Debian Unstable, and Thinkpad X31 with Radeon Mobility
Hi all,
I've been running Debian unstable on my Thinkpad X31 laptop for almost two years. In general it works great.
I use the Radeon mobility card in it to provide a dual-head setup when I am at my desk. This has been working fine, until today.
I couldn't leave good enough alone, and did an update to the xserver-xorg package, and related packages. I hadn't updated in a couple of months.
After this update, when Xorg starts, it will not display any image on my laptop's LCD panel if the external monitor is plugged in. I did not change anything in my hardware setup, so this is purely a software issue - since it worked great before.
I checked my xorg.conf file, and it is exactly the same as it was before - it did not get updated .. so my configuration is the same as well. Anyway, I had backups, so I wasn't in danger of losing the conf files.
If my hardware is the same, and the configuration file is the same, then I am lead to believe that the software update has introduced a bug.
When I start xorg and look at the log, it shows the following interesting piece of info:
(II) Primary Device is: PCI 01:00:0
(--) Chipset ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY (AGP) found
(--) Chipset ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY (AGP) found
[...]
(II) RADEON(0): LVDS port is not in connector table, added in.
(II) RADEON(0): Connector0: DDCType-0, DACType-1, TMDSType--1, ConnectorType-1
(II) RADEON(0): Connector1: DDCType-3, DACType-0, TMDSType--1, ConnectorType-2
(II) RADEON(0): I2C device "DDC:ddc2" registered at address 0xA0.
(II) RADEON(0): I2C device "DDC:ddc2" removed.
(II) RADEON(0): DDC Type: 3, Detected Type: 1
(II) RADEON(0): EDID data from the display on port 1 ----------------------
(II) RADEON(0): Manufacturer: NEC Model: 65d2 Serial#: 16843009
[...]
(II) RADEON(0): Primary:
Monitor -- CRT
Connector -- VGA
DAC Type -- Primary
TMDS Type -- NONE
DDC Type -- VGA_DDC
(II) RADEON(0): Secondary:
Monitor -- NONE
Connector -- Proprietary
DAC Type -- TVDAC/ExtDAC
TMDS Type -- NONE
DDC Type -- NONE
(II) RADEON(0): PLL parameters: rf=2700 rd=60 min=12000 max=35000; xclk=14400
(WW) RADEON(0): Failed to detect secondary monitor, MergedFB/Clone mode disabled
Which makes no real sense. Both monitors are attached - and this exact same hardware setup worked fine before - i.e. both screens were detected. All I did was an 'upgrade' in aptitude and then reboot.
I could post the entire log, but I'm not sure that will help.
What seems to be happening is that the external monitor is being treated as the primary monitor unless the software has no other choice but to use the built in LCD panel. In the middle chunk of log above, we can see that it says 'EDID data from the display on port 1 ... Manufacturer: NEC ...' which is referring to my external monitor (NEC Multisync LCD). But there is never another 'EDID data from the display on port 2' .. or port 0 for that matter.
I've confirmed that while the default 'Monitor' section in my xorg.conf file should only be used for the internal LCD panel, it gets used by the external monitor. I know this because if I change the frequences to a slightly higher freq. then, when my external monitor is not connected, my laptop LCD panel works fine, but when I then plugin the external monitor and try to start X again, X dies saying the frequencies don't work with the screen.
SOOO...
1) Is there any way to revert to the previous software version easily? I don't know exactly what number I was at, so would need a way to step back through various versions... The current version of the package 'xserver-xorg' is '
6.9.0.dfsg'
2) Is this a problem with Debian, or should I be whining to the Xorg people... or the Xorg Debian people... or all of them?
Thanks for any guidance.
--
Its been so long,
and the groove in my heart is nearly gone,
Oh my head's in the clouds,
but I'm landing on my feet. - JK
www.falderal.net
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