my video card had switched to Graphic modes i.e. the text mode shows me the login prompt and above it are the messages from the kernel which are displayed during the normal boot. Although the screen is static the shutdown/restart procedure is happening at the back.

So right now the good thing is atleast my video card is switching to text mode but the text mode is totally static....any ideas?

Note: I haven;t tried it with fluxbox or GNOME with this fresh re-install.

guys, any help will be highly appreciated.

Do you really get 3D acceleration in Debian? What X11 version is it?