I've been trying for days to get X working again on my laptop(thinkpad x60). The debian installer got it working immediately but in trying to compile some software that needed some other libraries that needed some other libraries, etc.... I ended up recompiling and reinstalling X. It broke once, but then I upgraded the rest of the X libraries and got it running again and now it seems completely broken. There's very little error messages.

Sometimes it says: (WW) I810(0): Bad V_BIOS checksum
(EE) I810(0): unknown reason for exception
(EE) I810(0): cannot continue
(EE) I810(0): VBE initialization failed

The most annoying thing is that I keep trying to tweak the modules that its loading in the xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 and its definitely using that file but it just seems to ignore the configure file and load whatever modules it wants. The errors seem to change, sometimes there's no error, it just says "I810 successfully set to original devices" and exits. Other times it says no screens found.

What's so damn annoying is that it was working. And then it broke, and I got it working again, and now its been out for days. I've recompiled the kernel with every version of I2C and VESA and DRI drivers for i915 and i810 and nothing. I've got all the latest X server, compiled and installed from scratch. Sometimes I hate linux.

Is there some super X debugging mode I can turn on where it prints out everything? How do I know which of the (EE) and (WW) is actually killing the server. Sometimes it complains about some Synaptics thing or the keyboard. It seems like I've gotten every error its possible to get. Like its just doing this for fun.

Is there a list of which versions of which drivers its using? Maybe its calling in a module or driver from the old X version that's conflicting somewhere. I look and they all say "compiled for 7.1.1" But I'm not sure I believe anything anymore.

I know there's a bunch of stuff out there on DRI troubleshooting, but I don't care about 3d graphics, that would be nice, but I just want it working like it was before. And why does it ignore my commenting out of Load modules in xorg.conf? How do I know which graphics driver its actually using? Didn't people at MIT write this X thing? I guess it really is a party school now.

Steady Peterius,

If you willing to use back previous driver, I think simply use this command probably will help you.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-i810
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Good luck!

I considered doing that, but I think it will mess with my kernel which I have specially compiled. I'm pretty sure as some dependency it will replace my kernel.

I think it would be best if someone knew how to get the silly thing to print out verbose debug information, low level technical specifics like what actually causes X to exit.

no information about the X at /var/log/Xorg.*.log?

Hi,

If you re-install X, the dependencies may cause Debian to re-install its kernel as default, but it won't replace yours with it (unless yours is compiled from the same version, and you didn't append a custom version signature). You can just make yours default in your boot loader again afterwards.

Why did you need to build X from source? If you have some other program that needed certain libraries, you could always install the X headers. Just install xorg-dev and its dependencies.

Hope this helps,
Sam

No /var/log/Xorg.log.0 says very little. It does have that BIOS checksum thing. Like I mentioned.

The thing that's so odd is that I got it working, and actually I was in X when I installed the library that when I exited X, later wouldn't let me get back in.

Incidentally, I was trying to compile and install a program that needed the latest gtk, which needs glib, pango, atk, cairo, and each of those needed different things and eventually they didn't like my version of X.

That's the thing, if you follow the yellow brick road of distribution and config file and package management, then the most you run into is unsupported hardware. But I needed to install the latest version of X...

Yeah, the main thing is if someone could point me to some X resources like what's the chain of execution, why does it refuse to acknowledge that I've commented out those modules, etc. I guess I should just start combing through the source code with grep. But I know its got to be some library that I didn't upgrade, some simple conflict.

I'm still getting pretty much the same errors. But does anyone know where to get the source for the xorg module extension libglx.so ?? I can't find it anywhere. I thought it was part of xorg-server which even produces a libxglx.la under duress, but glx is hiding from me and I don't know how it turns that into modules. There must be some x mod tool.

I remember compiling X years ago from source. Has this just gotten more difficult? Ugh.

I always assumed that if you compiled things from source they would be configured more for your platform and would have less extraneous code. What a mess.

I am getting a slightly different error now:

(EE) I810(0): V_BIOS address 0x7d8e0 out of range

To get the glx module, I think you need to point your xorg configure to the location of your Mesa source. Add this to your configure line:

--with-mesa-source=/path/to/mesa

If you haven't looked at it already, check out:
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/ModularDevelopersGuide

Perhaps some of the modules that you commented out are being built because others depend on them. I'd just let the compile go through its paces. The extra modules wouldn't hurt, I should think.

Sam

Thanks, I got the glx module with that mesa path. I just figured it would mention if it couldn't find mesa since I specified --enable-glx. I should have known.

But I'm still getting that V_BIOS address out of range error on the I810 driver. after "initializing int10"...

Even with the int10 error, can you load xorg?

The int10 module is responsible for communicating with the video card's bios. On my system, it prints the warning "Bad V_BIOS Checksum", but it still allows me to run xorg.

I don't know if this'll help, but do you have i915resolution installed and running at boot? It provides some help with the Intel video bios.

Well, a longshot, but try to reboot. Give the video BIOS a chance to cycle off and on.

You were right, the reboot got the video card working. So X starts. Now I just need to get the window manager running... ;-)

Glad to help. Should be smooth sailing now.

Sam