[Unichrome-devel] [ unichrome-Bugs-1349309 ] X starts fine (no errors), but the screen blanks

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Bugs item #1349309, was opened at 2005-11-06 02:42
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by dwdeath
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Category: mode/outputs
Group: X-driver, Xv
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Assigned to: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Summary: X starts fine (no errors), but the screen blanks

Initial Comment:
I've just installed Mandriva cooker (latest devel
builds of everything) on a
Via ME600 motherboard. This is now supposed to work,
but what happens is this:

Using the VESA driver, everything is fine (but no
acceleration).

Using Mandriva's default setup of X (which sets the
driver to via, loads the kernel module, and seems to do
the right things), I do "startx", and am rewarded with
a blank screen. It is as if the DPMS had instantly
activated. There are no errors in xorg.0.log, and the
xserver doesn't exit until I Ctrl-C it. 

I've read all the documentation, and tried everything I
can. Is this a bug? Am I doing something daft? Would
any config files (log, xorg.conf, dmesg etc) be helpful. 

Thanks for your help,

Richard

P.S. I've also filed this with Mandriva here:
http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=19620
and if we get a fix, I'll follow it up there too.

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>Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-16 23:41

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Could you add the log with the vga reg dumps? Or did you
mail this to me (i doubt that i have seen this).

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-16 21:33

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Hi,

I'm just wondering - is there anything else that I could
usefully do to debug/diagnose this? Unfortunately, I'm not
wizardly enough to actually delve into the innards of the
driver, but if there is anything else that might help,
please ask. If prodding it with an oscilloscope would help,
I can do that :-)  

 - Richard

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-10 02:35

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No - I wasn;t logged in remotely to that machine, so I don't
know whether X had already died. The numlock light did
respond to key presses, but that was about it. 

OK - Now added the line as requested, and sending attaching
the file:
Xorg.0.log.printregs

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-10 02:09

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Hrm, distorted... could it be that X had already died then?
Or are you logged in remotely and did that connection die too?

I guess the next step is looking at VGA registers. This
won't be hard when diffing against my M10k doing 1280x1024@60Hz.

Option "PrintVGARegs" "True" in the device section.

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-10 01:50

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I googled a bit more, and found one suggestion: the use of
xorgcfg. If I try that, what happens is this:

screen blanks as usual. 1 second later, screen comes to
life. It looks like a badly distorted version of the normal
black and white hatched default wallpaper., complete with
what might be a dialog. The system then freezes in that
state. I could reboot it with Alt-SysrQ-B, but the usual
ways to exit from X (Ctrl-Alt-Bksp, or Alt-Sysrq-R and
Ctrl-Alt-F1) did nothing. 

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-09 23:28

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The monitors simply go into power-save mode. The power light
changes colour, and the monitor reports "No signal".  Then
it goes black.

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-09 23:22

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Hrm, i am seeing nothing out of the ordinary, except for
your DPMS option, but i figure you've taken that one all the
way already.

There is no call to VIADPMS made. And the old vga blanking
way, of setting the hsync to an impossible value should've
been overwritten too.

Do these monitors report any mode, or do they unsync/suspend?

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-09 23:06

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That's very odd indeed. The panel concerned is a new Relisys
LCD, capable of  1280x1024, and which runs very happily at
that resolution with the VESA driver. But I tried other
resolutions (eg 800x600@16bpp) just in case - with the same
results.  Just to be certain, I've also tried it on my main
desktop's 1600x1200 LCD, with the same effect. 

Just a possible thought: is there anything in the BIOS video
settings which could cause this problem? I don't think so,
but I did have to decide how much main memory to allocate
for video (I gave it 32MB).

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-09 22:49

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This shows up np on a CRT here, i see very little difference.

Before we go off comparing CR registers... Can you try using
a lower resolution, like 1024x768 or something? If that
doesn't work, then something else is at play here. If that
does work, then your CRT connected panel is unable to sync
to this mode (which it specifically reports itself), and we
will have to adjust that mode to suit your panel.

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-08 18:24

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Thanks. Here's the log (Xorg.0.log.debug8) from running:
./Xorg -logverbose 8
Hopeuflly this is more use.

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-08 15:15

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Oh, HAVE_DEBUG is defined per default in
xf86-video-unichrome. I must remember to undefine it when i
get a full release out.

But this just gets you the ability to dump registers through
config options (which might come in useful soon).

For a verbose log, you should run X with --logverbose 8. If
you call this from startx, you need to call it like this:
startx -- -logverbose 8

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-08 02:28

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OK - hopefully this is more helpful. I've found another
machine, built X on it, and compiled the driver. I then
copied the binary directory /opt/xorg-rjn  across to the
ME6000 machine, and ran /opt/xorg-rjn/bin/startx
This doesn't help - it runs the old xorg. So I used
/opt/xorg-rjn/bin/Xorg instead. The debug messages refer to
a different release date, so I'm definitely running the new
build.
   => Same symptom
I then recompiled the via driver as requested  (quick check:
you did mean me to change the line in via_driver.h to this
"#define HAVE_DEBUG 1" ), and then rsynced that across.
 => Same symptom, but hopefully a more useful log. The new
xorg.0.log is attached. I'm renaming it to xorg.0.log.debug
 for clarity.
Hope that helps...

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-07 17:50

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I'm really sorry, but there is no room on the disk to do
this. I have a 1GB CF card instead of a hard drive, and with
an absolutely minimal system + compiler + source of X, there
is 300MB free. When I tried to compile it overnight, the
system crashed by running out of disk.  I also tried
Mandriva's xorg-debug package, but this won't actually run
at all.

Is there anywhere I can get a binary version of the driver
to test with? Or is there any way to compile just the via
driver without having to compile all of X first? 

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-07 00:06

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From your log:
(II) LoadModule: "via"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/via_drv.so
(II) Module via: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
        compiled for 4.3.99.902, module version = 0.1.31
        Module class: X.Org Video Driver
        ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 0.8

That is not the driver distributed here.

And this log is not verbose enough. Could you enable
HAVE_DEBUG in via_driver.h and recompile?

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-06 22:48

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And here is the xorg.0.log file. I started the Xserver with
"startx" (as root).  After a few seconds the screen went
blank. I then waited 10 seconds, during which the LCD
monitor complained of having no signal, and then went into
power-save mode. Then, I used Ctrl-Alt-F1 to return to the
VT, and stopped the  X-server with Ctrl-C.

Hardware setup: 
  Mini-ITX machine: EPIA ME6000 motherboard.
  LCD monitor plugged into the CRT output.

Software:
  Distro: Mandriva cooker (current)
  kernel:  (Mandriva stock):
kernel-i586-up-1GB-2.6.12.12mdk-1-1mdk
  xorg-x11-6.9-1.cvs20051011.2mdk

Kernel modules: via,drm,via_agp are all loaded.

Hope that helps,

RIchard

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Comment By: Richard Neill (richardneill)
Date: 2005-11-06 22:40

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Here's my xorg.conf.  

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Comment By: Luc Verhaegen (dwdeath)
Date: 2005-11-06 09:14

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Attach a log please.

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