I have an intermittent problem where starting and stopping X11 a few times will leave my system console in a broken state (the monitor goes into power save). I'm using the radeonhd driver (1.3.0) and kernel 2.6.31-gentoo-r3. What will happen is that the radeonhd driver will die on a fatal error, but X won't restore my console. See "http://pastebin.com/m5977626f". After that, I can start and stop X11 remotely, but when I exit X11, it doesn't fix the console. BTW, is there a way to restore the console? Reproducible: Always Portage 2.1.7.4 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.4.2, glibc-2.11-r0, 2.6.31-gentoo-r3 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r3-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Quad_CPU_Q9450_@_2.66GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:00:01 +0000 app-shells/bash: 4.0_p35 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.9-r1 dev-lang/python: 2.6.4, 3.1.1-r1 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.5.2-r2 sys-apps/sandbox: 2.2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2, 1.11 sys-devel/binutils: 2.20 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6a virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -ggdb -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -ggdb -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs=5" FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms splitdebug strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ http://gentoo.netnitco.net http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/gentoo-distfiles/ ftp://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/gentoo-distfiles/ http://gentoo.mirrors.easynews.com/linux/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.free.fr/mirrors/ftp.gentoo.org/ ftp://gentoo.imj.fr/pub/gentoo/ ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/" LANG="en_US.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en en_US" MAKEOPTS="--jobs=5" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 apache2 bash-completion berkdb bidi bzip2 cairo cdda cdio cdr cli cracklib crypt ctype cups dbus dri dts dvd dvdr encode fbcon ffmpeg filter flac fortran freetype gcj gd gdbm gnutls gpm hal httpd iconv ipv6 jadetex java jpeg jpeg2k kde kde4 kerberos lame lapack lcms ldap live lm_sensors mad matroska mjpeg mmx mng modules mp3 mpeg mudflap multilib mysql mysqli ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg oggvorbis opengl openmp openssl pam pcre perl php png ppds pppd python qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection ruby samba session spl sql sse sse2 sse3 ssl stream svg sysfs tcl tcpd theora threads tiff tk truetype unicode utempter vcd vlm vorbis webkit wxwindows x264 xorg xv xvid zeroconf zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en en_US" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon radeonhd" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
You might want to try the "radeon" driver instead
Have you tried the non-experimental radeon driver (xf86-video-ati), as Patrick suggested? Comparison rom Xorg wiki http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon: "For an alternative R500/R600/R700 driver see radeonhd. Radeon has some features not available in radeonhd and vice versa, but generally they are starting to be quite close while radeon supports all the cards and radeonhd only r5xx-r7xx. The differences between radeon and radeonhd with r5xx-r7xx: * radeon supports tear-free video playback * radeon supports TV-out (experimental) * radeonhd supports HDMI audio" If that still doesn't work, you might need to get KMS (kernel-mode-setting) support in both kernel and driver, because KMS was designed to eliminate race conditions in console-switching that can goof up your consoles.
Yeah. After bugging the heck out of the people on #radeon on freenode, I got it all working. It involved using both the non-experimental ATI driver and KMS. Works like a charm. Don't even have an xorg.conf anymore. I think the biggest problem with all of this is that basically none of it's documented. I tried and tried to find stuff on Google, but all the Gentoo stuff I find is way out of date, lots of stuff pertaining to the most recent stuff is for other distros, and some of the stuff I find is just wrong. Might I encourage Gentoo folks to update the docs? I'd offer to help, but I don't even remember what I did. If it breaks, I'm going to be in trouble. :)
I think the forums are a great place to find info on new features, before it hits stable (which is when key docs, e.g. X upgrade guides, tend to get updated). For instance, here is a thread on KMS + radeon: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-792149-highlight-kms.html Those guys were using the latest live X ebuilds to get stuff to work, so I think our poor overworked docs guys will wait to update official docs until things get a lot more stable. I know ubuntu users who have been griping about KMS breakage; it seems that at this point you need some luck to have it work properly :} However, it would be really cool if you were inspired to post your successful configuration on the forums, e.g. which kernel and X versions you ended up with...
