Graphical display problems on thinkpad iseries

[whollygoat@letterboxes.org]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble with the graphical interface 
on an IBM Thinkpad i1161.  I was
hoping for some help in debugging them.

First off, I had to tinker with xorg.conf to
get anything usable.  I'm using siliconmotion
as the driver at 1024x768.  Now that I've got
that working, other problems have showed up.

xdm will not allow a login.  This isn't a password
problem.  It accepts the password, then starts
the process of xetting up X, then pops back
to the login screen.

I also can't switch back to a text terminal.  The
screen goes black for any of ctrl-alt-f1-6.  alt-f7
brings me back to the xdm login.

If I kill xdm with ctrl-alt-bckspc, the screen
goes black, and I can do nothing at the 
console.  Same thing if I ssh in to the laptop
and run "/etc/init.d/xdm stop". If I kill xdm using
the kill command on xdm and X, the xdm login in
screen stays displayed on the machine, but the console
is still frozen.

I can get an xsession using startx.  However, when
I exit the session, I am back to the frozen black
console.  

The laptop is not frozen.  I can ssh in after X has
locked the console, but can't get the console back.
I've tried sighupping all the getty's

Searching on the web I've come across similar
problems but with intel graphics hardware, but at
least part of the above leads me to think that this
is probably a siliconmotion driver problem.

Any thoughts?

will
-- 
  
  whollygoat@letterboxes.org

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