Created attachment 362789 [details]
dmesg showing nouveau issue

Created attachment 362790 [details]
xorg log for nv not working

For nouveau, can you update to at least kernel-2.6.31.1-46.fc12 and retry.

For nv, it's not going to work while nouveau has control of the hardware.  Boot with "nomodeset" in your boot options.

updating to 48 did not change anything. Nomodeset does work, so at least I have a working x system now. It is still going to be a problem to upgraders.

Is that nomodeset with nv that works? Or nomodeset with nouveau?

Actually with nomodeset I can use either driver.

Ok, well it looks like the latest kernel has actually fixed some of the known issues on your chipset then, and an issue seen in your kernel log you attached earlier.

So, are you able to post /var/log/Xorg.0.log from using nouveau with nomodeset and your /var/log/messages from trying to use nouveau without nomodeset.  Without nomodeset, do you see the plymouth boot screen and/or boot messages?  Or nothing at all when nouveau takes control?

Created attachment 362949 [details]
xorg.log without nomodeset using nouveau. kernel 2.6.31.1-48.fc12.x86_64 

I don't claim to understand what I just saw. I rebooted into level 5 without the nomodeset. The modeset was done since I switched to proper screen resolution. Dmessage still reports the GPU lockup and the screen spent a few seconds with total noise. But then the cursor appeared over the noise and finally a real login screen. Maybe startx at init 3 is different and maybe I just didn't have enough patience for the driver to recover.

There are hundreds of lines in dmesg of the form
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_DMA_PUSHER - Ch 1
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_DMA_PUSHER - Ch 0
followed by
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Failed to idle channel 1.  Prepare for strangeness..
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_DMA_PUSHER - Ch 0

What you seen was nouveau detecting a GPU lockup, and X switching off acceleration so it could still operate.  I'm not really sure what you're seeing, I've just tested a machine with the same chipset and it appears to be functioning correctly.  This is with 2.6.31.1-56.fc12, but, there were no nouveau changes since the version you tested and that version.

There were further fixes to various potentially-related areas of nouveau recently.  These would be available in http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=135765 if you wish to test.

that's the thing, I don't see anything my laptop screen remains completely blank. I copied the messages file completely blind

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 12 development cycle.
Changing version to '12'.

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I'm having display corruption with FC12 and a GeForce 6150 card.  Not sure if the problem is related to this bug or not.   

00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51PV [GeForce 6150] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. K8NGM2 series
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
        Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at fc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Expansion ROM at feae0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb


I also get a constant stream of the following messages in dmesg:

[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0310 Data 0x010d7000
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0314 Data 0x00001000
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0318 Data 0x00001000
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x031c Data 0x00001000
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0320 Data 0x000003ce
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0324 Data 0x00000101
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0328 Data 0x00000000
[drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: PFIFO_CACHE_ERROR - Ch 0/0 Mthd 0x0100 Data 0x00000000

Created attachment 383610 [details]
Screen capture of the display corruption

Common display issues:
- Background get random noise
- Icons/buttons are the first to start with display corruption.

I should have added the kernel version and x11 driver.  

[pulsar ~]$ rpm -qa | egrep -i 'nouveau|kernel-' | sort
kernel-PAE-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.i686
xorg-x11-drv-nouveau-0.0.15-17.20091105gite1c2efd.fc12.i686

clinton: please file a separate bug. thanks.

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