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Bug 80402
Summary: | redhat-config-xfree86 is dirtier than zebra | ||
---|---|---|---|
Product: | [Retired] Red Hat Public Beta | Reporter: | Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa> |
Component: | redhat-config-xfree86 | Assignee: | Brent Fox <bfox> |
Status: | CLOSED RAWHIDE | QA Contact: | |
Severity: | high | Docs Contact: | |
Priority: | medium | ||
Version: | phoebe | CC: | irc, ivo, jsk29, mharris, wtogami |
Target Milestone: | --- | ||
Target Release: | --- | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | Linux | ||
Whiteboard: | |||
Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
Last Closed: | 2003-01-10 03:27:20 UTC | Type: | --- |
Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
Embargoed: | |||
Bug Depends On: | |||
Bug Blocks: | 79579 |
Description
Tom "spot" Callaway
2002-12-25 22:33:43 UTC
Do you have any traceback info? I don't have that exact laptop, but my Compaq Presario 1700T laptop at home has a Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x (rev 64), which sounds similar although not identical. redhat-config-xfree86 works ok on that laptop. Also, can you try redhat-config-xfree86-0.7.1-1 out of Rawhide and see how that goes? I recently took ownership of this package and I am trying to give it more attention than it has received in the past. The code has changed a lot since 0.6.9-2. There's not time to add a TUI mode for GinGin, but I'd like to do that for the next release. Is there time to reinclude Xconfigurator? The guts of that application (hwdata, kudzu) are still present, it should work with little effort. That way, if redhat-config-xfree86 is not successful, it could print a little message for the user like "I was not able to configure X Windows. You may want to try using Xconfigurator to manually configure X Windows." I'll get a more specific debug tonight, and I'll try the new package. I really don't want to include Xconfigurator again. The right answer is to fix redhat-config-xfree86. Although Xconfigurator has a text interface, it had plenty of open bugs against it when it was decommissioned. We don't have the resources to maintain two X tools since we can barely maintain one. Bringing it back now would be a nightmare. I assure you, Xconfigurator is totally, completely, irrevocably removed from Red Hat Linux, and will not return, ever. As Brent says, redhat-config-xfree86 is what we ship now, and we want bug reports for things that do not work. If anyone adds Xconfigurator, I'll make sure an rpm -e Xconfigurator is executed from within the X server binary at startup. redhat-config-xfree86-0.7.1-3 out of rawhide correctly detects and probes X on my laptop. :) I've got a new Sony VAIO R505G laptop, and even the latest Rawhide redhat-config-xfree86 is unable to autodetect the LCD display. (I've been able to use the generic laptop 1024x768 option, though.) (Also, ddcprobe does not return the monitor type.) For cases where the monitor type is not autodetected, I'd be very happy if the installer queried for the monitor type as soon as possible. (Since ddc doesn't work, how can LCD monitor type be determined? Is it impossible, or is something just waiting to get implemented?) jsk29: some LCD's cannot be probed with ddcprobe, usually ones with laptops. Most flatpanel monitors these days can be probed, like my Dell 1702FP at home, but laptop screens must do something different at the hardware level. Apparently X has some way of probing these kinds of monitors, but this probing is not (as far as I know) made available to programs other than X via an API. We are investigating ways to try to go about this, whether that's parsing the output of the X.log when starting X fails (this logfile usually contains the probing information) or whether it means pulling the actual probing code out of X itself. I can't promise that we'll have this fixed for the next release, but we're definately aware of the problem. The general methods for probing LCD's in no particular order are: 1) DDC probe 2) BIOS calls 3) BIOS snooping 4) ACPI info The only one that is very reliable is DDC, however DDC is not implemented on a large number of LCD panels, which sucks. Furthermore, the other 3 methods are rather extremely hardware dependant and not very reliable. Windows has a bit of an advantage here, because a laptop comes with driver disks, .INF files, etc. specifically designed for that laptop / LCD, which inform Windows of what it needs to know, in addition to the various probing techniques. We unfortunately (the open source community) do not enjoy these luxuries yet. Thanks for the rundown Mike, that was very useful. If I can be of any help learning how to identify the VAIO R505G displays, let me know. I had figured that the preinstalled drivers were giving Windows an unnatural advantage. Hopefully someday Sony will decide to Red Hat certify all of their laptop hardware. :) Thanks again! |