Terrance N. Phillip <mediocre_person@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Okay--that makes sense. I'll try to grab Xorg.0.log right after the next
> crash, before I restart X. Of course, what this means is that my
> computer will not crash for the next month or so...

If your prior X session crashed, see if you have an Xorg.0.log.old file,
which should be the right one. Of course, if you've restarted X more than
once since the last crash, that will have been overwritten with a "good"
session as well.

Two cup of coffee reply -->

If you are handbombing the X settings I would not bother. I would
let X from xf86config do its thing and just give it the V refresh and
Hsync. Every time I tried to figure out modelines with modeline math,
front port and back porch and retrace, X balked and would not drive it.

It would appear with your situation that X is refusing to allow many low
level resolutions that should be in range. That means the Vrefresh is
not set correctly somehow. I would not say it should not work, just that
the i810 driver does not like it.

My advice is to try to (de)tune your monitor with XF86Setup and perhaps
there are option to try with it from the i810 driver specs. I can
remember trying all sorts of quirky options to get Cirrus drivers
to run that you would not suspect. MAybe run Xvidtune. Maybe probe
your monitor with X

X is a work in progress. You have to face that. For the most part the
card drivers are reverse engineered. That they work at all without
some options that should work may be viewed as a small miracle.

If you get your horizontal sync wrong you can kiss your monitor good
bye in anywhere from 1/2 hour to 24 hours of running time. NEVER run
a monitor in X that exhibits a flakey, strange colour or lines on
screen. Those vertical lines are ominous. I have two monitors in
the trash to testify to that. OK they were fixed frequency but newer
monitors actually take a lot less abuse albeit they will take it over
wider VR ratings if that makes any sense.

try "X -probeonly >/out.123 2>&1" for output of settings problems.

Note Bene: A lot of resolutions will not work, interlaced mode and
Acceleration may not work with i810. You may need options NoAccel
SWCursor and Dac6Bit in your Device card section of the XF86Config file.
These may be set as in Option "no_accel" or -- > Option "NoAccel"
or Option "sw_cursor" Option "dac_6-bit" etc.. The i180 readme file
may have different spellings for the options.

This may be available to select in Xf86Config. You may have to hand bomb
it in XF86Setup or put it into the appropriate section of the Devices
section in the /etc/XF86Config file. Read
/usr/lib/x11/doc/VideoModes.doc but first the README.i810 too.

Maybe--->

You may need the module agpgart.o as well, in order to use all
resolutions and you may have to hand compile it. In agpgart.c pr apg.c
there MAY BE instructions as to compilation line options for gcc. These
should be at the end of the module.

This module should be in /usr/src/linux/drivers though so it may not be
necessary. A makefile may be there too. Or the driver
compiled already.

In order to insert a hand compiled module you will probably need
compile in "set versions info on all symbol" in the kernel. This is
under "loadable module support" in make menuconfig.

This module finagling may not be necessary so --->

Under Character Devices in "make menuconfig" in /usr/src/linux i.e.
recompiling the kernel for AGP support, there are three options you
should take a look at.

These are CONFIG_AGP=y

CONFIG_AGP_i180=y

And under Processor Type and Features do

CONFIG_MTRR=y

All of these set may allow the card and monitor to scream. On the other
hand the AGP options for that card may require setting the no_accel and
other option in your devices section.

Finally tuning your monitor to use lesser resolutions or a narrower
range of resolutions with XF86Setup could be what you have to put up
with. XF86Setup can be run from the command line of a text console. It
is useful to run xvidtune (warning, be careful with xvidtune) and repair
xf86config screw ups and to tune monitor ranges visually and quickly. It
is also great for solving mouse problems in X. Use it. Save your old
XF86Config file in /etc as XF86Config.old1 etc as you may want to go
back to it.

EC<:-}

**********************

Terrance N. Phillip wrote:

E. Charters <echarters@sympatico.ca> wrote:

[snip]

I haven't seen the XF86Config stuff in Slackware lately. I am now
running xorg.conf. Was there an option I missed somewhere?

E. Charters wrote:
> Two cup of coffee reply -->
>
> If you are handbombing the X settings I would not bother. I would
> let X from xf86config do its thing and just give it the V refresh and
> Hsync. Every time I tried to figure out modelines with modeline math,
> front port and back porch and retrace, X balked and would not drive it.


Yow! That's a detailed reply, and it'll take me more than two cups of
coffee to digest. THANK YOU, and rest assured, I've your message saved.

Nick.

Terrance N. Phillip wrote:

> Hello, all!
>
> Slackware-current, 2.4.29 kernel. I'm getting frequent X crashes while
> running KDE. It seems to happen more often than not when I have a
> konsole open. Screen blanks, and I get either a very few (1 to 4) or
> many (100s) of vertical lines in various colours drawn on the screen.
> Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Keyboard also locks at this point. The only ways
> out seem to be to either cycle power or reset the computer.
>
> I'm not Linux-savvy enough (yet) to diagnose where the problem might
> be. Can anyone get me started? If this were Windows I'd suspect buggy
> hardware, since the drivers are pretty vanilla (i810 chipset & video).
>
> Nick.

In addition to other folks' suggestions, have you tried xorgcfg (from a
console log in), xorgconfig (interactive), or, especially, xorgsetup
(automagic)? They're found in /usr/X11R6/bin.

I particularly like xorgsetup, which appears to go have a look at things
and makes a usable /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for you (that you can then
fiddle with). It makes a back up of your existing xorg.conf file, by the
way, so it may be worth a shot to see what X thinks things ought to look
like. You have to be logged in as root and not have X running for any of
these.

The only thing I ever have to do with the xorg.conf file generated by
xorgsetup is add

Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

so a microjunk wheel mouse will work.

Terrance N. Phillip wrote:

> Had a look and the memory is set to 64 MB, although it's not called agp
> aperture on this 1999 bios; the motherboard doesn't even have an agp
> port, as I recently was horrified to find out
>
> N

hmmm......and why then is the agpgart module loaded and trying to
reserve memory.
if you don't need it , you could try to remove it.
i think it's loaded in rc.modules.

cashmir

cashmir wrote:
> Terrance N. Phillip wrote:
>
>> Had a look and the memory is set to 64 MB, although it's not called
>> agp aperture on this 1999 bios; the motherboard doesn't even have an
>> agp port, as I recently was horrified to find out
>>
>> N
>
>
> hmmm......and why then is the agpgart module loaded and trying to
> reserve memory.
> if you don't need it , you could try to remove it.
> i think it's loaded in rc.modules.
>
> cashmir
Well, that's a really good question. It *is* in rc.modules, I've
commented out the line, and now I'm going to try shutting down &
restarting X. Let you know what happens!

Nick.

Terrance N. Phillip wrote:

> Well, that's a really good question. It *is* in rc.modules, I've
> commented out the line, and now I'm going to try shutting down &
> restarting X. Let you know what happens!
>
> Nick.

Actually did a /sbin/reboot instead of just re-starting X, and all's
well, for now. Thanks for noticing that. I'll give this a try for a
while & report back.

To some other responders, not to downplay your suggestions, especially
with my lack of experience... but... X and KDE *do* come up, the display
is stable. I used xorgconfig to set up xorg.conf, and the only changes I
made (right in the xorgconfig menus) were to the monitor's horiz &
vertical refresh rates, right off the vendors spec sheet. Everything
works except for these occasional crashes, which involve both the
display and the keyboard. My admittedly meager experience with
configuring X is that if I get it wrong, *nothing* works and I'm dumped
immediately back to a text-only terminal. The crashes I'm experiencing
freeze up the entire system, and no amount of ctrl-alt-Fn-ing will get
me to a terminal.

Nick.

Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
-- Carl Gustav Jung

Whether or not there bee an agp port, horrifying as it is, the i810
deviceorama is an agp type on-board "card", so to speak, so will/must
work with the agpgart module/kernel option. Either way --
module/in_kernel will work.

AGP support is required for the i810 module.

agpgart.o is required for AGP support if you are modularizing.

You also have to enable i810 on board support which is a separate
kernel option and is AGP as well.

With i810 on board support it may not be necessary of course to
enable the i810 card support. But they are both AGP.

DRI should be enabled as well in character devices. This could speed
writes up bigtime.

If you enable MTRR in the processor options, then the whole system
will work faster.

Out on a limb here, but I would drop your processor type back a notch
when compiling and not try to optimize codes for the CPU. Vanilla
586 may work better.

EC<:-}



Terrance N. Phillip wrote:
> Hello, all!
>
> Slackware-current, 2.4.29 kernel. I'm getting frequent X crashes while
> running KDE. It seems to happen more often than not when I have a
> konsole open. Screen blanks, and I get either a very few (1 to 4) or
> many (100s) of vertical lines in various colours drawn on the screen.
> Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Keyboard also locks at this point. The only ways out
> seem to be to either cycle power or reset the computer.
>
> I'm not Linux-savvy enough (yet) to diagnose where the problem might be.
> Can anyone get me started? If this were Windows I'd suspect buggy
> hardware, si nce the drivers are pretty vanilla (i810 chipset & video).
>
> Nick.

I think I'm ready to wrap up this thread. Thanks to all who replied. The
one thing I've changed, which appears to have made a significant
difference, was suggested by cashmir:

>>Had a look and the memory is set to 64 MB, although it's not called
>>agp aperture on this 1999 bios; the motherboard doesn't even have an
>>agp port, as I recently was horrified to find out
>>
>> N
>hmmm......and why then is the agpgart module loaded and trying to
>reserve memory.
>if you don't need it , you could try to remove it.
>i think it's loaded in rc.modules.
>cashmir

I haven't had an X-related crash since I disabled the offending line in
rc.modules.

Nick

(Another problem to come, though...)