Bug 176985

Summary:	x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810-2.0.0 fails to correctly handle i915 chipsets with external monitors
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Bill Kenworthy <bill>
Component:	Current packages	Assignee:	Gentoo X packagers <x11>
Status:	RESOLVED NEEDINFO
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Bill Kenworthy 2007-05-04 02:58:39 UTC

I upgraded to the latest x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810-2.0.0 and after 2 days of fiddling trying to get a usable system reverted back to the older x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810-1.7.4 driver.

Is on a sony vaio that has a 1366x768 widescreen, and is used in an office with a 1280x1024 LCD, and also use it with a number of projectors (mostly @1024x768 which is the max I can do with the older driver externally for some reason - prob the LCD height) in different rooms. The old i810 driver would run at whatever resolution from the choices I made, and stretched/squashed the ext/int screen as needed. Usually just hibernated or suspended to ram and restarted in the new location, chose the appropriate resolution and got on with it. Not ideal, and not as usable as the windows display but it worked.

The new driver however seems an only/or solution. It wont stretch/squash the image but turns off the output where the resolution doesn't exactly match. Worse, if you start it up without the monitor plugged in, the ext output wont come on at all. Even if you get both screens working at bootup, in some cases choosing a new, supported resolution (xrandr) gives two blank screens - even if one/both match common modes between the two. On top of this, it appears to always want to use EDID and DDC information, even when xorg.conf says not to (the old driver did that as well - but maybe not so destructively ...).

Switching back to a terminal at least allows X to be killed/restarted, but sometimes that came up blank as well ...

Searching the net finds a few hits that imply that the driver is faulty and being worked on, so I am raising this bug in the hope of getting it fixed. Gentoo also has one i915 bug (#176960) on this driver which may or may not be related, so I raised a new bug. Also, see forum post http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=4037502#4037502 for more problems/comments on this driver

On the plus side, being able to use heights greater than 768 on the ext adapter has me salivating ...

Next version please

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:
See above

Comment 1 Joshua Baergen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2007-05-07 22:59:51 UTC

You should probably file this issue upstream, since there's not much we can do here.

Before you do, however, please attach your xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log so that we can take a quick look.

Comment 2 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2007-08-02 01:14:45 UTC

Is this still an issue with 2.1.0? Please reopen when you reply.

Comment 3 Bill Kenworthy 2007-08-02 01:29:46 UTC

Yes - but I have not had a chance to redo my xorg.conf to see if I can work around it.  When I get to it I'll open a new bug on it, and attach xorg.conf etc.