Bug#420300: kernel-2.6.18: MGA video driver crashes system during X -> fb or fb -> X switching
Package: kernel-2.6.18
Version: linux-source-2.6.18
Severity: normal
As soon as I started to do some work on my new Debian Etch system, I got several severe
lockups per day. "Severe" means: Ctrl-Alt-Del has no effect, and Alt-Print s does not sync the
filesystem.
The lockups happen, if I switch from X to a tty, or from a tty to X. They don't happen every
time, but with a chance of 1:20 - 1:50, about 5 or 10 times a day. (Thank God or somebody else
for ext3...)
The problem does not exist under Debian Sarge on the same computer. Or sort of: If switching from
a certain X program (gthumb) to tty, there is sometimes a slight corruption under Sarge, which
can be cleared easily by switching back, changing to a different Gnome workplace, and switching to
tty again.
Additional system information:
1) Framebuffer
The Framebuffer is installed with the following Grub line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18 root=/dev/sda1 ro video=matroxfb:vesa:0x1B5,fh:85000,fv:110
(I calculated the line, when I installed the Matrox card under Debian Woody, many years ago.)
It reports itself as
Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0
<...>
matroxfb: MTRR's turned on
matroxfb: 800x600x24bpp (virtual: 832x6721)
matroxfb: framebuffer at 0xCE000000, mapped to 0xdc880000, size 33554432
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 100x37
fb0: MATROX frame buffer device
matroxfb_crtc2: secondary head of fb0 was registered as fb1
<...>
Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected an Intel 440BX Chipset.
agpgart: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xd0000000
<...>
Matrox MGA G200/G400/G450/G550 YUV Video interface v2.01 (c) Aaron Holtzman & A'rpi
mga_vid: Found MGA G400/G450 at 0000:01:00.0
mga_vid: MMIO at 0xde9a0000 framebuffer: 0xCE000000
mga_vid: OPTION word: 0x50044120 mem: 0x10 SGRAM
mga_vid: detected RAMSIZE is 32 MB
mga_vid: 1 supported cards found
mga_vid: using major: 83 (assigned or default!)
<...>
[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.1 20051102
[drm] Initialized mga 3.2.1 20051102 on minor 0
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
[drm] Initialized card for AGP DMA.
2) X
My EIZO/Nanao CRT is a little older, and does not report its capabilities back to the video
adapter. I install it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf with
Mode "1152x864"
DotClock 127.83
HTimings 1152 1176 1304 1504
VTimings 864 868 872 902
EndMode
(I calculated the line, when I installed the Matrox card under Debian Woody.)
Additional information:
Kernel with video drivers and mga_vid module are compiled from stock Debian Etch Stable.
Since my settings have worked well under Debian Woody and Debian Sarge, since quite some years,
I assume a video driver problem.
Ciao
Hans-Joachim
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Reply to: