ok, this has been an ongoing problem i've had. It has followed me from redhat 7.2 up to 9.0. Periodically my X server will stop responding, then suddenly die and respawn. After this happens if i try to switch to a virtual console, the screen is all messed up. The bottom half is still what was showing on the X server at the moment of switching, and the top half is divided into halves again with two mirror images of the text screen, now with unreadably small green text. What do i do if not reboot the computer when this happens. P.S. the X server respawns on terminal 8 when it was on terminal 7, taking the machine to runlevel 1 doesn't help, and the X server still runs like a charm.
I am running redhat 9.0 now with kernel 2.4.25, and have frame buffers enabled.

Two things i could imagine are

1. I had this problem with an old video card once and later when i got a newer one it just disappeared. So it might be specific to your card/driver combi (new or old).

2. is more like maybe you can have a workaround. If you use non-default videomodes on your console (framebuffer) you could try to switch that off (lilo.conf or other depending on your bootmanager & kernel)

Chris

Hi,
For the first X problem, check if the font server "xfs" dies. I run RH9 and have that
problem from time to time. First Mozilla hangs, then crashes. And then sometime the
X server. It usually works to quickly restart "xfs" from an already open terminal.
I don't know why the "xfs" dies, but I suppose it's a bug somewhere and it helps to
upgrade.
Regards,
L Ekman.